Chapter 2

He leaned
low and reached down his hand to assist her up the ladder.

“I have been nigh crazy all morning. But I had to wait a decent time and
listen to their gossip after breakfast,” she told him, her face close
to his as she came up the ladder. “And, besides, my father is snappy
to-day. He scolded me last night for neglecting my guests. Just as if
I were called on to sit all day and listen to Nan Burgess appraise her
lovers or to sing a song every time Wally Dalton has his relapse of
lovesickness. He has come away to forget her, you know.” She chuckled,
uttering her funny little gurgle of a laugh which stirred in him,
always, a desire to smother it with kisses.

They went to the end of the bridge, apart from the man at the wheel.

“I hurried to go to sleep last night so that I could dream of you, my
own big boy.”

“I walked the bridge until after daylight. I wanted to stay awake. I
could not bear to let sleep take away my thoughts.”

“What is there like love to make this world full of happiness? How
bright the sun is! How the waves sparkle! Those folks sitting back there
are looking at the same things we are--or they can look, though they
don't seem to have sense enough. And about all they notice is that it's
daylight instead of night. My father and those men are talking about
money--just money--that's all. And Wally has a headache from drinking
too much Scotch. And Nan Burgess doesn't love anybody who loves her, But
for us--oh, this glorious world!”

She put out her arms toward the sun and stared boldly at that blazing
orb, as though she were not satisfied with what her eyes could behold,
but desired to grasp and feel some of the glory of outdoors. If Captain
Mayo had been as well versed in psychology as he was in navigation
he might have drawn a few disquieting deductions from this frank and
unconscious expression of the mood of the materialist. She emphasized
that mood by word.

“I'll show you my little clasp-book some day, big boy. It's where I
write my verses. I don't show them to anybody. You see, I'm telling you
my secrets! We must tell each other our secrets, you and I! I have put
my philosophy of living into four lines. Listen!

“The future? Why perplex the soul? The past? Forget its woe and strife!
Let's thread each day, a perfect whole, Upon our rosary of Life.”

“It's beautiful,” he told her.

“Isn't it good philosophy?”

“Yes,” he admitted, not daring to doubt the high priestess of the new
cult to which he had been commandeered.

“It saves all this foolish worry. Most of the folks I know are always
talking about the bad things which have happened to them or are peering
forward and hoping that good things will happen, and they never once
look down and admire a golden moment which Fate has dropped into their
hands. You see, I'm poetical this morning. Why shouldn't I be? We love
each other.”

“I don't know how to talk,” he stammered. “I'm only a sailor. I never
said a word about love to any girl in my life.”

“Are you sure you have never loved anybody? Remember, we must tell each
other our secrets.”

“Never,” he declared with convincing firmness.

She surveyed him, showing the satisfaction a gold-seeker would exhibit
in appraising a nugget of virgin ore. “But you are so big and fine! And
you must have met so many pretty girls!”

He was not restive under this quizzing. “I have told you the truth, Miss
Marston.”

“For shame, big boy! 'Miss Marston,' indeed! I am Alma--Alma to you. Say
it! Say it nicely!”

He flushed. He stole a shamefaced glance at the-wheelsman and made a
quick and apprehensive survey of the sacred regions aft.

“Are you afraid, after all I have said to you?”

“No, but it seems--I can hardly believe--”

“Say it.”

“Alma,” he gulped. “Alma, I love you.”

“You need some lessons, big boy. You are so awkward I think you are
telling me the truth about the other girls.”

He did not dare to ask her whether she had loved any one else. With all
the passionate jealousy of his soul he wanted to ask her. She, who was
so sure that she could instruct him, must have loved somebody. He tried
to comfort himself by the thought that her knowledge arose from the
efforts either men had made to win her.

“We have our To-day,” she murmured. “Golden hours till the moon comes
up--and then perhaps a few silver ones! I don't care what Arthur
guesses. My father is too busy talking money with those men to guess.
I'm going to be with you all I can. I can arrange it. I'm studying
navigation.”

She snuggled against the rail, luxuriating in the sunshine.

“Who are you?” she asked, bluntly.

That question, coming after the pledging of their affection, astonished
him like the loom of a ledge in mid-channel.

“It's enough for me that you are just as you are, boy! But you're not a
prince in disguise, are you?”

“I'm only a Yankee sailor,” he told her. “But if you won't think that
I'm trying to trade on what my folks have been before me, I'll say that
my grandfather was Gamaliel Mayo of Mayoport.”

“That sounds good, but I never heard of him. With all my philosophy, I'm
a poor student of history, sweetheart.” Her tone and the name she gave
him took the sting out of her confession.

“I don't believe he played a great part in history. But he built sixteen
ships in his day, and our house flag circled the world many times.
Sixteen big ships, and the last one was the _Harvest Home_, the China
clipper that paid for herself three times before an Indian Ocean monsoon
swallowed her.”

“Well, if he made all that money, are you going to sea for the fun of
it?”

“There are no more Yankee wooden ships on the sea. My poor father
thought he was wise when the wooden ships were crowded off. He put his
money into railroads--and you know what has happened to most of the
folks who have put their money into new railroads.”

“I'm afraid I don't know much about business.”

“The hawks caught the doves. It was a game that was played all over New
England. The folks whose money built the roads were squeezed out. Long
before my mother died our money was gone, but my father and I did not
allow her to know it. We mortgaged and gave her what she had always been
used to. And when my father died there was nothing!”

Her eyes glistened. “That's chivalry,” she cried. “That's the spirit of
the knights of old when women were concerned. I adore you for what you
did!”

“It was the way my father and I looked at it,” he said, mildly. “My
father was not a very practical man, but I always agreed with him. And
I am happy now, earning my own living. Why should I think my grandfather
ought to have worked all his life so that I would not need to work?”

“I suppose it's different with a big, strong man and a woman. She needs
so much that a man must give her.”

Captain Mayo became promptly silent, crestfallen, and embarrassed. He
stared aft, he looked at the splendid yacht whose finances he managed
and whose extravagance he knew. He saw the girl at his side, and blinked
at the gems which flashed in the sunlight as her fingers tucked up the
locks of hair where the breeze had wantoned.

“I think my father works because he loves it,” she said. “I wish he
would rest and enjoy other things more. If mother had lived to influence
him perhaps he would see something else in life instead of merely piling
up money. But he doesn't listen to me. He gives me money and tells me to
go and play. I miss my mother, boy! I haven't anybody to talk with--who
understands!”

There were tears in her eyes, and he was grateful for them. He felt
that she had depths in her nature. But keen realization of his position,
compared with hers, distressed him. She stood there, luxury incarnate,
mistress of all that money could give her.

“Anybody can make money,” she declared. “My father and those men are
sitting there and building plans to bring them thousands and thousands
of dollars. All they need to do is put their heads together and plan.
Every now and then I hear a few words. They're going to own all the
steamboats--or something of that kind. Anybody can make money, I say,
but there are so few who know how to enjoy it.”

“I have been doing a lot of thinking since last night--Alma.” He
hesitated when he came to her name, and then blurted it out.

“Do you think it is real lover-like to treat my name as if it were a
hurdle that you must leap over?” she asked, with her aggravating little
chuckle. “Oh, you have so much to learn!”

“I'm afraid so. I have a great many things ahead of me to learn and do.
I have been thinking. I have been afraid of the men who sit and scheme
and put all their minds on making money. They did bitter things to us,
and we didn't understand until it was all over. But I must go among them
and watch them and learn how to make money.”

“Don't be like the others, now, and talk money--money,” she said,
pettishly. “Money and their love-affairs--that's the talk I have heard
from men ever since I was allowed to come into the drawing-room out of
the nursery!”

“But I must talk money a little, dear. I have my way to make in the
world.”

“Thrifty, practical, and Yankee!” she jested. “I suppose you can't help
it!”

“It isn't for myself--it's for you!” he returned, wistfully, and with
a voice and demeanor he offered himself as Love's sacrifice before
her--the old story of utter devotion--the ancient sacrifice.

“I have all I want,” she insisted.

“But _I_ must be able to give you what you want!”

“I warn you that I hate money-grubbers! They haven't a spark of romance
in them. Boyd, you'd be like all the rest in a little while. You mustn't
do it.”

“But I must have position--means before I dare to go to your father--if
I ever shall be able to go to him!”

“Go to him for what?”

“To ask him--to say--to--well, when we feel that I'm in a position where
we can be married--”

“Of course we shall be married some day, boy, but all that will take
care of itself when the time comes. But now you are-- How old are you,
Boyd?”

“Twenty-six.”

“And I am nineteen. And what has marriage to do with the love we are
enjoying right now?”

“When folks are in love they want to get married.”

“Granted! But when lovers are wise they will treat romance at first as
the epicure treats his glass of good wine. They will pour it slowly and
hold the glass up against the light and admire its color!” In her gay
mood she pinched together thumb and forefinger and lifted an imaginary
glass to the sun. “Then they will sniff the bouquet. Ah-h-h, how
fragrant! And after a time they will take a little sip--just a weeny
little sip and hold it on the tongue for ever so long. For, when it is
swallowed, what good? Oh, boy, here are you--talking first of all about
marriage! Talking of the good wine of life and love as if it were a
fluid simply to satisfy thirst. We are going to love, first of all!
Come, I will teach you.”

He did not know what to say to her. There was a species of abandon in
her gaiety. Her exotic language embarrassed one who had been used to
mariners' laconic directness of speech. She looked at him, teasing him
with her eyes. He was a bit relieved when the pale-faced secretary came
dragging himself up the ladder and broke in on the tête-à-tête.

“Mr. Marston's orders are, Captain Mayo, that you turn here and go west.
Do you know the usual course of the Bee line steamers?”

“Yes, sir.”

“He requests you to turn in toward shore and follow that course.”

“Very well, sir.” Captain Mayo walked to the wheel. “Nor' nor'west,
Billy, until I can give you the exact course.”

“Nor' nor'west!” repeated the wheelsman, throwing her hard over, and
the _Olenia_ came about with a rail-dipping swerve and retraced her way
along her own wake of white suds.

Miss Marston preceded the captain down the ladder and went into the
chart-room. “A kiss--quick!” she whispered.

He held her close to him for a long moment.

“You are a most obedient captain,” she said.

When he released her and went at his task, she leaned upon his shoulder
and watched him as he straddled his parallels across the chart.

“We'll run to Razee Reef,” he told her, eager to make her a partner in
all his little concerns. “The Bee boats fetch the whistler there so as
to lay off their next leg. I didn't know that Mr. Marston was interested
in the Bee line.”

“I heard him talking about that line,” she said, indifferently.
“Sometimes I listen when I have nothing else to do. He used a naughty
word about somebody connected with that company--and it's so seldom that
he allows himself to swear I listened to see what it was all about. I
don't know even now. I don't understand such things. But he said if he
couldn't buy 'em he'd bu'st 'em. Those were his words. Not very elegant
language. But it's all I remember.”

Before he left the chart-room Mayo took a squint at the barometer. “I'm
sorry he has ordered me in toward the coast,” he said. “The glass is too
far below thirty to suit me. I think it means fog.”

“But it's so clear and beautiful,” she protested.

“It's always especially beautiful at sea before something bad happens,”
he explained, smiling. “And there has been a big fog-bank off to
s'uth'ard for two days. It's a good deal like life, dear. All lovely,
and then the fog shuts in!”

“But I would be happy with you in the fog,” she assured him.

He glowed at her words and answered with his eyes.

She would have followed him back upon the bridge, but the steward
intercepted her. He had waited outside the chart-room.

“Mr. Marston's compliments, Miss Marston! He requests you to join him at
cards.”

She pouted as she gave back Mayo's look of annoyance, and then obeyed
the mandate.

Mr. Marston was stroking his narrow strip of chin beard with thumb and
forefinger when she arrived on the quarter-deck. The men of business
were below, and he motioned to a hammock chair beside him.

“Alma, for the rest of this cruise I want you to stay back here with
our guests where you belong,” he commanded with the directness of attack
employed by Julius Marston in his dealings with those of his ménage.

“What do you mean, father?”

“That--exactly. I was explicit, was I not?”

“But you do not intimate that--that I have--”

“Well?” Mr. Marston believed in allowing others to expose their
sentiments before he uncovered his own.

“You don't suggest that there is anything wrong in my being on the
bridge where I enjoy myself so much. I am trying to learn something
about navigation.”

“I am paying that fellow up there to attend to all that.”

“And it gets tiresome back here.”

“You selected your own company for the cruise--and there is Mr.
Beveridge ready to amuse you at any time.”

“Mr. Beveridge amuses me--distinctly amuses me,” she retorted. “But
there is such a thing as becoming wearied even of such a joke as Mr.
Beveridge.”

“You will please employ a more respectful tone when you refer to that
gentleman,” said her father, with severity. But he promptly fell back
into his usual mood when she came into his affairs. He was patronizingly
tolerant. “Your friend, Miss Burgess, has been joking about your sudden
devotion to navigation, Alma.”

“Nan Burgess cannot keep her tongue still, even about herself.”

“I know, but I do not intend to have you give occasion even for
jokes. Of course, I understand. I know your whims. You are interested,
personally, in that gold-braided chap about as much as you would be
interested in that brass thing where the compass is--whatever they call
it.”

“But he's a gentleman!” she cried, her interest making her unwary. “His
grandfather was--”

“Alma!” snapped Julius Marston. His eyes opened wide. He looked her up
and down. “I have heard before that an ocean trip makes women silly,
I am inclined to believe it. I don't care a curse who that fellow's
grandfather was. _You_ are my daughter--and you keep off that bridge!”

The men of business were coming up the companion-way, and she rose and
hurried to her stateroom.

“I don't dare to meet Nan Burgess just now,” she told herself.
“Friendships can be broken by saying certain things--and I feel
perfectly capable of saying just those things to her at this moment.”

In the late afternoon the _Olenia_, the shore-line looming to starboard,
shaped her course to meet and pass a big steamer which came rolling down
the sea with a banner of black smoke flaunting behind her.

The fog which Captain Mayo had predicted was coming. Wisps of it trailed
over the waves--skirmishers sent ahead of the main body which marched in
mass more slowly behind.

A whistling buoy, with its grim grunt, told all mariners to 'ware Razee
Reef, which was lifting its jagged, black bulk against the sky-line.
With that fog coming, Captain Mayo needed to take exact bearings from
Razee, for he had decided to run for harbor that night. That coastline,
to whose inside course Marston's orders had sent the yacht, was too
dangerous to be negotiated in a night which was fog-wrapped. Therefore,
the captain took the whistler nearly dead on, leaving to the larger
steamer plenty of room in the open sea.

With considerable amazement Mayo noticed that the other fellow was
edging toward the whistler at a sharper angle than any one needed. That
course, if persisted in, would pinch the yacht in dangerous waters. Mayo
gave the on-coming steamer one whistle, indicating his intention to pass
to starboard. After a delay he was answered by two hoarse hoots--a most
flagrant breach of the rules of the road.

“That must be a mistake,” Captain Mayo informed Mate McGaw.

“That's a polite name for it, sir,” averred Mr. McGaw, after he had
shifted the lump in his cheek.

“Of course he doesn't mean it, Mr. McGaw.”

“Then why isn't he giving us elbow-room on the outside of that buoy,
sir?”

“I can't swing and cross his bows now. If he should hit us we'd be the
ones held for the accident.”

Again Mayo gave the obstinate steamer a single whistle-blast.

“If he cross-signals me again I'll report him,” he informed the mate.
“Pay close attention, Mr. McGaw, and you, too, Billy. We may have to go
before the inspectors.”

But the big chap ahead of them did not deign to reply. He kept on
straight at the whistler.

“Compliments of Mr. Marston!” called the secretary from the bridge
ladder. “What steamer is that?”

“_Conorno_ of the Bee line, sir,” stated Captain Mayo over his shoulder.
Then he ripped out a good, hearty, deep-water oath. According to
appearances, incredible as the situation seemed, the _Conorno_ proposed
to drive the yacht inside the whistler.

Mayo ran to the wheel and yanked the bell-pull furiously. There were
four quick clangs in the engine-room, and in a moment the _Olenia_ began
to quiver in all her fabric. Going full speed ahead, Mayo had called
for full speed astern. Then he sounded three whistles, signaling as the
rules of the road provide. The yacht's twin screws churned a yeasty riot
under her counter, and while she was laboring thus in her own wallow,
trembling like some living thing in the extremity of terror, the big
steamer swept past. Froth from the creamy surges at her bows flicked
spray contemptuously upon Julius Marston and his guests on the
_Olenia_'s quarter-deck. Men grinned down upon them from the high
windows of the steamer's pilot-house.

A jeering voice boomed through a megaphone: “Keep out of the way of the
Bee line! Take the hint!”

An officer pointed his finger at Marston's house flag, snapping from
the yacht's main truck. The blue fish-tail with its letter “M” had
revealed the yacht's identity to searching glasses.

“Better make it black! Skull and cross-bones!” volunteered the megaphone
operator.

On she went down the sea and the _Olenia_ tossed in the turbulent wake
of the kicking screws.

Then, for the first time, Captain Mayo heard the sound of Julius
Marston's voice. The magnate stood up, shook his fist at his staring
captain, and yelled, “What in damnation do you think you are doing?”

It was amazing, insulting, and, under the circumstances as Mayo knew
them, an unjust query. The master of the _Olenia_ did not reply. He was
not prepared to deliver any long-distance explanation. Furthermore, the
yacht demanded all his attention just then. He gave his orders and she
forged ahead to round the whistler.

“Nor'west by west, half west, Billy. And cut it fine!”

The fog had fairly leaped upon them from the sea. The land-breeze
had been holding back the wall of vapor, damming it in a dun bank to
southward. The breeze had let go. The fog had seized its opportunity.

“Saturday Cove for us to-night, Mr. McGaw,” said the master. “Keep your
eye over Billy's shoulder.”

Then the secretary appeared again on the ladder. This time he did not
bring any “compliments.”

“Mr. Marston wants you to report aft at once,” he announced, brusquely.

Mayo hesitated a moment. They were driving into blankness which had shut
down with that smothering density which mariners call “a dungeon fog.”
Saturday Cove's entrance was a distant and a small target. In spite of
steersman and mate, his was the sole responsibility.

“Will you please explain to Mr. Marston that I cannot leave the bridge?”

“You have straight orders from him, captain! You'd better stop the boat
and report.”

The skipper of the _Olenia_ was having his first taste of the
unreasoning whim of the autocrat who was entitled to break into
shipboard discipline, even in a critical moment. Mayo felt exasperation
surging in him, but he was willing to explain.

The whistler and Razee Reef had been blotted out by the fog.

“If this vessel is stopped five minutes in this tide-drift we shall lose
our bearings, sir. I cannot leave this bridge for the present.”

“I'm thinking you'll leave it for good!” blurted the secretary. “You're
the first hired man who ever told Julius Marston to go bite his own
thumb.”

“I may be a hired man,” retorted Mayo. “But I am also a licensed
shipmaster. I must ask you to step down off the bridge.”

“Does that go for all the rest of the--passengers?” asked the secretary,
angry in his turn. He dwelt on his last word. “It does--in a time like
this!”

“Very well, I'll give them that word aft.”

Captain Mayo caught a side glance from Mate McGaw after a time.

“I have often wondered,” remarked the mate to nobody in particular, “how
it is that so many damn fools get rich on shore.”

Captain Mayo did not express any opinion on the subject. He clutched the
bridge rail and stared into the fog, and seemed to be having a lot of
trouble in choking back some kind of emotion.

III ~ THE TAVERN OF THE SEAS

Now, Mister Macliver, you knows him quite well,
He comes upon deck and he cuts a great swell;
It's damn your eyes there and it's damn your eyes here,
And straight to the gangway he takes a broad sheer.
--La Pique “Come-all-ye.”

Into Saturday Cove, all during that late afternoon, they came
surging--spars and tackle limned against the on-sweeping pall of the
gray fog--those wayfarers of the open main.

First to roll in past the ledgy portals of the haven were the venerable
sea-wagons--the coasters known as the “Apple-treers.” Their weatherwise
skippers, old sea-dogs who could smell weather as bloodhounds sniff
trails, had their noses in the air in good season that day, and knew
that they must depend on a thinning wind to cuff them into port. One
after the other, barnacled anchors splashed from catheads, dragging
rusty chains from hawse-holes, and old, patched sails came sprawling
down with chuckle of sheaves and lisp of running rigging.

A 'long-coast shanty explains the nickname, “Apple-treers”:

O, what's the use of compass or a quadrant or a log?
Keep her loafin' on her mudhook in a norther or a fog.
But as soon's the chance is better, then well ratch her off once more,
Keepin' clost enough for bearings from the apple-trees ashore.

Therefore, the topsail schooners, the fore-and-afters, the Bluenose
blunt-prows, came in early before the fog smooched out the loom of
the trees and before it became necessary to guess at what the old card
compasses had to reveal on the subject of courses.

And so, along with the rest of the coastwise ragtag, which was seeking
harbor and holding-ground, came the ancient schooner _Polly_. Fog-masked
by those illusory mists, she was a shadow ship like the others; but,
more than the others, she seemed to be a ghost ship, for her lines and
her rig informed any well-posted mariner that she must be a centenarian;
with her grotesqueness accentuated by the fog pall, she seemed unreal--a
picture from the past.

She had an out-thrust of snub bow and an upcock of square stern, and
sag of waist--all of which accurately revealed ripe antiquity, just as
a bell-crowned beaver and a swallow-tail coat with brass buttons would
identify an old man in the ruck of newer fashions. She had seams like
the wrinkles in the parchment skin of extreme old age. She carried a
wooden figurehead under her bowsprit, the face and bust of a woman on
whom an ancient woodcarver had bestowed his notion of a beatific smile;
the result was an idiotic simper. The glorious gilding had been worn
off, the wood was gray and cracked. The _Polly's_ galley was entirely
hidden under a deckload of shingles and laths in bunches; the
after-house was broad and loomed high above the rail in contrast to the
mere cubbies which were provided for the other fore-and-afters in the
flotilla which came ratching in toward Saturday Cove.

The _Polly_, being old enough to be celebrated, had been the subject of
a long-coast lyric of seventeen verses, any one of which was capable of
producing most horrible profanity from Captain Epps Candage, her master,
whenever he heard the ditty echoing over the waves, sung by a satirist
aboard another craft.

In that drifting wind there was leisure; a man on board a lime-schooner
at a fairly safe distance from the _Polly_ found inclination and lifted
his voice:

“Ow-w-w, here comes the _Polly_ with a lopped-down sail,
And Rubber-boot Epps, is a-settin' on her rail.
How-w-w long will she take to get to Boston town?
Can't just tell 'cause she's headin' up and down.”

“You think that kind o' ky-yi is funny, do you, you walnut-nosed,
blue-gilled, goggle-eyed son of a dough-faced americaneezus?” bellowed
Captain Candage, from his post at the _Polly's_ wheel.

“Father!” remonstrated a girl who stood in the companionway, her elbows
propped on the hatch combings. “Such language! You stop it!”

“It ain't half what I can do when I'm fair started,” returned the
captain.

“You never say such things on shore.”

“Well, I ain't on shore now, be I? I'm on the high seas, and I'm talking
to fit the occasion. Who's running this schooner, you or me?”

She met his testiness with a spirit of her own, “I'm on board here,
where I don't want to be, because of your silly notions, father. I have
the right to ask you to use decent language, and not shame us both.”

Against the archaically homely background the beauty of the young girl
appeared in most striking contrast. Her curls peeped out from under the
white Dutch cap she wore. Her eyes sparkled with indignant protest, her
face was piquant and was just then flushed, and her nose had the least
bit of a natural uptilt, giving her the air of a young woman who had a
will of her own to spice her amiability.

Captain Candage blinked at her over the spokes of the wheel, and in his
father's heart acknowledged her charm, realizing more acutely that
his motherless girl had become too much of a problem for his limited
knowledge in the management of women.

He had not seen her grow up gradually, as other fathers had viewed their
daughters, being able to meet daily problems in molding and mastery.

She seemed to reach development, mental and physical, in disconcerting
phases while he was away on his voyages. Each time he met her he was
obliged to get acquainted all over again, it appeared to him.

Captain Candage had owned up frankly to himself that he was not able to
exercise any authority over his daughter when she was ashore.

She was not wilful; she was not obstinate; she gave him affection.