"'In a fair ground—in a fair ground—Yea, Sussex by the sea!'"
"'In a fair ground—in a fair ground—Yea, Sussex by the sea!'"
While the mystery which Paul met at every turn beckoned him on in pursuit of it, he was careful to guard against giving any time except to necessary things. He was compelled to give his attention to the donkey boiler and galley fires forward as well as keep an eye on the sun's ascension toward noon. TheDaphne'sposition was the most important thing to be ascertained. To this end he searched high and low for a sextant. The mate's was missing; the skipper's, too. He found McGavock's empty case in a corner of the chart room, where it had been thrown and smashed. A mercurial barometer lay crushed beside it. Nor could he discover the sailing chart of the bark's present voyage nor any other chart of the Pacific.
Abaft the companionway staircase he came upon a room which had escaped his attention before. It opened upon a short alleyway into the lazarette. Here were stowed the ship's slop stores. A door on the left hand, as one went aft, led into the skipper's room. He had noticed it when he had returned to get the ulster for Emily. Immediately opposite was the entrance to a snug bathroom.
Paul took advantage immediately of his discovery of the slop stores to levy upon them for an outfit of clothing and shoes. When he had found how plentiful was the vessel's supply of water he had vanquished the dust and grime of his venture into the fore hold. The touch of the fresh clothing, rough though it was, was pleasant. It was a link with the world again.
The while he dressed in the bathroom he observed many things which told of a woman's presence—articles of the toilet too fine and dainty for a man's use. A leather traveling dressing case lay on a small stand. It contained a silver-mounted assortment of brushes and screw-top bottles. He paused to examine them for a marking. There was none but the English Sterling impression. Another thing which indicated to him that this room had known a woman's presence was a tiny fern basket which swung over the bath. Similar baskets hung in the skylight of each saloon and from the ceiling in the skipper's room. These meant a woman's watchfulness and tender care. Men who live and die by the sea know no green-growing things; no flowers. The sea gives no flowers to its children; no sweet odors for memory. It has gardens, but they are scentless and one may enter them only when life is done. So perhaps it is just as well that its flora is without fragrance.
At one moment Paul was convinced that a woman had been in theDaphnebut recently: the next he doubted it. He did not wish to think that she had been carried off in those small boats. The thought sickened him.
He crossed from the bath into the skipper's room again, hoping that he might have overlooked there some place where a sextant or quadrant might be stored. Alongside the desk he spied a silver frame. It contained the photograph of a laughing, blonde-headed girl of not more than two and twenty—an wholesome English type of face; just such a woman as he imagined a man like McGavock would go a-wooing and take to wife. He regretted that he had not found it sooner. John McGavock might have wished to take it with him. Paul set it on top of the desk again, from which it had evidently been knocked, and turned away cudgeling his brain to suggest where he might carry his search. His glance picked up a knobless door in the bulkhead to the right of the desk. He dimly remembered noticing it when he had taken the mackintosh and of fixing it in his mind at the time as the vessel's medicine chest. It was fastened with a spring lock. He stepped back from it, hesitated a second, and with a heave of his shoulder burst it in.
An odorous wave of English lavender rolled out upon him. The man closed his eyes and inhaled the sweet freshness with a lingering breath. It conjured memories of mother, sister, home, boyhood—all the tender recollections of the days which had known no clouds; no bitternesses.
The room which the door revealed was half filled with a woman's skirts and gowns and coats hanging in order from the beams overhead. Along a shelf against the forward side stood a neat row of six or seven pairs of shoes and slippers. The drooping tops of some of them suggested little soldiers grown tired of marching. The invader felt as if he had broken into a holy place. A cedar-wood chest stood open on his left. On top of a filmy heap of woman's things lay a Leghorn straw, trimmed with a wreath of faded red silk roses. Across the hat was a baby's dainty underslip.
Turning away from the chest with a pang in his heart and a tightening at the throat latch his eyes found the object of his search. A sextant lay on top of the medicine chest which was built into the vessel's side. As he picked it up eagerly and examined it, he discovered two new chart pipes standing in the corner. In one of these was a new Admiralty chart of the North and South Pacific Oceans.
Carrying the pipes and the sextant, Paul Lavelle backed out of the little room, and as he went he could not help feeling that he had violated a shrine.
Warned of a sudden that the sun was near the zenith, Paul hastened from the engine room aft. Although he tried to go softly when he reached the poop for fear of waking Emily he could not control the heels nor the squeaking of his new slop chest shoes. He heard her calling him before he was halfway to the wheel.
As he appeared in the lounge door she sat up in dumb fear. For the moment she did not recognize him in the rough blue shirt and corduroys and strange cap into which he had changed.
"It's I," he said, removing his cap with a smile.
"Oh, Paul—Paul," she sobbed hysterically and covering her face as if to shut something unpleasant away from her. "I—I have had such—such a horrible dream. I——"
"There, there," he said comfortingly and going in to her. She caught hold of his hand. "Everything's going to come out all right. You know you've been through an awful drive. If——I'm sorry I woke you. Try to go back to sleep for another hour."
"I couldn't—I couldn't. I was dreaming that—that you were out there in the sea and that the ship was falling on you—pressing you down, down, down! It isn't true! It isn't true!"
Her voice rose nearly to a shriek in her effort to reassure herself. He had won to his old control of himself.
"No, no, it isn't true. Now listen: We're playing a big, big game here. You're my partner. The only one I can depend on——"
"Forgive me—I don't mean to be selfish or thoughtless or whimpery—or the clinging-vine sort."
"It's all right. All right, partner. It's a wonder you've a nerve left. There are mighty few men who could have come through what you have and not be folded up now. But I want you to think of this game. It's so big, so big, that it's worth winning!" His tone, his expression, brought a smile of interest into her face. "If you think you can't sleep I want you to go down below and get into a heavy shirt like mine—the strongest, heaviest clothes you can find. I've pulled a lot out of the slop chest—socks and things. Then, there's a little room—you'll find it in a corner of the skipper's. It's filled with a lot of woman's things. There's a cedar-wood chest——You will know what to take."
"A woman's things? There was a——"
"All I can say is that theDaphnehas known a woman's presence. When she was here—what has become of her—God knows."
"Before I slept I said a prayer for her. And every time I lie down to rest I will pray for her safety."
Emily stood up, but she hesitated as she started to descend the companionway.
"It's all right. There is nobody down there now. We're absolutely alone," Paul said, noting her trepidation. "'Home is the sailor, home from the sea, And the hunter home from the hill.'"
Peace came to her spirit at the gentleness of his words and she went below unafraid.
By the noon sights which theDaphne'snew master got he fixed her position as Latitude 33:18 north; Longitude, 177:20 east. It astounded him. He worked his calculations over and over again according to a half-dozen different formulæ. The result was the same, except for an unappreciable difference in longitude. So he made it 12 o'clock, setting the local time by an old-fashioned silver watch which he had discovered under the pillow in Elston's berth.
Assuming the correctness of his reckoning, theDaphnewas approximately two hundred miles north and west of where theCambodiahad gone down. In the light of this he had to accept it as a fact that the island had drifted across the steamship lane. On the 29th theDaphnehad been in Latitude 32:30 and Longitude 176:28. He visualized that day on the island. There had been a light breeze from sunrise to sunset out of the northeast. With the going down of the sun it had begun to veer through the north until it brought out of the southwest. Hove to on the port tack, the bark most have followed the hauling breeze until she had circled the island and then drifted up on it with the swell. It was the only satisfactory solution of which Paul could think.
There came to him now, with redoubled force, a thought which had formed in the instant he had read in the log the port of the vessel's departure and her destination: "What can have caused a ship bound from Sydney, New South Wales, toward San Francisco, to be steered so far to the westward?"
He was compelled to turn from the puzzle and admit that he was baffled.
During the half-hour preceding noon the swell had gone down considerably. The breeze still continued steady from the southwest. An aneroid barometer which he had discovered in the lounge, when he had spread Emily's berth there, stood at an ordinary normal height. So he decided to hold on as the bark lay until after luncheon, then get under way, run before the wind for two hours, and take another altitude.
As Paul turned away from the barometer hanging over the chart table, Emily came up through the companionway. She wore a heavy blue flannel shirt such as he had told her to put on and a blue walking skirt which came to the tops of a pair of tan tennis shoes. She had plaited her hair again and wound it round her head like a crown. The shirt was unbuttoned at the throat, the cuffs rolled back. She presented a figure of beautiful, efficient womanhood where she paused at the head of the companionway, her arms half raised as if seeking Paul's approbation. Never since the first day he had seen her had she seemed so strongly feminine.
"You are the——" There he broke an exclamation. He halted in the step which he had taken toward her. Emily waited, her eyes half lowered. When his voice broke she looked up in surprise. She was pale, despite the soft tan with which exposure had dusted her face and throat. With an embarrassed laugh Paul went on: "You would make gunny cloth seem like the finest silk. Never ship sailed the seas with such a chief mate."
It was a disingenuous, awkward speech. Ill at ease he hurried on to tell her of theDaphne'sposition by the observations he had just made; of the plans he had formed. All the while he talked, a thought, which had been with him ever since the moment of madness in the galley and which had lashed him all through the morning, sprinkled salt on the wounds in his conscience.
"I felt as if I were committing a sacrilege when I went into the little room where the cedar chest is," Emily told him as they went forward to prepare luncheon. "The chest is filled with a girl's wedding things. The hat—the baby slip—I laid them away carefully and shut the lid on them."
She looked at the sea with a shudder. Paul noticed this and realized that he must fight, too, to keep his companion's mind on pleasant things. He quickly directed her thoughts to the future, explaining the division of labor that must be theirs and the vigilance they must keep to win a triumph of the sea. Her interest was enlisted more easily than he imagined it would be, for her thoughts were busy with a future which was calling her in all the beauty of life.
Emily insisted upon preparing the luncheon, permitting Paul only to shake up the fire. She did it well and, the while she was about it, he took the opportunity to reëxamine theDaphne'slog. He hoped to glean from it some things which might aid him in the navigation of the bark. It served, however, only to deepen the mystery.
It was a clean record of routine for two weeks after the departure from Sydney. The crew had been received aboard on Christmas night. It was not hard to visualize the condition of the lot on such a day—the sorriest day in the year for an outward-bound. The following morning she had sailed—three months and eight days gone, or, as Elston had written at noon of the 29th: "Our 96th day at sea from Sydney." This was the 98th day.
The first thing to seize Paul's professional eye importantly was the absence of any designation of second or third mate. If theDaphnehad sailed without these officers then they must have been recruited afterward from the forecastle gang. There was no telling from the names of the sixteen members of the crew who these might have been. The list comprehended every nationality under the sun.
At the end of the first two weeks three pages had been torn from the book. A week later another page was missing. There was not a week of the entire ninety-six days up to the hour of abandonment which was complete. Of course, it was plain to Lavelle that the man or men who had defaced the book had done so to destroy something that had been written against him or them.
"But why not have hove the book overboard and been done with it?" Paul asked himself. He could not answer the question.
TheDaphnehad spoken no other vessels; sighted no sail so far as the log disclosed. Fair weather had attended her to the equator, which she had crossed on the fiftieth day out with a proper casting—Longitude 119 west. This was in the track made by sailing vessels bound from Australia to the west coast of the United States. Then had followed calms until she had fallen in with the northeast trades in Latitude 8 north, but there was no word to explain why she thereafterward had been steered into this western sea more than two thousand miles off the course she should have held!
Emily's summons to luncheon made Paul lay aside the log. It was a surprisingly good and substantial meal that she had whipped together. While they ate Paul undertook the gold woman's drilling in the details of working a ship. On the island he and Chang had filled in many a dreary minute with talk of ships. Chang had taught her how to box the compass, and she was proud now, indeed, to exhibit this knowledge—eager to put it to use. Her experience in the boat had taught her much, too. She surprised Paul and made him proud of the intelligence with which she was able to comprehend his explanations.
"You're bully!" he exclaimed finally in admiration. "You're a woman with an efficient brain."
This little speech made Emily glow with happiness. She had had many a pretty compliment addressed to her by artists at that game, but never one which gave her this pleasure. Somehow she felt that thus he would have spoken to another man whose work he wished to praise. She understood that Paul Lavelle held order and efficiency above everything else. She was efficient in his sight. She fairly ran when he gave her the word to go aft and stand by the wheel.
The donkey boiler had made a full head of steam half an hour before. Now Paul started the engine which was connected with two hoisting drums protruding from each side of the forward house. He hoisted and hauled with these drums—set an additional headsail, and hauled his main yards round. Within ten minutes he had theDaphnebearing away to the northward with the wind over her port quarter. He ran aft and by hand swayed up the peak of the spanker as best he could. Next he set the patent log which was trailing over the stern.
Pausing to note the effect of the spanker he there and then stored in his memory the fact that with the peak down and a slight lee helm theDaphne, with the canvas she was now carrying, would practically take care of herself hove to in a light breeze.
When he looked over Emily's shoulder at the compass he could hear her heart beating wildly.
"How are you heading?" he asked with a slight brusqueness.
"Northeast by north, half north," she answered accurately and with a sharp intake of the breath.
"Keep her so."
All the gold woman could do was nod that she heard. The power of speech seemed to have gone from her. Awe of the big fabric of iron and canvas and web upon web of ropes and gear obeying the impulse of her small hands was upon her. It was a big game. It was a terrific, intoxicating, joyous sensation. She had but one distinct thought: That was to go sailing on in theDaphne—just she and this man alone—forever and ever. All the years of her past faded away—the moment obliterated their insignificance. Her eyes, alight with love, went seeking the man's face and found him turned away from her, entering the lounge.
"Rouse me at the slightest weather change—in two hours anyway," he called from within.
"I will," she managed to answer in a voice that seemed to belong to somebody else. She was trembling from head to foot with wonder—wonder of new strange forces clamoring through her being. The one thought which her comprehension dragged out of the riot and held was that this man through whom and by whom she lived trusted her so that he was lying down to sleep in her keeping; that he was depending upon her. Her woman's soul cried out in the pride of possession.
A violent ringing of the ship's bell and Emily calling him in a voice fraught with excitement aroused Paul. For a second he imagined he was still dreaming.
"Paul! Paul! Quick!"
He sprang out on deck.
"Oh!" Emily gasped in relief. "I thought you would never wake. But look!" She pointed forward. "A boat's there! Right ahead! A man——There!"
Rubbing his sleep-bewildered eyelids, Paul made out a small white boat a point off theDaphne'sweather bow and not more than five ship's lengths away. Yes, a man was standing up in it. He was beckoning wildly to the bark and to the sky in turn.
The boat was too far off to make out if the man were alone in it. Paul had to depend on his sight. The bark had been robbed of her glasses.
TheDaphnewas making about three knots an hour. While he had slept the breeze had lessened. The swell was practically gone.
"Haul her up three points," said Paul, facing the wheel. "Keep an eye on me. Every time I raise my right hand let her go off half a point. When I hold up my left: Haul up half a point—luff!"
With this instruction snapped at Emily, Paul ran forward, leaving her alone, bewildered, fearful of making a mistake. But he was satisfied she would understand. He held responsibility to be as much the mother of capacity as necessity is of invention.
By instinct alone Emily interpreted Paul's orders. She brought theDaphneto windward and until she could see the boat and its passenger's head just over the lee bow. She saw Paul spring into the fore shrouds with a coil of rope. As he did so he raised his left hand. The boat disappeared. She was sure theDaphnewould run it down. Paul raised his right hand. The helmswoman let the bark go off half a point.
Paul, leaning over the rail at his last signal, tried to read a name on the stern of the little boat which came bobbing toward him. He failed.
An old man was standing up between the cockleshell's alter and second thwarts. He was babbling in delirium. His swollen tongue was protruding from his lips. He was bareheaded and his hairless crown seemed ready to burst open in fire. Now the boat was close enough to see that the derelict was alone. His clothing consisted of a shirt and trousers—dungarees. He answered Paul's hails with a leer of idiocy.
Emily steered so finely that theDaphnebrought the boat alongside just abreast of the fore-rigging. As their sides touched, Paul dropped a running bowline over the old man's head and shoulders and a minute later hauled him over the side. The boat overturned as its occupant was jerked out of it and Paul regretfully saw it drift away.
The derelict crumpled in a heap at his rescuer's feet as he touched the deck. His face and neck and arms and feet were horribly sunburned. He was literally parboiled. It would have taken the woman who mothered him to recognize his pitiably swollen countenance. He was short and thick-set and between fifty-five and sixty years old. His horny nails and blunt work-worn fingers bespoke him a sailor.
Paul carried him up on the poop as the best place to work over him and laid him down in the lee of the lounge house.
"Oh, you poor, poor man!" Emily cried in sympathy at sight of him.
"This is terrible, little woman. I'm afraid we can do little for him."
Paul looked away from the stranger with a shudder. While he had been forward at the rescue and carrying the stranger aft the breeze had died away. All aloft was now idle.
"Can't I leave here and help you?" asked Emily. "We must try to save his life."
"It's a mighty unpleasant task for you."
"Don't think of me as being helpless, Paul. Please. I know I can do so many things. I'm not the same woman you met back there."
She looked away to the westward as she spoke.
"Come, then." He put the wheel in beckets. "Forward——Get some water out of the galley."
Emily ran to do as she was bidden and Paul went below to the medicine chest. The medical supplies provided some strychnine tablets and, tincturing a glass of water with this heart stimulant, the castaways took turn about forcing drops of the fluid between the cracked lips. Emily discovered a jar of beef extract among the stores and made up a little of this for the sufferer.
After two hours of careful and unceasing attention the derelict opened his rheumy eyes and stared at the sky for a second.
"Hello, stranger," said Paul. "Feeling better?"
The eyes closed again and the cracked lips muttered an inaudible blur of words. It was plainly an unconscious answer.
A little while later, as Paul was taking another observation of the sun, Emily thought she saw a gleam of consciousness in the faded gaze which found her face and held it.
"Are you from the barkDaphne—theDaphne?" she asked.
Both she and Paul had discussed the possibility of this being so.
"He—walked—'tween—gyves——"
This was the strange whispered utterance that came from the cracked lips.
"Paul, he is speaking."
Lavelle laid down his sextant and knelt beside the stranger.
"I asked him," the gold woman explained, "if he belonged to theDaphne. He——Listen——"
The cracked lips were speaking again.
"He—walked—'tween—'tween with—with gyves——"
The stranger was repeating what he had said to Emily.
Paul ran the words over under his breath. They sounded familiar. They had a rhythm that touched some cell of memory. Suddenly his mind groped upon discovery. Emily uttered an exclamation in the same instant. Both of them knew what the stranger was attempting to say.
"Don't you remember Hood's 'The Dream of Eugene Aram,' Paul?"
"Yes," he said with a nod. "'And Eugene Aram walked between, with gyves upon his wrists.'"
The line, as he repeated it, had a startling weirdness.
"What can the poor brain be thinking? What is hidden back of this strange thought?" Emily asked in a whisper.
"It may be as we have thought—that he belongs to theDaphne'screw. Perhaps in its disorder his brain is reflecting the crime committed aboard here in the words of Hood's poem. Yet one would imagine that if there is anything in the theory of crime suggesting crime that it would be something of the sea of which he would be thinking. Eugene Aram was a schoolmaster and he killed in the woods. This man is a sailor. There is no doubt about that."
"Could he have been the one——"
Emily shrank from the stranger at the thought which leaped into her mind.
"Don't think that, Emily. If he had a hand in what happened here——But let as not think of what's past."
Paul carried the derelict below and put him in the room next to the mate's. He swathed his burns in carron oil and tied him in the bunk so that the rolling of the vessel would not turn him out. The man had become unconscious again immediately after mumbling the bit of "Eugene Aram" which Emily had called Paul to hear. Lavelle left the derelict sleeping in apparent peace, but with a heart action that was extremely weak.
"If he lives he will be a Godsend toward helping us work ship," Paul told Emily as they went aft together to the lounge.
"May be that is why it was given to us to pick him up."
Paul smiled doubtfully.
"What time is it, Emily?" he asked.
"Only quarter past three," she said, looking at the silver watch which he had given her to carry when he put her at the wheel.
"Didn't have much of a sleep, did I?"
"No, you didn't. Please lie down again."
"Will in a little while. Got to. But first I must work out this observation—see where in this world or Kingdom Come we are."
He sat down at the chart table and in a few minutes, weary though he was, finished his calculations. The result checked and confirmed his noon reckoning.
Emily stood beside him holding down the edges of the chart while he pricked off theDaphne'sposition and ran a line to the southeastward. It ended at Ocean Island. He ran a second to Midway; a third to Honolulu. The woman watched his long fine fingers—wondrously fine for the rough, hard things of which she knew them to be capable—handling pencil and ruler and dividers with a fascinating deftness and certainty. He seemed oblivious of everything else. An eager stimulation seemed to be driving him. The mystery of the student was about him. A feeling of woful incompetence possessed her. She realized how narrow and little her life had always been until now; how little she actually knew of all the things there were to be known. Her heart stirred of a sudden with a marvelous thrill at the thought of what a woman's triumph must be to suffer the giving of such a man as this to the world. Her breath paused tremulously. What Shanghai Elsie had said to her in the boat flashed into her mind: "You were made for the mother of men—strong men—like him."
The navigator, glancing up from his work, beheld an expression in her beautiful face which was beyond his understanding. Her glance dropped as it met his and a glow suffused her cheeks and thin, delicate ears that the dawn might have envied. A second later her eyes lifted to his again and in their expression and her smile he read elation. In his blindness he believed that she had been able to follow his work and that it was the prospect of an early deliverance which enlightened her countenance.
"There you are!" he exclaimed in a note of lively and natural pleasure. "Look! Only five hundred miles to the southeast——See that speck? That's Ocean Island. If we can't fetch that we'll try for Midway. A cable station's there. If we can't make any of these islands we'll keep right on to Honolulu. All the while we'll be lying along in the steamship track. Isn't it wonderful, eh?"
"Too wonderful to be true, Paul."
The answer came in a whisper. Tears glinted in her eyes. She was glad for his sake; glad that the stress which was upon him was so near an end. His escape, of course, meant hers and——Intuitively she sensed that he was very far away from her; that he was slipping further and further away and she started to put out a hand to touch him; to hold him. Her arm dropped as she raised it. This was not the man who had held her in his arms that morning. She heard his words dimly.
"If we can work to the south'ard and the eastward, by to-morrow noon we may begin to keep our eyes open for ships. With any kind of fair weather and a breeze from the westward land should be rising over the bows in three or four days. Think of it! Another twelve hours and you may be going over theDaphne'sside into a homeward bounder!"
Emily's eyes overflowed. He winced at the tears.
"Why——You mustn't be crying now. You must laugh! Sing! The chief mate of the barkDaphnewould better be thinking of her shore-going togs! This is what we'll be singing in a very short time:
"IthoughtI heard the captain say,Leave her, Johnny, leave her;You may go ashore and touch your pay,It's time for us to leave her."We'll sing. Oh, may we never be,Leave her, Johnny, leave her;On a hungry ship the like of she,It's time for us to leave her."
"IthoughtI heard the captain say,Leave her, Johnny, leave her;You may go ashore and touch your pay,It's time for us to leave her.
"We'll sing. Oh, may we never be,Leave her, Johnny, leave her;On a hungry ship the like of she,It's time for us to leave her."
With a laugh and those snatches of the old chanty of "Leave Her, Johnny" ringing from his lips in a clear, deep voice Paul led the way out on deck.
"Great old song that. Ought to hear a gang of bullies at it."
"It must be fine," she managed to say with a pretense of enjoyment.
He turned from her and went forward to the standard compass. Going and returning, he looked aloft and around at the silent plain of brine. The sails still drooped in idleness. There was the barest heave in the ocean. The bark was without steerage way.
"Better lie down and take a nap," Paul said as he came back and stood at the wheel for a second. "Can't tell how long this calm will last. I'm going to try to steal a little sleep."
"Please do. I will lie down presently."
He did not meet her gaze, and she turned toward the sea as if she hoped its purple heart would give her throbbing one an answer. She heard Paul leave the poop and then a clang from the engine room told her he was there. It sounded like a door closing between them—a door that would never open again—and she went into the lounge to weep bitter tears which would not be stayed.
If she could have seen Paul Lavelle's face when he turned away from her and at the moment when she was giving way to her loneliness she would have understood that he was suffering, too.
After overhauling the fires under the donkey boiler, Paul threw himself at full length across the main hatch. He was mind weary; body weary; at war with himself. Staring up at the sky he brought his whole life in contemplation. Another day, as he had told the gold woman, might see them delivered from their peril in theDaphne. Anyway he felt that the world—the world in which she belonged and must have her being—was not very far off. And she would be going out of his life forever. She must. A pariah like him could not say to her, "Stay." The man who stood marked as he was could say to no woman, "Stay." All day the past had lashed him. All day the fineness of him had arraigned the weakness which had permitted him to forget that he could never claim her love. All day the memory of his madness in daring to kiss her as he had had tortured him. He groaned in his agony of spirit.
"God," he prayed aloud with lips strange to prayer, "grant that I may finish 'what remains before us of the course without dishonor to ourselves or hurt to others.' For my soul's sake I ask this."
With this thought his mother's dear face smiled into his vision.
"Mother mine, mother mine," he murmured, and his eyes closed in exhaustion.
It was dusk when Emily awoke in the lounge. By the silver watch she saw that it was a quarter past six o'clock. All was quiet as when she lay down. The bark was in the same dead calm. The creaking of the gear overhead and the slatting of the idle sails were the only sounds in the stillness. She stole below, and on her way forward paused at the door of the derelict's room. He still slept. She tiptoed inside and wet his lips with a sip of water. He murmured in unconscious thankfulness. She hurried on then toward the engine room. Paul must be there or in the galley. She came upon him lying across the main hatch. He was asleep, his head pillowed on his right arm. The light of a love that would never die came into her eyes as she stood for a second listening to his deep breathing of honest weariness.
The chill of the coming night was in the air. Emily stole aft again on tiptoe and returned with a blanket. She spread it over the sleeper with a mother's gentleness. He did not move. Sighing, she turned away and with the silence of a thief went to the galley to prepare the evening meal.
Coming down from aloft, where he had gone immediately after dinner to reef and furl the topgallant sails as best he could, Emily met Paul with the news that the derelict seemed to be recovering a glimmer of consciousness.
"When I carried a cup of beef extract to him just now he was awake," she told Paul. "He seemed not at all surprised to find a woman attending him. He thinks he is in a hospital somewhere—that I am a nurse. When I asked him his name he answered: 'Number 19—cot 19, nurse.'"
"Did you ask him anything about theDaphne?"
"Yes; but neither the vessel's name nor Captain McGavock's nor any of those you told me were in the log book meant anything to him. His only answer to all my questions was, 'Nurse, if the captain comes in before "lights out" tell him I'd like to see him.' He's an Irishman, I should say—a kind sort of an old soul, with a rare, musical brogue."
"A very broth of a bhoy, eh?" laughed Paul.
"If he is one of theDaphne'screw, I am sure—I am certain that he had nothing to do with the mutiny."
"And that is the woman of it. Come. I'll go in to see him. Let me get a lantern out of the engine room."
"There is a lamp in his room. I filled it the way I saw you filling the sidelights."
"You'd make a great pioneer, Emily. Come."
Thus praise always came from him quickly for the doing of a helpful thing. She could imagine men working their fingers to the bone under his mastership.
Together they went aft, Emily preceding Paul through the alleyway to the derelict's door. The light in the lamp, which hung in gimbals against the forward bulkhead of the room, was low. Emily went in and turned it up.
"Are you feeling better?" she asked cheerily.
"Yes, nurse, easier—much easier," came his answer rather thickly. His face was toward the inside of the berth. He turned over painfully, his eyelids fluttering. "Has the cap—the Ould Man——"
His lips froze as he discovered Paul Lavelle in the doorway. He started up on his right elbow. His eyes bulged wildly. His jaw went loose. He made a vain effort to lift his left hand to his brow in a salute. He tried to speak, but his tongue clicked in his throat like a twig crackling. With a weird, eery cry he fell back in the berth senseless.
The time of a breath embraced the strange scene.
"Oh, Paul, Paul, he knows you!" exclaimed Emily in a tense whisper.
"I never saw him to my knowledge until we pulled him aboard this afternoon," said Paul, recovering from his surprise. "He has mistaken me for somebody else. Poor devil is out of his head."
"Are you sure you have never seen him?"
"I'm quite sure. But it's uncanny. Please bring the lamp over here so that I can take a good look at him."
Emily carried the light to the side of the berth and Paul bent over the stranger. He searched every feature of the weather-beaten face and his own memory at the same time. He was positive he had never seen the derelict before.
"Just out of his head, little woman—that's all. I never saw him—I don't know him, although his own mother wouldn't recognize him now."
As he spoke Paul timed the unconscious man's pulse and laid an ear to his breast. Emily caught an uncertain shake in Paul's head as he straightened.
"Is—is he going to get better?" she whispered.
Paul answered her with a shrug of doubt.
"We can't do any more for him than we are doing now."
He added this as he saw her wince and the glint of pitying tears come into her eyes.
"His heart is very weak," he went on, after a slight pause. "He seems to be in a bad mooring ground. He's burnt up as if he had been through a fiery furnace. It may sound strange to hear one speak of the sea as a fiery furnace, but it is. It can burn a man's soul out of him just as it can freeze it out. And—mock him with bitter waters he cannot drink."
There was a world of bitterness in his tone as he finished speaking and left the room to go aft to the medicine chest. He returned with some spirits of nitre to find Emily placing a wet pack across the derelict's forehead. He mixed a dose of the tincture in a tumbler of water and dropped some of the fluid between the cracked lips.
"This will help to pull the fever down," he explained. "It's all I could find back there—this nitre. He will need watching and attention to-night. If this calm holds I will slip in here now and again."
A low moan escaped from the stranger.
"Come, little woman. Let us leave him now."
Paul put up a hand to turn down the light.
"No, I am going to stay and do what I can for him, Paul."
"But, Emily, this—this is no work for you. You——"
"Paul Lavelle, it is my work," the gold woman said firmly. "I've been a loafer—an idling nothing—a leaner all my life. I've never helped until now. You've taught me how. You can't unteach me. If my hands can aid this poor old man to keep a hold upon life they are going to do it. If they can make his going out any easier they are going to do it. My God, the thought—that it might be you—and a woman would turn away from—from you——"
Her voice broke. Tears choked her. She put an arm against the bulkhead and buried her face in it, away from Paul's sight. Her nobility of soul chastened his spirit. It exalted him. In silence he went out into the night. Strangely there lingered in his brain as he went about the ship two sentences Emily had uttered with unwonted fire: "You've taught me how. You can't unteach me."
There was much for theDaphne'snew skipper to do. While the calm gave no sign of breaking and the lounge barometer held steady for fair weather, still the longer he contemplated the task of handling theDaphnethe bigger it grew in his sight. He could not afford to let any precaution which suggested itself pass unembraced. So he turned to work on the theory that it is easier to let out a reef in a breeze than it is to furl a sail in a gale. He cut his coat according to the cloth he had. He double-reefed the foresail and the topsails and, with the donkey engine's aid, found it not such a hard task as he had imagined it might be. Steam hauled the blocks of the reef tackles closer together than sailor hands could ever have brought them. The best he could do with the mainsail was stopper it with gaskets. It would have been vain and futile to have tried to roll the heavy canvas up on its yard. He knew if it should come on to blow that the wind would take care of it as he left it, but he could not help it.
The last thing he did forward was to put the hatch covers on and bar them down. The tarpaulin had been burned or thrown overboard by the mutineers, but Paul felt certain that little water could enter theDaphnethere.
As he went aft he was surprised to see a light in Elston's room. Peering through the port under the gangway ladder leading to the poop he saw Emily writing at the dead boy's desk. She stirred slightly as his eyes rested on her and as if conscious of another presence. A sense of guilt startled Paul and he hastened aft to reef down the spanker.
With the finishing of that task the skipper leaned wearily against the wheel and surveyed the things he had done alow and aloft. The moon, which, twenty-four hours gone, he had never expected to see rise again, presently caught him in its spell. It was now nearly two hours high over the bark's starboard quarter. In its beams theDaphneseemed but the delicate tracery of a ship o' dreams. It powdered the vessel with a silvery dust; enveloped her in a mystic, spiritual splendor. The gilded trucks gleamed like true gold. Masts and spars, shrouds and stays and running gear were invested with a fairy grace. The coarse, heavy sails had become gossamer in their fineness—butterfly wings at rest. The night, as if for the very beauty of the scene, wept upon the fabric in dewy tears of pearl and opal and sparkling diamond.
Emerging from the lounge Emily was caught in the moonlight's enhancement. For a second it swept from her mind what had brought her seeking Lavelle. Paul, staring aloft, did not see her nor did he hear her footfall. A hiss of steam from the donkey boiler's safety escape, which had been set at a very low pressure, broke the spell.
"It seems helpless—weak to say that words fail one in expressing a thought—an impression," said the gold woman. "But all I can say—I must say the trite thing: How wondrously beautiful!"
Her words but expressed the thought that had leaped into Paul's mind at discovering her and which he had bravely denied utterance.
"The sea has no fairer sight to give men than this—unless it is a square-rigged vessel like theDaphne, 'a towering cloud of canvas,' driving along over the deep in such a light. But how is the stranger?"
The question brought a serious eagerness into Emily's face.
"Are you positive, Paul, that you have never seen this man before?"
"I have searched my memory to place him. He is not in it. Why?"
"He was quiet for perhaps an half-hour after you left. I went into the room next door—the mate's—to—to write something. Suddenly I heard him call your name, 'Lavelle.'"
"Impossible!"
"No; I heard the name, 'Lavelle'; just as distinctly as that. I was shocked. I stole in very softly and stood beside him. His eyes were closed, but he kept mumbling, 'That night at Apia——'"
"Apia? Apia?" Paul repeated with interest. "Yes, go on. What else did he say?"
"That was as far as he seemed able to get. I thought he was trying to go over some oft-told story. At last he sank back in exhaustion. I did not dare to speak to him. He has slept ever since and his fever is down. What is Apia? Where is it? What do you think he meant?"
"Apia—in the Samoan Islands. My father was lost there twenty-five years ago in a hurricane which trapped three naval squadrons. He was about my age at the time. Only a little while ago mother wrote me that a photograph I sent her might have been father's. This old fellow must have served under him. He mistook me for him when he saw me so unexpectedly in the doorway. This explains it. The way he attempted to salute when he saw me made me think he was a man-o'-war's man."
A strange, unreasonable hope which had sprung into Emily's heart died.
"The sea plays strange pranks, doesn't it, my friend?" Paul asked after a pause. The question drew Emily's gaze back from the satiny blue deep. His manner of address chilled her. "'My friend! My friend'?" her brain echoed. He averted his gaze sadly.
"Yes," she assented. "It does play strange pranks."
In the words a meaning was veiled that did not reach him. She was thinking of the barrier that had been building itself between them all day. No sooner did one wall go down than another rose in its place. Strangely, as she watched him staring over the deep to the southward, a feeling of contrition filled her. With the truest sympathy she said:
"I am sorry. Perhaps I shouldn't have told you what this man said. It has stirred unpleasant memories—sad ones."
"No. The finest memory I have is my father—the finest memory any son ever had."
As he spoke he seemed to go still further away from her. In silence she watched him enter the lounge and return to the deck with his sextant. He took an observation of Polaris and then went in to the chart table to work it out. With a feeling akin to shame Emily sensed that he did not wish her near him and she started below.
"We should try to get as much sleep as possible while this calm lasts."
He said this coldly and without looking up from the book from which he was taking a set of logarithms.
"I know—I understand," she answered, fighting for control of herself.
"A breeze may come at any time and we'll need every bit of strength we can muster to work the ship."
The gold woman could stand the uncertainty no longer.
"Paul, tell me frankly—have I done or said anything to hurt you? What is it? What I said down there in the stranger's room—is it that?"
The words were no sooner away from her lips than anger at herself swept her. Where was her pride?
"No, no. Of course you have not said anything. Of course not. All's well, little woman." His answer came quickly, but not without an embarrassment that she failed to understand. He bent his head over his work again. "Don't forget you are to call me at the first sign of a breeze; anyway not later than 11:30."
They had planned at dinner that she was to keep the watch for the first part of the night.
"No; I shan't forget," she answered bravely and groped down the companionway from his sight. Nor could she dream what pain it cost the lonely man at the chart table to let her go from him.
"Up with ye, yez foretop bullies! Up an' give her a cheer! Hip!—--Hear her! A bloody Englishman playin' av 'Th' Star Spangled Banner!' That's for us, ye bullies! Hip, hip!—--Damn ye, cheer! Now! Hip!—Again!—She's struck! No! She's by the reef!—By God she's clear! She's in the open sea! Clear! Hip!"
This monologue, shouted as if through the teeth of a gale, suddenly broke upon the gold woman's troubled consciousness where she stood writing at William Elston's desk. It was the derelict raving. The dramatic spirit of his speech thrilled her. It conveyed to her mind a picture of a ship fighting to sea against all odds and she could see the stranger in the next room somewhere in the foreground of a ragged shore urging others—men under him—to cheer her on.
A silence followed the outburst and Emily tiptoed into the alleyway. She listened for Paul, but no sound came from him aft. She had been below about an half-hour. He must be asleep.
The gold woman entered the derelict's door softly and discovered him sitting upright in his berth, peering from under his two hands as if at something a long distance away. There was an heroic suggestion in the posture of him and in the set of his scraggly white-bearded jaw.
"She's clear—clear," came from him in a tired whisper as Emily crossed the threshold. He dropped his hands. "Hello, nurse," he said, discovering the girl. She turned up the light.
"You're feeling much better, aren't you?" she asked very tenderly.
She held a glass of water to his lips and he drained it.
"Thankee, nurse, thankee. Another long drink, please. That's—Ah! That's good. My coppers is hot. Thankee. I'll be comin' out o' drydock soon. All I needs is t' get my head gear overhauled an' these ribs spliced. Nurse, sailormen orter have good hackmatack knees for ribs." A faint smile of humor rippled across his face. "It's a mighty long way from a fore-uppertawps'l yard t' th' foc'sle head—a mighty long way."
The listener gathered that the old man believed he was suffering from the effects of a fall. He lay back obediently at her suggestion. His eyes appeared quite rational. Although his hands were still scorching to the touch there had been an abatement of the fever. Yet his pulse was extremely weak. When Emily felt it she was surprised at the strength of his voice.
"Nurse," he said, after a short pause, "when that 'ere sky pilot comes roun' in th' mornin' I wants you t' stand by." A twinkle danced in his sea-bleached blue eyes. "He says th' sea gives up its dead. I'll be after askin' th' gentleman how he knows. Ye'll hear him shputter at that. It'll be a fair joke. A fair——"
He stopped seriously. His gaze sought the doorway. In a whisper fraught with a note of bitter fatalism he said:
"Th' sea gives nothin' back, nurse. When it takes annythin' it kapes it. Th' sky pilots are but pretindin'."
Emily sensed that the sailor's mind was groping around the appearance of Paul earlier in the evening. She feared that it would do him harm to let his mind rest on this and that it would be better if she could induce him to sleep.
"Don't you think if I turned down the light you might be able to sleep again?"
The suggestion startled him.
"No, no, nurse. Plaze lave th' light. I'll be afther stayin' awake for th' Ould Man—that's me own skipper."
"But he has been here. He——"
"Mother av God!" he cried. He seized her hand and held it in great stress. "Thin yez saw him, too! Yez saw Lavelle." His eyes, filled with awe, leaped from Emily's face to the open doorway and back again. "'Tis me warnin', colleen, t' be snuggin down—t' make everythin' tight!"
The thing she had wished not to do she had done unwittingly. She had turned his poor brain back to its memory of Paul's father.
"Did yez hear him shpake t' me? Did he shpake t' annybody else?"
"It was not the Captain Lavelle you think. It was his son."
"His son? Not 'Prince' Lavelle?"
The derelict shook his head in doubt, and as he did so he looked round the stateroom. His eyes picked up each article in it in a bewildered, half-familiar way.
"Yes, his son. You must have no fears. Can't you think where you are? Do try. You're aboard the barkDaphne—theDaphne."
"Daphne?Daphne?" he repeated. "No, th'Daphnewasn't there. There was th'Trenton, th'Nipsic, th'Vandalia, a Dutchmin called th'Sadler, th'Cally-ope—notDaphne." It was plain that the past was ruling his memory. "'Twas only yestiddy th' home mails come in an' brought th' 'Prince' a loikeness av his littul bhoy—littul Paul. Says th' 'Prince' t' me, 'Dan, an' 'tis home with th' littul feller I'd loike t' be.' He says that t' me, an' him th' 'first luff' an' me a common sailorman an' capt'n av th' foretop be grace av three enlistments an' sthayin' sthraight three months on ind. Now he's lyin' out there in thim God-forsaken wathers an' all because av a bloody lot av Dutchmin an' naygurs."—"Come along t' th' mass with me an' pray for God's kindness t' th' 'Prince's' sowl. Yez'll niver sail agin, my bullies, under an officher man loike 'The Prince.'"
The last was not spoken to Emily, but to men who were not in the room.
The sweet tender praise of the father of the man she loved with all the soul of her wrung tears from the listener. She could see "The Prince" showing this sailor the picture of Paul. She could hear him speaking.
"And he called you Dan—'The Prince'?" Emily managed to say and with the hope that possibly it might suggest the derelict's identity.
"Dan? T' be sure he called me Dan. 'Rid-headed bunch av sin' he called me whin I wint on th' bind. I had a thatch in thim days as rid as th' British merchant flag." A gnarled hand wandered to his bald crown and as it touched it the sailor started up. Reason seemed to have made a breach in his poor brain. He looked round the room quickly. A light of recognition dawned in his gaze. "Dan—Dan," he kept repeating. "Daniel—Daniel Mc—Mc—Mc—Daniel McGovern!"
Emily hearkened in breathlessness. She felt herself in the presence of a mystery. Paul had read her the names of theDaphne'screw from the log. "Daniel McGovern" was not one of them.
Tears coursed down the old man's cheeks. His hands trembled. His voice quavered in a childish treble. He kept on repeating the name over and over again as if he had found it after many years and was making sure that it would not escape him again.
Suddenly he caught Emily's hand and became still. He was listening.
"Mother av God where am I?" he asked in a few seconds. In the next breath he exclaimed: "'Tis a ship I'm on! I c'n fale th' sea!"
"You're in the barkDaphne—theDaphne. Don't you understand? Can't you remember anything?"
It was evident that a great struggle was going on within him.
"That's her door; that's her door," he whispered. He pointed at the stateroom door. "Takewood an' mahogany an' maple. So were th' cabins thrimmed."
Emily's heart leapt at this. He was from theDaphne. She gave him a drink of water. She started to call Paul. But when she thought of what had happened before she drew back.
"Yez are not a spirut—th' spirut av McGavock's woife, eh?" the derelict asked doubtfully.
"No, no; but what has happened here? What became of McGavock's wife?"
"Murder an' hell. That's what happened here. Where's Morgan—an' th' Jap? Th' sicond mote an' th' cook?"
"Only you and Captain Lavelle and——"
A cunning expression came into the derelict's face at Paul's name. His mind was breaking again.
"What d'yez know of Lavelle?" Without pausing for an answer, he went on: "'The Prince' is drown-ded these twinty odd year. An' his poor bhoy—he's gone this past twilve-month. A man—a prince av min loike his father, he was. I was along av th' bhoy in th'Yakutat."
Emily's senses went reeling.
"TheYakutat?" she gasped.
"Aye, th'Yakutat—th' big Alaskan brute. She did for th' bhoy, but 'Th' Prince' would have loiked t' have been with us that night." A boastfulness of pride came into his voice. His eyes closed for a second as if he saw a vision. "'Twas loike mush whin she piled up. Misther Lavelle kept a-tellin' Graham he was sthandin' in too close, but 'twas no use. I heard him meself toll him twict. I was at th' wheel th' lasht toime. I can see th' two av thim just outside th' wheel-house now. 'You're wrong,' says 'Th' Prince's' son. 'I'm masther here,' says Graham. Dhrunk he was wid th' lust av pride an' power loike whin fools command. An' maybe he was dhrunk, too, wid somethin' else. 'Take yure orders or go t' yure room.' An' 'Th' Prince's' son says he: 'I'll take me orders.' I was at th' wheel agin in th' mid-watch. God help me 'twas meself that stheered her up on th' rocks, obeying orders. She climbed thim loike a woild horse. Th' scut av a third officher had th' bridge. 'Full spade asthern' he give her as' I knew thin she was broke in two. 'Full spade ahead,' an' she'd a-hung on th' rocks till mornin' whin th' shore folk could have saw us."
The old man paused.
"Yes, yes, go on," whispered Emily.
"A sup av water. That's it. Thankee, nurse. Where was I? Oh——Misther Lavelle comes a-tumblin' up an' Graham an' th' foorth officher. 'All hands t' th' boats,' says Graham. A mad, crazy coward he was. Says I t' meself, 'I want none av ye,' an' I followed 'The Prince's' son. 'T' th' boats.' Huh! An' not enough boats for th' half av thim aboord. I lep' from th' wheel an' shtuck t' Misther Lavelle. We had a din av woild animals t' foight. But we got our boat away—th' childer an' th' women an' th' ould folk. Lavelle he was for goin' back aboord. 'Twas suicide. I shoved off. We cleared th' side an' just thin a big naygur I had lopped av' th' ear an' overboord from th' deck reaches up an' catches our gunnle. 'Th' Prince's' son cracks at him with an oar. A fule shtood up i' th' boat, sayin', 'Take him aboord.' An' we full thin as a tick. Th' next minynte an' over we wint.
"Loike an hour ago I see it. Says a littul lady forninst me—we'd taken her husband aboord 'cause we'd seen him sick about th' deck—says she, 'If we must die, we'll die thegither, Jawn.' An' all round was Bedlam."
With a shudder he lay back. Emily Granville knew that it was of her mother and father that the derelict had just spoken. But even in the stress of feeling which possessed her there formed in her mind an high, practical purpose. She knew that if this man could but reach the ears of the world with this tale it meant the vindication of Paul Lavelle. It meant all that was dear to him—his good name, his honor restored. The sailor must not die. He must live. She would fight death for him and in justice she must conquer. If she could do this thing for her love she would have nothing else to ask of life.
But of a sudden dread seized her. Perhaps it was only the tale of a disordered brain that she had heard. Why had not this man come forward at the inquiry which had sent Paul forth branded a coward? Why had he not told this story then? If he had been on theYakutatthat night, how was it that Paul did not remember him? Could it be that this man's weakened mind had found suggestion for the tale from the force of her own mental desire?
"But what became of you after that night—after theYakutatwas lost?" she asked.
"I don't know, nurse. I don't know. It was just a year ago that I woke up."
The last anchorage of her hope went with that. It was but a maundering tale, after all. Or else her senses were tricking her and she had imagined that he had said these things about Paul and her mother and father and theYakutat!
"It all came back to me," the derelict went on wearily—"twelve years of my loife. I was in th' seamen's Bethel in Hong Kong—just a year gone. An' out av a 'Frisco paper I spelled that th' Lavelle av th'Yakutat—'Th' Prince's' bhoy—was gone—lost in a tramp off Rangoon. Like th' loightnin' sthrikes th' twilve lost year come back. Says I, 'I'm Daniel McGovern.' Whin I was afther tellin' th' sky pilot he wint an' tol' th' docthors all about it. Th' newspapers printed it. Whin th'Yakutat'sboat wint over somethin' struck me head. A whale ship picked me up. 'Th' Prince's' boy niver knew I'd served with his father. All th' thrubble in me head shtarted before I j'ined th'Yakutat. I was afther fallin' from th' tawps'l yard av some ship. Her name—I can't raymimber where 'twas or what ship 'twas. I tould Elston about it—fine lad he was—an he laughed at me till I give him th' piece out av th' Hong Kong newspaper. He laughed——I'll be afther shlapin', shlapin', nurse. I'll be——"
Daniel McGovern's eyes closed. He seemed very weak. For a second Emily feared that he was dying. Then, her abiding faith in the justice of things renewed her.
"He mustn't die, God—not yet, not yet," she pleaded in a whisper.
She ran from the derelict's room into the mate's. Earlier in the evening she had found on Elston's desk a book—a half-filled diary—from which she had torn a page upon which to write. She carried this book and pen and inkwell back to McGovern's room. She would reduce McGovern's story to writing and make him swear to it. As she spread the book open upon a chair and knelt beside it to write a newspaper clipping fluttered out from its pages. A glance confirmed the truth of all the derelict had said about his strange lapse of memory:
Lost His Identity for Thirteen Years.Word in a Newspaper Restores the Memory of a Man Who Had Forgotten Who He Was.
Lost His Identity for Thirteen Years.
Word in a Newspaper Restores the Memory of a Man Who Had Forgotten Who He Was.
Thus ran the headlines. To Emily Granville they were written in fire.
The cabin clock struck seven bells—11:30—but she did not hear it. Oblivious to all else save her task and the flickering life in the berth at her side she began to write a statement of all McGovern had said. She felt that it was in her to stay death until the derelict had signed it.