Martin became suddenly aware that the recital was ended, and that three unlike, friendly faces were beaming upon him with smiling lips. Unconsciously, as he had followed the course of the tale with absorbed interest, he had lost sight of the fact of his own intimate connection with the narrated events. He had seemed to be a listener to an interesting fiction. His old habit of identifying himself with the characters in the tales he read had mastered him. Little Billy's recountal, and his own responses and interjections, all seemed part of a melodrama which, played out, would vanish and leave him secure in his accustomed law-abiding world.
Now he suddenly realized that the melodrama was real, that the first act only was ended, and that the last was obscured in the future.
The day had been replete with shocks, but the greatest shock was this, when Martin finally and completely realized that the even course of his life had been rudely and permanently changed, that he had been plucked out of his humdrum niche and cast willy-nilly into this violent drama by sportive circumstance. The tumultuous incidents of the previous night arrayed themselves in his mind with something of their true perspective.
He touched his head, and felt the bandage about the forgotten wound. He became more keenly conscious of his surroundings—the unfamiliar furnishings of the cabin, the careened table, the motion of the ship that had at first disturbed and now soothed him, the measured footfalls of the boatswain, overhead, the sough of the wind aloft.
He looked with fresh eyes upon his companions. They too were actors in the play—the forceful blind man, the lovable cripple, and this blooming, merry-eyed girl whose every glance sent a strange thrill through his being. They were his partners, his shipmates! He was committed with them to this adventure, and he was glad. They, too, seemed glad, for they were smiling a welcome.
"Of course, Martin, we feel rather diffident before you," spoke up Little Billy. "We know it is an outrage, this causing you to lose your comfortable berth ashore, and——"
"Say no more about it," interrupted Martin. "You had sufficient provocation for all your actions. And really, believe me, I am very glad I fell in with you. I am glad to be here. I have wanted to go to sea all my life. We are going to Fire Mountain now, aren't we?"
"That's the spirit!" cried the captain heartily. "And you will not lose by your joining us, lad. Even if this venture prove a failure, there is still a mighty good living to be picked up on the Pacific."
"We are a sort of coöperative association," explained Ruth. "We work on shares; something like the whaleman's lay, though more generous. Of course, we pay straight wages to the hands forward. But we of the afterguard work this way: After all expenses of a voyage have been paid, the captain as master and owner takes fifty per cent. of the net profits. The remaining fifty per cent. is divided among the rest of us, not according to rank but pro rata. We want you to join the partnership. You are to share equally with Billy, the bosun, and myself. And if we really find this stuff on Fire Mountain, your share will come to a neat fortune. No, don't start protesting—of course you are entitled to it."
"And don't commence counting your chickens before they are hatched," admonished Little Billy. "It is quite on the cards that we will reach Fire Mountain to discover Carew ahead of us. Or somebody else may have happened upon the stuff during the twenty-five years since Winters died. The last is not probable, but the first is, at least, possible. It will not do for us to rest in false security. Carew and his backers are sure to have a try for that million on Fire Mountain."
"But he does not know the island's position. I am sure of that!" objected Ruth.
"But he does know Bering Sea, almost as well as I," spoke up Captain Dabney. "And he knows the particular corner of Bering we are bound for. No—Billy is right. We must not imagine theDawnisn't on our heels, even now. In any event, he would be setting out for the Kuriles to pick up the seal-herds, about this time; and, knowing Carew as we do, we may prophesy that he will try to find our island. Indeed, the man may have already run across Fire Mountain during his excursions in those waters—he may know its position as well as we do. He'll try to poach on our preserve, no fear.
"That ambergris would represent the profits of a score of seal-raids—and besides, there is you, Ruth, drawing him like a lodestone. His attempt to shanghai you, back there in Frisco, shows the temper of the man. If we meet theDawnup north, and I have a hunch we shall meet her, we want to keep our eyes open. Meanwhile, we want to make a smart passage, and get there first, and away. We want to carry on—by the Lord, crack on to the limit!"
"If it has come to a race, Carew's schooner has the heels of us," observed Little Billy.
"Yes, theDawnis the better sailer," reluctantly admitted the captain. "If theCohassetwere ten years younger, I wouldn't admit it, but the old girl isn't quite as limber as she used to be. But the log line isn't everything in an ocean race. I know Bob Carew is a good seaman, but I'll show him a trick or two this passage, for all that I'm a blind man!"
"I hope we don't meet him up north. I am afraid," muttered Ruth.
"But haven't you considered that the police may have grabbed Carew, and the rest of that gang, for their part in that street fight?" broke in Martin. "Of course, I didn't see the finish of that affair, but I remember that I saw the police coming just before I fell."
"The police! Lay Carew by the heels!" The captain shook his head. "No such good luck, I'm afraid. Trust Carew to win clear of the police every time."
"And if they did grab him, you may trust Lawyer Smatt to have procured his release, at least upon bail, ere now. There is the hope, of course, that when you, Martin, shied that gun into his face, he was badly injured," said Little Billy.
"Oh, I hope not!" ejaculated Martin.
"We hope so," went on Little Billy. "If you had killed him, you would have rendered mankind a service. No such luck, though—the devil never fails to look after his own. He may not have even been stunned. The bosun did not see what happened after you fell—he picked you up and turned tail and ran for it. But I have no doubt Carew's men gathered up their leader and made off ahead of the law's coming. Carew is too much the fox not to have had a getaway prepared; and the clearance we dumped off the Farallones showed that he had theDawnready for sea. I'll wager we didn't beat him out through the Gate by many hours!"
"I suppose the police are looking for us?" ventured Martin.
"Not likely," assured the other. "We are safe away, at any rate. But I doubt if they have even heard of theCohasset. The denizens of that groggery would have given no evidence against us—they are themselves too deeply implicated. Also, shooting affrays are common enough on the Frisco waterfront, even gunfights of such magnitude as we indulged in. The police will forget all about it within a week's time.
"Of course, if we had left you behind, to be arrested, the consequences might have been serious enough for you, providing you did not have money or influence. That is the main reason we brought you to sea with us. But as it is, a dead or wounded Jap does not amount to much in Frisco, and the affair will have slipped men's minds long ere we see Market Street again."
"But—I think I killed that man, Spulvedo!" urged Martin, with a qualm at the recollection.
"A good job if you did," was the reply. "He was a notorious scoundrel. If you snuffed him out, I suspect the police would feel inclined to vote you a medal. But don't feel badly about that incident, Blake. Remember, you dropped him in self-defense."
"Gentlemen!" broke in Ruth suddenly. "We will have to adjourn this meeting till another time. Seven bells went some time ago. I have just time to get my coffee and relieve the bosun by midnight."
"What—the watch gone!" cried the captain. "But, lass, you have had no rest."
"Small matter," assented the girl, rising. "I'll make up for it. Is there any change in course, captain?"
"No, make all the westing we can," said the captain. "If this breeze will only hold a couple of days longer, we'll pick up the trades. Then for the passage!"
"But—a second!" exclaimed Little Billy. "We have not yet assigned our new brother to his duties. You know, Blake, there are no drones in the happy family. Now, I suggest, you are eminently qualified to assist the hard-driven steward."
A hearty laugh from the girl and the old man checked the hunchback's speech.
"No, you are not going to sluff your job upon poor Mr. Blake's shoulders!" cried Ruth. "That is—unless he wishes to become a steward."
"I want to be a sailor," Martin asserted emphatically.
"Well said, lad—I know you have mettle," commented Captain Dabney. "But it means work. You cannot learn a sailor's work by pacing a poop-deck."
"I am more than willing to work—common sailor work," said Martin.
"Well, we'll assign you to a watch," said the old man. "Of course, you will live aft. Keep your present berth with Billy. You had better join the starboard watch, I think. The bosun is a great hand to break in a greenhorn."
But Martin objected to this disposition. He was watching Ruth. She was buttoning her pea-coat around her throat, preparatory to braving the raw night. There was, he dared to think, a welcome twinkle, a meaning message, in the sidewise glance she shot at him.
"I would rather be in the mate's watch," said Martin.
The captain grinned, Little Billy chuckled and muttered something about a "sheep to the slaughter," and the mate rewarded him with a flash of white teeth.
"I'll be glad to have you in my watch," she said. "But remember—it is all work and no play! I keep strict discipline in my watch!"
Martin then proposed to commence straightway his seaman's career, by standing the impending watch, by accompanying Ruth on deck. Thereupon his officer voiced her first command:
"I don't want you blundering about the decks to-night with that sore head. Time enough for you to start in the morning; after breakfast I'll examine the wound, and if it looks well I'll turn you to. Also, you need to visit the slop-chest." She pointed to his once natty, now bedraggled, business suit. "You are hardly dressed for facing weather. Billy will outfit you in the morning. Meanwhile, turn in and sleep."
It was the night of April 29, 1915, that Martin Blake, clerk, sat at theCohasset'scabin table and heard the tale of Fire Mountain. It was on the morning of July 6, 1915, that Martin Blake, seaman, bent over theCohasset'sforeroyal yardarm and fisted the canvas, with the shrill whistle of the squall in his ears.
The interim had fashioned a new Martin Blake. In the bronzed and active figure, dungaree clad, sheath-knife on hip, who so casually balanced himself on the swaying foot-rope, there was little in common, so far as outward appearance went, with the dapper, white-faced clerk of yore.
He completed furling the sail. Then he straightened and swept the sea with keen, puckered eyes. It was a scrutiny that was rewarded. Ahead, across the horizon sky, floated a dark smudge, like the smoke-trail of a steamer, and beneath it was a black speck. It was no ship, but land, he knew. It was the expected landfall, the volcanic island, there ahead, and he, of all of the ship's company, first perceived it from his lofty perch.
He sent the welcome hail to the deck below——
"Land ho!"
He leaned over the lee yard-arm, grasped a back-stay, and commenced a rapid and precipitous descent to the deck. A few months before, he would have descended laboriously and fearfully by way of the shrouds; sliding down a backstay would then have rubbed his palms raw, and visited giddiness upon him. But now his hands were rope calloused, and his wits height proof. He was now the equal, for agility and daring, with any man on the ship. He had won, without much trouble, a seaman's niche on the ship.
In truth, Martin was to the life born, and he took to the sea like a duck to water. He won quickly through the inevitable series of mishaps that rubbed the greenhorn mark away; and he gleefully measured his progress by his ever-growing ability to outpull, outclimb, and outdare the polyglot denizens of the brigantine's forecastle.
He had expert coaching to urge his education on apace. He knew the many ropes and their various offices before he was two weeks on board; and he was able to move about aloft, by day or night, quite fearlessly. By the end of the first month he was standing his regular wheel trick. And, as the weeks passed, he gained more than a cursory knowledge of the leverages and wind surfaces that controlled and propelled his little floating world.
He applied himself earnestly to master his new craft. It was the life he had lusted for, and the mere physical spaciousness of his new outlook was a delight. He contrasted it with his former city-cramped, office-ridden existence.
He rejoiced openly as each day lengthened the distance between him and his former slavery. On the very first day he had mounted to the deck to commence work, the morning after the meeting in the cabin, he had enacted a ceremony that, to his own rollicking mind, placed a definite period to his old life. He came on deck bravely bedecked in his new slop-chest clothes, a suit of shiny, unstained dungarees.
He held carefully in his hands a black derby hat, and a starched collar of the "choker" variety. He carried the articles to the ship's side and cast them into the sea. Then he declaimed his freedom.
"They were the uniform of my servitude—badges of my clerkhood! I have finished with them. Into the ocean they go! Now—ho for the life on the billowy wave!"
"Very good!" the mate applauded his act and words. Her next words were an incisive and frosty command. "You may commence at once your life on the billowy wave! Go for'rd and stand by with the watch!"
Martin went forward, and he began to learn the why and wherefore of things in his new world. He learned to jump to an order called out by that baffling and entrancing person aft, learned to haul in unison, to laugh at hard knocks and grin at pain.
He learned to cultivate humility, and to mount the poop on the lee side when duty took him there. He learned the rigid etiquette of the sea, and addressed that blooming, desirable woman with the formal prefix, "mister."
His body toughened, his mind broadened, his soul expanded. But his heart also expanded, and it was unruly. Ruth was such a jolly chum—off duty. On duty, she was a martinet. Below, she was the merry life of the "happy family." On deck, she lorded it haughtily from the high place of the poop, and answered to the name of "mister"!
TheCohasset, Martin discovered, was manned by a total of eighteen souls. Besides the five persons aft, there were a sailmaker, a carpenter, a Chinese cook and ten forecastle hands. His first impression—that the crew was composed of wild men—was partially borne out. Of the ten men in the forecastle, but four were Caucasian—two Portuguese from the Azores, a Finn and an Australian—and the quartet were almost as outlandish in their appearance as the other six of the crew.
The remaining six were foregathered from the length and breadth of the Pacific. There was a Maori from New Zealand, a Koriak tribesman from Kamchatka, two Kanakas, a stray from Ponape, and an Aleut. The six natives, Martin discovered, had all been with the ship for years, were old retainers of Captain Dabney. The four white men, and the cook, who rejoiced in the name of Charley Bo Yip, had been newly shipped in San Francisco.
Martin's watchmates were five of the natives. Martin suspected they composed the mate's watch because they were all old, tractable hands. They were the Maori, Rimoa, a strapping, middle-aged man, Oomak, the Koriak, the man with the tattooed and scarified face whom Martin had seen at the wheel the first day at sea, the two Kanakas, and the Aleut. They talked to each other, he found, in a strange pidgin—a speech composed mainly of verbs and profanity, a language that would have shocked a purist to a premature grave. But Martin found his watchmates to be a brave, capable, though rather silent group.
Martin's initiation into the joys of sea life was a strenuous one. The gale that had sent theCohassetflying from San Francisco, died out, as Ruth had predicted. Followed a couple of days of calm.
Then came another heavy wind, in the boatswain's words, "a snortin' norther," and for three days Martin's watches on deck were cold, wet and hazardous. He blindly followed his watchmates over lurching, slippery decks, in obedience to unintelligible orders. He was rolled about by shipped seas, and his new oilskins received a stern baptism. His clerk's hands became raw and swollen from hauling on wet ropes, his unaccustomed muscles ached cruelly, the sea water smarted the half-healed wound on his head, now covered with a strip of plaster. But he stood the gaff, and worked on. And he was warmly conscious of the unspoken approval of both forecastle and cabin.
During that time of stress he learned something of the sailor's game of carrying on of sail. The wind was fair, and by the blind captain's orders, they held on to every bit of canvas the spars would stand. The little vessel rushed madly through the black, howling nights, and the leaden, fierce days, with every timber protesting the strain, and every piece of cordage adding its shrill, thrummed note to the storm's mighty symphony.
During that time Martin first proved his mettle. He fought down his coward fears, and for the first time ventured aloft, feeling his way through the pitch-black night to the reeling yard-arm, to battle, with his watch, the heavy, threshing sail that required reefing. After the test, when he came below to the warm cabin, he thrilled to the core at his officer's curt praise.
"You'll do!" she muttered in his ear.
But it was not all storm and battle. Quite the reverse. The calm succeeded the storm. Martin came on deck one morning to view a bright sky and a sea of undulating glass. Astern, above the horizon, were fleecy clouds—they afterwards rode high, and became his friends, those mares' tails—and out of that horizon, from the northeast, came occasional light puffs of wind.
Captain Dabney, pacing his familiar poop with firm, sure steps, turned his sightless face constantly to those puffs. There was upon the ship an air of expectancy. And that afternoon Martin beheld an exhibition of the old man's sea-canniness; he suddenly stopped his steady pacing, stood motionless a moment, sniffing of the air astern, and then wheeled upon Ruth.
"To the braces, mister! Here she comes!" he snapped.
She came with tentative, caressing puffs at first, each one a little stronger than the last. Then, with a sigh, a dark blue ripple dancing before her, she arrived, enveloped and passed them.
The brig trembled to the embrace and careened gently, as if nestling into a beloved's arms. About the decks were smiling faces and joyous shouts, and the sails were trimmed with a swinging chantey. For theCohassethad picked up the northeast trades.
That night the wind blew, and the next day, and the next, and the next week, and the weeks following. Ever strong and fresh, out of the northeast, came the mighty trade-wind. Nine knots, ten knots, eleven knots—the brig foamed before it, into the southwest, edging eleven knots—the brig foamed before it, into the southwest, edging away always to the westward.
Every sail was spread. Sails were even improvised to supplement the vast press the ship carried, a balloon jib for the bows, and a triangular piece of canvas that the boatswain labored over, and which he spread above the square topsails on the main. He was mightily proud of his handicraft, and walked about, rubbing his huge hands and gazing up at the little sail.
"An inwention o' my own," he proudly confided to Martin. "Swiggle me stiff, if theFlyin' Cloud'as anything on us, for we've rigged a bloody moons'il, says I."
Day by day the air grew warmer, as they neared the tropics. One day they sighted a school of skimming flying fish; that night several flew on board and were delivered into Charley Bo Yip's ready hands, and Martin feasted for the first time upon that dainty morsel. Bonito and porpoise played about the bows.
Martin could not at first understand how a ship that was bound for a distant corner of the cold Bering Sea came to be sailing into the tropics. But the boatswain enlightened him.
"It's a case o' the longest way being the shortest, lad. The winds, says I. We 'ave to make a 'alf circle to the south, using these trades, to make the Siberian coast this time o' year. We're makin' a good passage—swiggle me, if Carew an' hisDawn'ave won past, the way we're sailin'! And the old man reckons seventy days, outside, afore 'e makes 'is landfall o' Fire Mountain. Coming 'ome, now, will be different. We'll sail the great circle, the course the mail-boats follow, an' we'll likely make the passage in 'alf the time. We'll run the easting down, up there in the 'igh latitudes with the westerlies be'ind us."
They were bright, sunny days, those trade-wind days, and wonderful nights. The ship practically sailed herself. A slackening and tightening of sheets, night and morning, and a watch-end trimming of yards, was all the labor required of the crew.
So, regular shipboard work, and Martin's education, went forward. "Chips" plied his cunning hand outside his workshop door; "Sails" spread his work upon the deck abaft the house.
A crusty, talkative, kind-hearted fellow was Sails. He was an old Scot, named MacLean; and the native burr in his speech had been softened by many years of roving. He always took particular pains to inform any listener that he was a MacLean, and that the Clan MacLean was beyond doubt the foremost, the oldest, and the best family that favored this wretched, hopeless world with residence. He hinted darkly at a villainous conspiracy that had deprived him of his estates and lairdships in dear old Stornoway, Bonnie Scotland. He was a pessimist of parts, and he furnished the needed shade that made brighter Martin's carefree existence.
MacLean had followed Captain Dabney for six years—most of the crew were even longer in the ship—and before joining theCohasset, he had, to Martin's intense interest, made a voyage with Wild Bob Carew.
"Och, lad, ye no ken the black heart o' the mon," he would say to Martin. "Wild Bob! Tis 'Black Bob' they should call the caird. The black-hearted robber! Aye, I sailed a voyage wi' the deil. Didna' he beach me wi'oot a penny o' my pay on Puka Puka, in the Marquesas? An' didna' I stop there, marooned wi' the natives, till Captain Dabney took me off? Forty-six, five an' thrippence he robbed me of.
"I am a MacLean, and a Laird by rights, but I could no afoord the loss o' that siller. Oh, he is the proud deil! His high stomach could no stand my plain words. Forty quid, odd, he owed me, but I could no hold my tongue when he raided the cutter and made off wi' the shell. The MacLeans were ne'er pirates, ye ken. They are honest men and kirkgoers—though I'll no pretend in the old days they didna' lift a beastie or so.
"I talked up to Carew's face, an' told him a MacLean could no approve such work, an' I told him the MacLeans were better folk than he, for all his high head. Ye ken, lad, the MacLeans are the best folk o' Scotland. When Noah came oot the ark, 'twas the MacLeans met him and helped him to dry land.
"On Puka Puka beach he dumped me, wi'oot my dunnage, and wi'oot a cent o' the siller was due me. Och, he is a bad mon, yon Carew, wi' many a mon's blood on his hands! He has sold his soul to the deil, and Old Nick saves his own. He is a wild mon wi' women, and he is mad aboot the sweet lassie aft. Didna' he try to make off wi' her in Dutch Harbor, three years ago? And didna' the old mon stop him wi' a bullet through the shoulder? And now he tries again in Frisco!
"The lass blooms fairer each day—and Carew's madness grows. Ye'll meet him again, lad, if you stay wi' the ship. Wi' Old Nick to help him, 'tis black fortune he'll bring to the lass, ye'll see." And Sails would croak out dismal prophecies concerning Wild Bob Carew's future activities, so long as Martin would listen.
Indeed, the adventurer of the schoonerDawnwas ever present in the thoughts of the brig's complement. He was a real and menacing shadow; even Martin was affected by the lowering cloud. The old hands in the crew all knew him personally, and knew of his mad infatuation for their beloved mate. In the cabin, it was accepted that he would cross their path again, though it was hoped that Fire Mountain would be reached and the treasure secured before that event occurred. But, save for an ever-growing indignation against the haughty Englishman, for daring to aspire to Ruth LeMoyne's hand, Martin gave the matter small thought; he was too busy living the moment.
Concurrent with his education in seamanship, progressed Martin's instruction in the subtle and disquieting game of hearts. Ruth attended to this particular instruction unconsciously, perhaps, but none the less effectively.
Of course, it was inevitable. When a romantic-minded young man aids in the thrilling rescue of an imprisoned maid, that young man is going to look upon that young woman with more than passing interest. When the maid in question happens to be extremely pretty, his interest is naturally enhanced. When he is thrown into a close shipboard intimacy with her, and discovers her to be at once an exacting tyrant and a jolly chum, when the maid is possessed of a strange and exciting history, and congenial tastes, when she is not unaware of her own excellence, and, at times, not disinclined to coquet a trifle before a young, virile male—then, the romantic young man's blood experiences a permanent rise in temperature, and there are moments when his heart lodges uncomfortably in his throat, and moments when it beats a devil's own tattoo upon his ribs.
And when there are wonderful tropic nights, and bright eyes by his side that outrival the stars overhead, and a glorious tenor voice softly singing songs of love nearby—then, the heady wine of life works a revolution in a romantic young man's being, and in the turmoil he is accorded his first blinding glimpse of the lover's heaven of fulfilled desire, and his first glimpse also of the lover's hell of doubting despair. A man, a maid, a soft, starry night upon the water, a song of love—of course it was inevitable!
Martin's previous experience with the tender passion was not extensive. Circumstance, shyness and fastidiousness had caused him to ignore most of the rather frequent opportunities to philander that his good looks and lively imagination created, and upon the rare occasions when he had paused, it was because of curiosity—a curiosity quickly sated.
Of course, he had been in love. At twelve years he had betrothed himself to the girl who sat across the aisle, at fifteen, he exchanged rings and vows with a lady of fourteen who lived in the next block, at seventeen he conceived a violent affection for the merry Irish girl who presided over his uncle's kitchen—but Norah scoffed, and remained true to the policeman on the beat, and Martin, for a space, embraced the more violent teachings of anarchy and dreamed with gloomy glee of setting off a dynamite bomb under a certain uniformed prop of law and order.
The uncle died, and Martin was henceforth too busy earning a living to indulge in sentimental adventures. After a time, as he grew to manhood and his existence became more assured, he became a reader of stories; and unconsciously he commenced to measure the girls he met with the entrancing heroines of his fiction. The girls suffered by comparison, and Martin's interest in them remained Platonic.
By degrees he became possessor of that refuge of lonely bachelorhood, an ideal—a dream girl, compounded equally of meditation and books. She was a wonderful girl, Martin's dream girl; she possessed all the virtues, and no faults, and she was very, very beautiful. At first she was a blond maid, and when she framed herself before his eyes, out of the smoke curling upward from his pipe, she was a vision of golden tresses, and rosy cheeks, and clear blue eyes.
But then came Miss Pincher, the manicure maid, to reside at Martin's boarding-house. Miss Pincher's hair was very, very yellow—there were dark hints about that boarding-house board anent royal colors coming out of drug-store bottles—and her eyes were a cold, hard blue. She cast her hard, bold eyes upon Martin. She was a feminist in love. Martin fled horrified before her determined, audacious wooing.
His blood idol was overthrown, his ideal slain. He went to bed with the stark corpse, and awoke to contemplate with satisfaction a new image, a brooding, soulful brunette.
Then, Martin suddenly discovered that his ideal was neither a rosy Daughter of theDawn, nor a tragic Queen of the Night—she was a merry-faced, neutral-tinted Sister of the Afternoon, a girl with brown hair, so dark as to be black by night, and big brown eyes. A girl with a rich contralto voice that commanded or cajoled in a most distracting fashion. A girl who commanded respect by her mastery of a masculine profession, yet who thereby sacrificed none of her appealing femininity. A girl named Ruth LeMoyne.
There was nothing staid or conservative about the manner of Martin's receiving this intelligence. It was his nature to fall in love with a hard bump, completely and without reservation. He recognized Ruth as the girl of his dreams the very first moment he obtained a good daylight look at her—that is, upon the afternoon he first mounted to theCohasset'sdeck, and was welcomed by the smiling, lithesome queen of the storm. Blonde and brunette had in that instant been completely erased from his memory; he had recognized in the mate of theCohassetthe companion of his fanciful hours, in every feature she was the girl of his dreams.
There are people who say that every person has his, or her, preordained mate somewhere in the world. They say that the true love, the big love, is only possible when these predestined folk meet. They say that love flames instantly at such a meeting, and that the couple will recognize each other though the whole social scale divide them. They say that Love will conquer all obstacles and unite the yearning pair. They are a sentimental, optimistic lot, who thus declaim. Martin, when he thought the matter over, inclined to their belief. Only—the trouble was that Ruth did not seem to exactly recognize or welcome her predestined fate.
But there is another theory of love. Any shiny-pated wise man will give the formula.
"Love at first sight! Bosh!" says the wise man. "Love is merely a strong, complex emotion inspired in persons by propinquity plus occasion!"
Perhaps. Certainly, the emotion Martin felt from the time he spoke his first word to Ruth LeMoyne, was strong enough and complex enough to tinge his every thought. And the propinquity was close enough and piquant enough to flutter the heart of a monk—which Martin was not. And a headlong young man like Martin Blake could be trusted to make the occasion.
He made several occasions. His journey along Cupid's path was filled with the sign-posts of those occasions.
Off duty, Ruth and he were boon companions, during the rather rare hours when she was not in attendance upon the blind captain or asleep. Martin stinted himself of rest, Ruth was too old a sailor for that.
The dog-watches, and, after they had gained the fine weather, the early hours of the first watch, were their hours of communion. They eagerly discussed books, plays, dreams, the sea, their quest, and themselves. They called each other by their first names, in comradely fashion. Oftentimes Little Billy joined them and enlivened the session with his pungent remarks, or, on the fine evenings, treated them with wonderful, melting songs.
Martin had the uneasy feeling that Little Billy, of all the men on the ship, divined his passion for Ruth. He seemed to feel, also, that Little Billy was, in a sense, a rival; with a lover's insight, he read the dumb adoration in the hunchback's eyes whenever the latter looked at, or spoke of, the mate.
But, of course, Ruth knew what was in Martin's mind and heart. Trust a daughter of Eve to read the light in a man's eyes, be she ever so unpractised by experience. It is her heritage. Nor did Martin attempt concealment of his love for very long. A dashing onslaught was Martin's nature.
Ruth teased him and deftly parried his crude attempts to make the grand passion the sole topic of their chats. She would hold him at arm's length, and then for a swift moment drop her guard. It would be but a trifle—a fugitive touching of shoulders, perhaps—but it would shake Martin to his soul.
She would hold their talk to commonplaces, and then, as their hour ended, would transfix him with a fleeting glance that seemed to bear more than a message of friendship, and he would stand looking after her, weak and gasping, with thumping heart.
One evening they stood together on the forecastle head, watching the setting sun. Sky and sea, to the west, were ablaze for a brief space with ever-changing gorgeous colors. The sheer beauty of the scene, added to the disturbing nearness of his heart's wish, forced Martin's rose-tinted thoughts to speech.
"I see our future there, Ruth," he said, pointing to the rioting sunset colors. "See—that golden, castle-shaped cloud! We shall live there. Those orange-and-purple billows surrounding are our broad meadows. It is the country we are bound for, the land of happiness, and its name is——"
"Its name is 'dreamland'!" finished Ruth, with a light laugh. "And never will you arrive at your voyage's end, friend Martin, for 'dreamland' is always over the horizon."
She looked directly into Martin's eyes; the brief dusk was upon them, and her face was a soft, wavering outline, but her eyes were aglow with the gleam that set Martin's blood afire. Her eyes seemed to bear a message from the Ruth that lived below the surface Ruth—from the newly stirring woman beneath the girlish breast.
It was a challenge, that brief glance. It made Martin catch his breath. He choked upon the words that tried tumultuously to burst from his lips.
"Oh, Ruth, let me tell you—" he commenced.
Her laugh interrupted him again, and the eyes he looked into were again the merry, teasing eyes of his comrade. With her next words she wilfully misunderstood him and his allusion concerning the sunset.
"Indeed, Martin, that cloud the sunset lightened is shaped nothing like Fire Mountain, which is a very gloomy looking place, and one I should not like to take up residence in. And no bright meadows surround it—only the gray, foggy sea. Hardly a land of happiness. Though, indeed, if we salvage that treasure, we will have the means, each of us, to buy the happiness money provides."
"Confound Fire Mountain and its treasure!" exclaimed Martin. "You know I didn't mean that, Ruth! I was talking figuratively, poetically, the way Little Billy talks. I meant just you and I, and that sunset was the symbol of our love."
But he was talking to the air. Ruth was speeding aft, her light laughter rippling behind her.
Another night, when the brig was near the southern limit of her long traverse, they stood in the shadow, at the break of the poop, and together scanned the splendid sky. Ruth was the teacher; she knew each blazing constellation, and she pointed them out for Martin's benefit. But Martin, it must be admitted, was more interested by the pure profile revealed by a slanting moonbeam than by the details of astronomy and his mumbled, half-conscious replies revealed his inattention.
After a while, she gave over the lesson, and they stood silent, side by side, leaning on the rail, captivated by the witchery of the tropic night.
The heavens were packed with the big, blazing stars of the low latitudes, and the round moon, low on the horizon, cut the dark, quiet sea with a wide path of silver light. Aloft, the steady breeze hummed softly; and the ship broke her way through the water with a low, even purr, and the sea curled away from the forefoot like an undulating silver serpent. The wake was a lane of moonlight, barred by golden streaks of phosphorescence.
On the ship, the decks were a patchwork of bright, eerie light and black shadow. The bellying sails and the woof of cordage aloft, seemed unsubstantial, like a gossamer weaving. The quiet ship noises, and the subdued murmur of voices from forward seemed unreal, uncanny.
The unearthly beauty of the night touched strange fancies to life in Martin's mind—he was on a phantom ship, sailing on an unreal sea. The desirable, disturbing presence so close to his side enhanced his agitation.
His shoulder touched her shoulder, and he could feel the gentle rise and fall of her breast, as she breathed. The bodily contact made his head swim. When she raised her head to stare at the sky, a fugitive moonbeam caressed her face and touched her briefly with a wondrous beauty. Her curved, parted lips were almost within reach of his own at such instants; he had but to bend swiftly forward! Martin was all atremble at the daring thought, and he clutched the rail to steady himself.
Behind them, a golden voice suddenly commenced to sing an age-old song of love, "Annie Laurie."
Softly the hunchback sang; his voice seemed to melt into and become one with the hum of the breeze aloft and the snore of the forefoot thrusting apart the waters. It seemed to Martin that the whole world was singing, singing of love. His heart thumped, his breath came quickly, pin-points of light swam before his eyes.
The girl trembled against his shoulder. Martin leaned eagerly forward, and their eyes met. They both stiffened at that electric contact. His eyes were ablaze with passion, purposeful, masterful; and in her eyes he again glimpsed the fresh-awakened woman, beckoning, elusive, fearful. For a brief instant they stared at each other, man and woman, souls bared. But that blinding moment seemed to Martin to encompass eternity. The songster's liquid notes fell about them, and they were enthralled.
The song ended. Quite without conscious movement, Martin put his arms about Ruth and drew her into a close embrace. He pressed his hot lips to hers, and with a thrill so keen it felt like a stab, he realized her lips returned the pressure.
It lasted but a second, this heaven. The girl burst backward out of his embrace. Martin's arms fell to his sides, nerveless, and he stood panting, tongue-tied with emotion. Nor did he have the chance to master himself and speak the words he wished, for Ruth, with a half sob, half laugh, turned and sped across the deck, and through the open alleyway door, into the cabin.
The next watch Ruth stood upon her dignity, and her manner was unusually haughty toward her slave. And the next day, in the dog-watch, he discovered that the old comradeship was fled. She was shy and silent, and she listened to his stammered apology with averted eyes and pink ears.
When Martin attempted to supplement his apology with ardent words, she fled straightway. And never again during the passage did Martin find an opportunity to avow his love. He discovered that somehow Little Billy, or the boatswain, or Captain Dabney was always present at their talks. Her elusiveness made him very wretched at times. But then, occasionally, he would surprise her looking at him, and the light in her eyes would send him to the seventh heaven of delight.
There came the day when the little vessel reached the southern point of the great arc she was sailing across the Pacific. Martin came on deck to find the bows turned northward, toward the Bering, and the yards braced sharp to catch the slant from the dying trades.
TheCohassetraced northward, though not as swiftly as she had raced southward. The winds were light, though generally fair, and the brig made the most of them.
The weather grew steadily cooler; the brilliant tropics were left behind, and they entered the gray wastes of the North Pacific. Forward and aft were smiling faces and optimistic prophecies, for the ship was making a record passage. The captain's original estimate of seventy days between departure and landfall was steadily pared by the hopeful ones. The boatswain, especially, was delighted.
"Seventy days! Huh!" he declared. "Why, swiggle me stiff, we'll take the days off that, or my name ain't Tom 'Enery! 'Ere we are, forty-one days out, an' already we're in sight o' ice, an' runnin' free over the nawstiest bit o' water between 'ere an' the 'Orn! It'll be Bering Sea afore the week out, lad! And afore another week, we'll 'ave fetched the bloody wolcano and got away again with that grease! Bob Carew? Huh—theDawnmay 'ave the 'eels of us—though, swiggle me, what with my moons'il, an' that balloon jib, I'd want a tryout afore admitting it final—but it ain't on the cards that Carew 'as 'ad our luck with the winds. 'E's somewhere a week or two astern o' us, I bet. We'll 'ave the bleedin' swag, an' be 'alf way 'ome, before 'e lifts Fire Mountain—if he does know where the bloomin' place is!
"Ow, lad, just think o' all that money in a lump o' ruddy grease! Ow, what a snorkin' fine time I'll 'ave, when we get back to Frisco! 'Am an' eggs, an' a bottle o' wine every bloomin' meal for a week! Regular toff, I'll be, swiggle me—with one of them fancy girls adancin', and one o' them longhaired blokes afiddlin' while I scoffs!"
Only old Sails declined to be heartened by bright expectations. He wagged his gray head solemnly.
"The passage is no made till we are standing off yon Island," he warned Martin. "Aye, well I remember the smoking mountain. Didna' that big, red loon aft split a new t'gan'-s'il the very next day, wi' his crazy carrying on of sail? Aye, I mind the place—a drear place, lad, wi' an evil face. I dinna like to see the lassie gang ashore there, for all the siller ye say the stuff is worth, an' I ken well she'll be in the first boat. 'Tis a wicked place, the fire mount, and I ha' dreamed thrice o' the feyed. Nay, I'll tell ye no more, lad. But do you give no mind to yon talk o' Bob Carew being left behind. He is the de'il's son, and the old boy helps his own. But keep ye a sharp eye on the lass."
No more than this half mystical jargon could Martin extract from the dour Scot. MacLean would shake his head and mumble that feydom brooded over the brig and hint darkly of battle and bloodshed.
That night, in the privacy of their berth, Martin mentioned MacLean's dismal croakings to Little Billy. He was minded to jest about the pessimist, but, to his great surprise, the hunchback listened to his recountal with a very grave face. But after a moment Little Billy's smile returned, and he explained.
"Sails is a Highland Scot," he told Martin. "Of course he is superstitious, as well as a constitutional croaker. He claims to be a seventh son, or something like that, and to be able to foretell death. When he speaks of a 'feyed' man, he means one over whom he sees hovering the shadow of death. He didn't say who was feyed, did he?"
"No, he wouldn't talk further," answered Martin. "What bosh!"
"Yes, of course," assented Little Billy. "You and I, with our minds freed of superstition, may laugh—but Sails, I think, believes in his visions. And, to tell you the truth, your words gave me something of a start at first. I have known MacLean a long time, you know. Last voyage, he told me one day that Lomai, a Fiji boy, was feyed, and that very night Lomai fell from the royal yard and was smashed to death on the deck. And once before that, before I became one of the happy family, he foretold a death to the captain. I am glad you told me about this. He didn't mention a name?"
"No. Just said he had dreamed three times of the feyed," said Martin, impressed in spite of himself.
"I'll speak to him, myself," went on Little Billy. "Won't do any good, though. He only tells one person of his foresight, and he has chosen you this time. But I wish—oh, what is wrong with us! Of course it is bosh! The old grumbler has indigestion from eating too much. I am going to read awhile, Martin, if the light won't bother you. Don't feel sleepy."
The hunchback clambered into his upper bunk and composed himself, book in hand. Martin finished his disrobing and rolled into his bunk, beneath the other. He was tired, but he didn't go to sleep directly. His mind was busy. Not with thoughts of Sails and his ghostly warning—Martin had not been long enough at sea to be tinged with the sailor's inevitable superstition, and he was stanchly skeptical of supernatural warnings. Martin lay awake thinking of the deformed little man, ostensibly reading, a few feet above him.
For some nights, now, the hunchback had read late of nights, because he "didn't feel sleepy." Daily, Little Billy's lean face grew more lined and aged; in the past week his appearance had taken on a half-score years. He still retained his smile, but it was even wan at times. In his eyes lurked misery. Martin knew that the books he took to bed were mainly a subterfuge to enable Little Billy to keep the light burning. For Little Billy was waging a battle with his ancient enemy, and he had grown afraid of the dark.
A week before, he had abruptly said to Martin:
"I gave the key of the medicine-chest to Ruth today. I won't be able to get atthatbooze, anyway." To Martin's startled look, he added: "I want you to know, so you won't be surprised by the capers I am liable to cut for a while. You see, I am dancing to old Fiddler Booze's tune. I want to go on a drunk—every part of me craves alcohol. And I am determined to keep sober.
"Oh, it is nothing to startle you, Martin. I never get violent. Only, I'll be in plain hell for a couple of weeks. Then the craving will go away, to return at ever shorter intervals, until I do get ashore on a good bust. No, I'll keep sober till I reach shore again—whatever comes. No raiding the bosun's locker for shellac or wood-alcohol this voyage."
"Good Lord, you wouldn't do that!" exclaimed Martin.
"Oh, yes—I did it once," confessed Little Billy easily. "Indeed, a swig of shellac punch is drink for the gods; my very soul writhes now at the thought of it. But, I'll admit, the wood-alcohol beverage conceals complications. It was the captain, and his little stomach-pump, that brought me to that time. But no more of such frolicking on board ship. That episode occurred during my first year with Captain Dabney. Never since have I succumbed to the craving while at sea. Oh, I'll be all right this time—only don't be startled if you hear me talking to myself, or roaming about in the middle of the night."
That was all that passed between them. But during the days following Martin's eyes often rested on the other with curiosity and sympathy. It was a new experience for Martin, to be room-mated with a dipsomaniac, and besides Little Billy had grown to be a very dear friend, indeed. Everybody on the ship loved the sunny hunchback.
Little Billy's happy face grew bleak, and many fine lines appeared about the corners of his eyes and mouth. He was suffering keenly, Martin knew. Even now, he could hear the uneasy, labored breathing of the man in the bunk above.
It was a strange, changeable, eager face, Little Billy had. It seemed to vary in age according to the hunchback's mood; these days he looked forty, but Martin had seen him appear a youthful twenty during an exceptionally happy moment. Actually, Martin learned during the passage, Little Billy Corcoran's age was thirty-one.
He learned, moreover, that Little Billy was the son, and sole surviving relative, of Judge Corcoran, a famous California politician in his day. Judge Corcoran had been a noted "good fellow" and a famous man with the bottle. And his son was a hunchback and a dipsomaniac. Little Billy was blessed with a fine mind, and he had taken his degree at Yale, but throughout his hectic life the thirst he was born with proved his undoing.
"I am an oddity among a nation of self-made men," Little Billy once told Martin. "They all commenced at the bottom and ascended fortune's ladder, whereas I started at the top and descended. And what a descent! I hit every rung of that ladder with a heavy bump, and jarred Old Lady Grundy every time. I was the crying scandal, the horrible example, of my native heath. That old rogue, my father, used to boast that he never got drunk—I used to boast that I never got sober. Finally, I bumped my last bump and found myself at the bottom. And there I stayed, until Captain Dabney, and the dear girl, pulled me out of the mire."
Almost literally true, this last, for Martin learned that five years before, Captain Dabney had salvaged Little Billy off the beach at Suva, a dreadful scarecrow of a man, and Ruth's nursing, and the clean sea life, had built a new William Corcoran. But the appetite for the drink was uneradicable, and the genial hunchback's life was a series of losing battles with his hereditary curse.