"'With everything drawing aloft and alowShe's a Liverpool packet! Lord God see her go!'"
"'With everything drawing aloft and alowShe's a Liverpool packet! Lord God see her go!'"
Emily was on the point of going to the galley door to call him when she caught that bit of heart-lifting song. A wild, compelling note of the sea was in it.
"We're homeward bound in a clipper ship, lassie!" he called as he discovered her. Nor would he eat or drink until he had told her where the storm had carried theDaphneand what it meant to them. He was like a big, wholesome boy and she told him so. His enthusiasm stirred her with a desire to be under way immediately. TheDaphnebecame personal in the gold woman's thoughts as Paul described her capabilities, and therewith she understood the love of a man for a ship which women rarely do.
"Unless we're picked up by some other vessel we'll be up with the Golden Gate in less than a month!"
Emily's face clouded at the suggestion of another vessel rescuing them. Paul laughed.
"You may not understand, but I wish we might sail theDaphneinto our own home port. Think what a prize it would mean to you."
A hope lived in his heart for an instant that this might come true. It was gone when he answered her.
"The first vessel that comes along we go in her, lassie; and leave theDaphneto the sea."
Yet as Emily lay down in the lounge a little while later and saw Paul hang a light of distress in the mizzen rigging, the strange wish that it would go unseen was uppermost in her heart. She wanted theDaphneto remain his, but she would not admit to herself the reason upon which that hope was predicated.
With the first streak of day Paul was on deck. The blow-off of the donkey, which he had set at a low pressure a couple of hours before, roused him from the berth he had stretched along the carpenter's bench. Custom trains seafarers as it does soldiers on campaign to live by a broken sleep which the average workaday citizen thinks would kill him. Although Paul had been up at intervals during the night, with an eye for the weather and any chance lights, he was filled with an eager freshness. A stirring was coming out of the northwest. There was a tang in it which promised a whole sail breeze. It put a song in his heart, and a little while later Emily was awakened by his clear voice ringing through the morning air, "The Chanty of the Rio Grande."
"'Where are you going to, my pretty maid?O away Rio!Where are you going to, my pretty maid?We are bound to the Rio Grande.O away Rio,O away Rio,O fare you well, my bonny young girl,We are bound to the Rio Grande.'"
"'Where are you going to, my pretty maid?O away Rio!Where are you going to, my pretty maid?We are bound to the Rio Grande.O away Rio,O away Rio,O fare you well, my bonny young girl,We are bound to the Rio Grande.'"
When Emily got forward to the galley she found breakfast waiting.
"Why didn't you call me, Paul?" she asked in a tone of protest, and she waited archly in expectancy of a kiss, but he did not seem to notice this. "Partners must play fair."
"Never mind, Emily. I can do so little for you. From now on it will be watch and watch and there will not be much that I can do for you."
The bending of a new fore upper topsail and straightening out the tangle of running gear about decks occupied most of the forenoon. It was not until after luncheon that theDaphne, with Emily at the wheel, lifted away to the eastward before a fresh northwesterly breeze.
Paul ran aft as the bark entered upon her task and stood for a moment beside Emily. The intoxication which she had first experienced alone at the wheel was again upon her. The breeze was dusting loose wisps of her hair into a halo which the sun burnished with fire. Bosom heaving, eyes alight, her whole virgin being alive, a-thrill with love and the sensation of theDaphne'smotion, she presented a figure which would have given fame to any brush that could have limned it. She might have been Daphne herself, not fleeing from, but hastening with her fresh treasures to meet Apollo.
Paul felt that he dare not speak. He put his hand on the wheel to haul the bark half a point closer to the wind. As he drew it away Emily touched it impulsively.
"Good strong, honest man's hand," she murmured.
Their eyes met in a flash in which her soul called to his and trembled when echo only seemed to answer it.
Paul turned abruptly away to stray the patent log over the taffrail. Then he went forward in silence. When he found himself a few minutes later staring out over the weather bow he wondered how he had gotten there. And the gold woman, watching him until he disappeared, kissed the wheel spoke his hand had touched and even again in the sweet agony of her love when she saw that it was flecked with the blood of his storm travail.
That evening Paul established the rule by which he thought it best to work the ship. Emily would stand a watch and trick at the wheel of two hours and have three hours below. His watch would be three on deck and two below.
"It isn't fair, Paul," the gold woman protested when he explained it to her.
"It is fair, Emily. I wish I might spare you every bit of the coarse hard things you have to do."
"That's just it. You are always thinking of sparing me."
"Take your orders or go to your room," he said with a pretended seriousness. Emily started with a gasp. Her thoughts leaped to McGovern's story of what had happened on the bridge of theYakutat. This was what Graham had said to Paul that fateful night.
"I—I will take my orders," she answered in a low voice.
"Why, dear, what is the matter? I didn't mean to frighten you. I'm a ruffian. Do forgive me."
"No, you should forgive me. I had no right to question what you said. You know best."
She drew in beside him on the lee side of the wheel.
"I've been away from civilization so long that I imagine that I've forgotten how to speak decently to white folk."
"Then I should like to send ever so many men that I know at home where you have been."
"Bravo! But 'ever so many men'?"
"Well, they wear trousers."
"You are cynical."
"No, observant."
"I'm afraid you are a new woman."
"I am. I have just been reborn. Oh, Paul, I have never lived until now. I have never known what life meant. I have lived as one blind, incompetent, thoughtless. Like most of those I knew before you came into my life I had just a vague notion that the earth was round. You know the kind."
"Yes. Take the fiction of civilization away from them and every nine hundred and ninety-nine would perish overnight."
"I saw them in extremity aboard theCambodia. How many knew one end of a boat from the other? They were all thinking of living, crying to live, and hardly one out of ten knew what to do to save their most precious possession—life."
"There is a big thought behind what you say."
"You started it in me."
Paul looked over his shoulder at the sea. After a considerable silence he said:
"I wonder how many came through?"
The question was addressed to the sea as much as it was to Emily. She shuddered.
"Here!" he exclaimed brusquely. "What are we doing? There is Polaris up there smiling at you, my lady."
His face was lit with a wonderful smile as he spoke. It drove the gloom from her mind which their reference to theCambodiahad produced. Soon they were off on an expedition to the stars, each in turn naming one and identifying its bearings. Paul had introduced Emily to this "game" the second night on the island, and then as now they lost themselves in it in a childish delight. His mental equipment was forever startling the gold woman. Where he had found the time to garner the store of knowledge that was his and to keep abreast of the times, leading such a life as he had for ten years, was a marvel to her.
"Ha! Ha!" Paul laughed suddenly as the cabin clock, which he had moved into the lounge, struck two bells. The laugh broke the spell of the stars which held Emily, only to weave her immediately in another.
"'I have shot back to Paris!'"
"'I have shot back to Paris!'"
Paul laughed and made a pretense of dusting himself.
"'Come—pardon me—by the last waterspout,Covered with ether,—accident of travel!My eyes still full of star-dust, and my spursEncumbered by the planets' filaments!Ha! on my doublet! A comet's hair!'"
"'Come—pardon me—by the last waterspout,Covered with ether,—accident of travel!My eyes still full of star-dust, and my spursEncumbered by the planets' filaments!Ha! on my doublet! A comet's hair!'"
As he finished this snatch from Cyrano de Bergerac's sky-traveling tale, Paul pretended to pick a comet's hair from his sleeve.
"Oh, my beloved 'Cyrano'!" exclaimed Emily, identifying the lines. "Do go on," and in answer Paul went through the entire scene between Cyrano and De Guiche.
"And I will applaud—I will pay you thus," and the gold woman reached up and kissed the helmsman on brow and lip.
Thus they both came back from across the world and the four centuries whither the magic of the romantic lines had transported them.
"Come, Emily, didn't you hear two bells strike? You have let me waste nearly an hour of your watch below. Turn in."
"It has been an hour of magic."
She held her mouth up to be kissed. His lips barely touched hers and flashed away, and as she went through the lounge door, he murmured, still in the words of his Gascon hero, "'I soon shall reach the moon.'"
Fifteen days later the gold woman was at the wheel again, having relieved Paul to permit him to make his noon observations. It was a Sunday. She watched him tremulously, and strangely troubled, where he worked at the chart table in the lounge.
The days that had passed had been those of which sea-singers make their happiest, bravest songs—by sunlight azure, cloudless sky, and wind-flecked, gem-shot, purple sea; by night an ermine-tipped deep, mirroring the star jewels and planet studdings of mystic, violet heavens. Through these halcyon days theDaphnehad been winging her way ever eastward; flinging long sea leagues behind under the impulse of a driving, northwesterly wind. It had been as constant as a mother's love; with never a pause the bark had sped as she was speeding now, not as a hand-made fabric of steel and iron and wood and canvas and brass, but like a living, sensate thing into which her maker had breathed a soul. The crispness of Spring was in the air—air which whipped the blood like young wine.
"Only a thousand miles more!" called Paul suddenly.
As he spoke Emily saw him rise quickly from the table and come toward her. The mask of joyousness which he wore was but a mask to her. It might have deceived anybody else, but this girl had come to understand him and read him as not even the woman who had borne him could have done. There was a constraint upon him. With each noon's tale of a shortening journey a relentless tide had seemed to carry him further and further away from her. After the first flush of the homeward flight he had sung no more of his sea songs unless she asked him. He had a guard up. A secret fear seemed to be gnawing at his heart. By instinct alone she read that he loved her; not by external signs.
"This is a smart little packet," Paul went on. "Just think of it—one thousand nine hundred and eighty miles in fifteen days! That's moving with nothing above a crippled mainto'-galluns'l on her! We did eleven knots for a stretch when that puff struck us at dawn this morning."
"'She's a saucy wild packet; she's a packet of fame,She belongs in New York and theDreadnaught'sher name.'"
"'She's a saucy wild packet; she's a packet of fame,She belongs in New York and theDreadnaught'sher name.'"
With this couplet, singing it in her rich voice, as she had learned it from Paul, Emily made her answer. She did it with a bravery and pretense of light-heartedness which she was far from feeling.
"At this rate we'll not be spending another Sunday aboard theDaphne, partner. Eh?"
"No," she said and she kept her eyes averted as he took the wheel from her. She looked out over the lee rail and across the sea. Just over the end of the spanker boom, where it wheeled low down on the southwestern horizon, a white glint fixed her gaze. For a second she thought it was a large bird. Guiltily she held her breath as she discovered it to be a sail. She closed her eyes and afterwards she believed that in that moment she had prayed that Paul might not see it. But he had followed her gaze. Her heart went cold as she heard him cry: "Sail ho!"
A second later theDaphnewas shaking in the wind.
"Here, Emily, take the wheel! Keep her shaking just as she is!"
Paul drew Emily to the wheel as he spoke and ran to the rail.
"It's a ship! Those are her skys'ls or royals we can see! She's bound this way!"
Emily's hands faltered. The wheel rolled through them. TheDaphneclawed up in the wind until she was nearly aback forward.
"Hard up! Hard up!" cried Paul in alarm.
Blindly Emily recovered herself and put the helm up. TheDaphnefell off before the wind and her skipper turned again to the strange sail.
"No," he said. "She's outward bound—going the other way. We could never overtake her." He took the wheel again. "Better look at her, partner. It's a full-rigged ship. Not many of 'em left. Pretty soon the sea will know them no more. They'll be gone—like—like the dreams of yesterday."
In a few minutes the outward-bounder dipped out of sight, but even before she went a mist had shut her from Emily's vision. "Dreams of yesterday," her thoughts kept repeating.
Although theDaphnehad been lying along in a beaten track of vessels for more than two weeks, this was the first sail to be sighted from her decks—the first vessel to come within her ken since the four-master with the painted ports had "arrived out."
"Don't feel badly, Emily," Paul said as the gold woman faced him. "Any hour may bring us up with a homeward-bounder."
"I do not feel badly," she answered, and her pride helped her mask her feelings. "But if we are going to be home by next Sunday we are going to have one more 'picnic.'"
With that she went forward to the galley. The preceding Sunday she had prepared a luncheon for both of them and they had eaten it at the wheel together. They had prepared for it a day ahead, talking childish make-believes of what they would wear and of the good things they would have to eat. Paul had stolen the time to shave. Emily had found a bit of pink ribbon and put it in her hair. This had been their change of apparel. Such a meal as the cheap, sea-sour provisions of theDaphneafforded had been the "picnic" luncheon of their fiction.
But Saturday of this week had slipped by and neither had spoken of a repetition. Emily had waited for Paul to say something. He had waited for her. Yet now he noted as she went forward that there was a bit of ribbon in her hair. And she had observed that morning when he had come on deck to relieve her at 10 o'clock that he was freshly shaven.
Of a sudden Emily paused in the midst of her "picnic" preparations, her mind stumbling upon the strangest thought that had yet come to her of Paul's inexplicable mood.
"Can there be another woman in his life?" whispered this thought.
Instantly there came to her mind the night on the Isle of Hope when she had heard him murmur in unconsciousness of a woman to whom he would soon come home.
She remembered that she had even prayed for this woman.
"Cherchez la femme." Nothing was truer than that. Always the woman. Her thoughts went wild. They began picturing the sort of woman who might have come into his life and who might be coming back into it. No; she would never come back into it, for if she had let him go when the blow fell, he was not the kind to let her back. Still love moved men in strange ways.
It was a sorry picnic that was spread on theDaphne'sdeck. It came to an end at 2 o'clock when Paul turned the wheel over to Emily and started forward with the dishes they had used.
"I think I shall break out some coal for the donkey," he announced.
"But it's Sunday, you know," said Emily, making a brave effort to smile. There was an invitation in her glance for him to remain, but he would not see it.
"And you've forgotten your sailor's litany," he answered:
"'Six days shalt thou work, doing all that thou art able; and on the seventh, holystone the decks and stow away the cable.'"
He smiled as he quoted the sea-grimed lines which the first shell back on the Ark must have turned. Then slowly he put down the dishes and irresistibly—a powerful magnet might have been controlling him—he was drawn aft to the gold woman. He took her face between his hands and kissed her as he had kissed her that day in the lounge. She dropped the wheel and staggered.
"My lover," she murmured.
"Darling," he whispered.
Just as theDaphnewas striking aback the madness which was upon Lavelle passed from him and he seized the wheel. As he sent her off before the wind again the back draught of the shaking sails wafted to him a sulphurous odor which chilled the last drop of blood in his veins.
"Emily, take the wheel. Keep her full—as she is."
"Paul, dear, what——"
The pallor of death was in his face. Another scent of gaseous warning struck him.
"My God, we're afire!" he cried and sprang forward.
Paul ran straight from the poop into the eyes of theDaphne. There the trail of gas led him. It was the coal in the fore hatch that had been exposed and wet. He went below through the chain locker, but only to remain a second. A sulphurous wave of heat drove him on deck, choking for breath. A furnace was back of it. There was no fire to be seen, but this man did not have to see it to know what the blast that repulsed him meant. He knew these Australian coal cargoes too well. This was not the result of the mutineers' abortive effort to destroy theDaphne. This was a fire of spontaneous combustion. It was deeply seated. These coals had been in the bark more than one hundred and sixteen days to his own knowledge, which was drawn from the log and the time since he had boarded her. How long she had lain in Sydney after being loaded there was no way of telling.
Coals of this kind, laden in hulls like theDaphne's, which were never built for such cargoes, generate gas after a certain period, and unless watched incessantly and ventilated properly fire is the certain result. The Pacific deeps hold the secret of many a ship brought to her doom through such a lading.
That night the constant northwesterly summoned a new freshness to its drive as if it sensed theDaphne'speril. When Paul relieved Emily at the wheel at seven o'clock she was crying with the pain in her arms. She had been standing there a full five hours. Not since they had been sailing to the eastward had Paul permitted her to take a trick beyond two hours. She had to walk up and down the deck swinging her arms and flexing her fingers to get the numbness out of them.
"Emily, I'd suffer any pain to take yours away," Paul said. "I feel like a whipped cur to see you going through all this terror and hardship—and to think I can't do anything to put any of it away from you."
His tenderness flooded her eyes with tears. Strife always brought him close to her.
"Don't, Paul, please," she said bravely, attempting to control her voice. "You will—you will have me breaking—going to pieces in a moment."
She put her hands to her face and leaned against the casing over the steering gear.
"Emily, I want you to get for'ard and get a bite to eat and then turn in," he said. "I'm going to try to let you sleep for three hours—maybe until midnight. I've everything battened down forward. The fire's all there. Not a sign aft—no temperature. It's this wind and our strength against the beast that's under decks."
He did not tell her what a beast he knew it to be.
The morning of the fifth day after the discovery of the fire Paul fixed theDaphne'sposition one hundred and fifty miles to the south and west of San Francisco.
"Only another day, partner! Maybe an hour may bring a vessel to us!" She had just relieved him at the wheel. Through these five days theDaphnehad come driving without sighting a sail: unspoken save by the voice of the northwest wind. Once they had seen the black smoke plume of an outward-bound steamer, but it was too far away for theDaphne'ssignal of distress to be seen.
Paul seemed to be living by will alone: to be endowed of a force that only death could stay. When he slept the gold woman had no idea. He had relieved her at the wheel every two hours, night and day, but when she was steering she frequently heard him at work in the engine room. From the very first night he had slept beside that engine, kept its fires alive and a stream of steam flowing into the forehold through a pipe led down through the chain locker. He had explained to her that water on a fire like this would have been of as little use as oil: that gases had to be smothered.
Emily sensed that a greater danger menaced them than Paul had revealed. This had been suggested to her when on the second day she had seen him finish a raft built of doors and forecastle bunkboards. But she had learned of the storm not to ask questions. What this man chose to tell he would tell.
Never had he seemed more splendid than as he stood before her this morning telling theDaphne'sposition, and in the same breath whispering again the belief that had come to him the night before that the steam was choking the beast in the hold. Bare-armed, bareheaded, lithe with a thoroughbred's suppleness, he was, in her sight, an urn of the divine fire from which mankind draws its noblest impulses.
"We'll win through yet, Paul! In justice we must!" she called to him as he went forward.
She saw him come to the galley door a few minutes later with a cup of steaming coffee and, as he ate of a biscuit and drank, he waved to her. He darted inside and a moment later came running aft with a cup for her.
"I've had my coffee, dearheart," she said.
"Half a dozen cups won't hurt you. I put two spoons of sugar in this—sand, save the mark."
With that he was gone from her again. Emily watched him breaking coal out of a corner of the main hatch for use in the donkey. She smiled as she remembered his commentary on the grimness of stealing coal from one end of the ship to make fire to put out coal already afire in the other end. It was the old, old principle of fighting fire with fire in a new, weird form.
Watching her partner drew Emily's attention from theDaphne. A warning slat of the weather leech of the to'galluns'l brought her eyes back to the bark and the compass. She had just succeeded in getting the vessel on her course of northeast again, when a roar with a shriek whistling through it came bursting aft. A cloud of steam poured from the engine room door.
Shrieking Paul's name, Emily paused but a second when no answer came. She became a flame of action. With the quickness of thought and the instinct of his training guiding her hands, she snapped the wheel into its beckets, let the spanker sheet go by the run and, leaping forward, cast the halyards off their pin.
Only belching steam answered her cry of Paul. Into it she hurled herself. It flung her back. She became as a tigress at the repulse. She was not to be denied. Instinct brought her to her hands and knees. It told her to go in under the scalding vapor. Just inside the door she found her own and snatched him into the life-giving air.
When Paul awoke to consciousness fifteen minutes later it was to find the face of the gold woman bending over him. He put up his arms and drew her face down against his hot lips and held it there.
"You, you," he murmured, and he found the precious lips which had kissed him again and again in his unconsciousness. They answered him as if they would breathe the strength of immortal life into his form.
"Not even death can take you from me!" she cried, and started up savagely. She might have expected to find the grim specter himself to grapple at her side.
"Not even—death——"
Lavelle sighed and his eyes closed in a seeming weariness of pain. His arms fell from her neck.
"Oh, God, you mustn't take him from me! You must not!"
It was an appeal, a command, a challenge of defiance. The cry with which she sent it heavenward pierced above the roar of the steam and the warring sails and hamper above.
Although this lone woman's extremity was great, yet of her association with Paul Lavelle she had learned to order her wits in the presence of disaster.
"If the next minute seems to be the last, just keep on fighting—hammering ahead," he had said to her so many times.
She remembered how he had given strychnine to McGovern to stimulate heart action—the oil he had put on the poor fellow's burns. She ran aft and in a drawer in the medicine chest which she looted of bandages and lint she discovered by accident a bottle of brandy. When she returned to Paul he was just opening his eyes again. He shook his head at the liquor when he had taken but a sip of it.
"Some starch and water," he whispered, "or glycerine. There's some aft——"
Emily found a bottle of glycerine. A few minutes after he had swallowed a mouthful of it he nodded that he felt easier.
"Steam—afraid it got inside," he whispered. "Tried—remember keep my mouth shut. Steam's bad to swallow. Water injector—on the boiler—blew out. Hit me somewhere in the middle. Happened all in a second."
He fainted while Emily was drawing the boot off his left leg which he had indicated hurt him most. The limb was scalded from the knee down. His arms and the backs of his hands, too, were blistered. His face was grimed with ashes and soot, but when Emily washed it she found it free of burn or hurt. The while her loving hands swathed him and soothed his wounds she crooned like a wild thing over its whelp.
When he revived she was holding his head in her lap just as she had in theCambodia'sboat. His eyelids lifted to her kisses. He put up a hand and touched her cheek and she patted it. He smiled at the reassurance that it was not a dream. Many, many times he had awakened to put out his hand like that—to touch that face and met only emptiness.
The jade ring which he had put on Emily's finger drew his glance and held it for a second.
"'Man has many reckonings with man, but only one with God,'" he repeated. "'Only one with God.'"
The escaping steam by this time had spent its strongest volume. It was now no more than a hiss. TheDaphnehad fallen off before the wind again and the noise aloft had practically ceased.
"I feel this is the reckoning, partner," he whispered.
With a sob she bent and kissed him with all the passion of her being.
"And for the touch of those lips," Paul went on, "the reckoning—cannot be too hard."
"No, no, dearheart——No, no! This is not the reckoning—only the beginning of the future."
Paul shook his head.
"I have thought of the future, but it can't be—for me. If things had been different I should have found you though you had been at the ends of the world. And I should have come for you and taken you." A flash of the old conquering spirit lit his eyes. "I should have taken you despite a world against me. It is part of the—the reckoning that we should—have met; like strange ships on the sea and to have sailed together for this little while. But it wasn't to be that we were to get home together. And that is right. That is right."
"Paul, Paul, this hopelessness is not like you. You will live! You must live!"
"But I don't want to live," he answered very calmly. "I am nothing but a worthless, broken thing—marked among men. I haven't even a name to give you. I am a pariah man—darling. That's——"
"Listen, Paul—look up at me so that you will know that it is my soul speaking to you. All that fortune has given me is as nothing to just the glance with which you are looking up at me now. All that I have is yours—my soul, my flesh, my blood, my every breath, my life! Had you nowhere to lay your head I would follow you. Had you only rags to cover me I would wear them as robes of state. Had you only a crust from the gutter to share with me it would be a feast. Were the whole world to revile you its scorn would make me proud. I would wear its spittle like jewels. My love would be my crown."
Emily Granville was burning with the divine fire of a sublime love. Her message to this man, who to her was more than all the earth and its treasures—more than life itself, burst from her lips with the passionate rush of a mountain stream seeking the ocean.
"Can you not understand that my love would be a poor weak, despicable thing if this were not so? That I would not be worthy of my womanhood?"
She choked back the tears as she asked these questions; she kissed the face which she pressed against her breast.
"That you might live—I would die with a smile and with but one regret: That it had not been permitted to me to bear a man child like you.
"But there is a future, Paul. The world will not drive us forth. Life—a fine, clean, God-fearing life is waiting for us over there—just through the Golden Gate. It is a golden gate which will close out the past—forever and ever."
"It cannot be locked out, dear."
"But it can. I can lock it out. The world must listen to me. It must believe me. Justice works in strange ways, but it brought us that poor man out of the sea. I can tell the world his story. He was with you on theYakutat."
Paul started and caught her hand.
"Then, it was not a vagary," he whispered. "That was Driscoll—the quartermaster."
"He was in the boat with you that night. I don't know what name you knew him by. But he told me what happened—the truth. Had he never spoken I should have known the truth. If the world would not listen to you, it will listen to me! It will take back its lies! If——"
Emily's voice broke and she lowered her head in the embrace of the wounded arms which encircled her neck. The pent-up tears of all her travail of spirit since their paths had crossed—the tears choked back and fought back through the dark hours of all the weeks that had gone—would not be longer stayed. On his breast she poured them, and her one thought was that if death must be her love's victor it would strike them quickly in each other's arms.
"In the Black Ball Line I served my time,To me hoodah. To me hoodah;In the Black Ball Line I served my time,So hurrah for the Black Ball Line!"Blow, my bullies, blow,For California O!There's plenty of gold,So I've been told,On the banks of the Sacramento!"
"In the Black Ball Line I served my time,To me hoodah. To me hoodah;In the Black Ball Line I served my time,So hurrah for the Black Ball Line!
"Blow, my bullies, blow,For California O!There's plenty of gold,So I've been told,On the banks of the Sacramento!"
It was with this familiar capstan chanty, "The Banks of the Sacramento," ringing into his senses that Paul Lavelle opened his eyes again on conscious life. The chorus rose clear and lusty, following a baritone leader whose tones were like chimes. A strange, sharp voice of command near by suddenly cut into the chorus.
"Tell that gang of bullies to cut that out and handle that capstan in silence! Tell 'em to remember we've sick folk aboard here."
A moment afterward the chanty ceased.
"Emily, Emily!" Paul called. He believed he shouted, but his voice rose hardly above a whisper. A shadow cut off the morning sunlight which was streaming through a door at his feet. A film seemed to be over his vision, but he sensed that he was in theDaphne'slounge. Somebody sat down beside him and two strong hands took one of his between them.
"You God blessed, old pirate, you——"
Emotion choked the speaker, but Paul Lavelle started at the sound of that voice. It called to him across fourteen years of silence. He looked up dazed at a man built like himself and dressed in the uniform of a United States naval commander.
"Tommy—Tommy Winterton," he murmured.
"Bet your boots it's Tommy!" came the answer with a bit of a sniffle in it.
"But where am I? Where——" Terror seized him. "Emily, Emily!" he called.
"She's below, Paul, sleeping. She's been up here, sitting where I am, nearly all night."
"But how——Where——"
"Stow your questions till I get through. I've a lot to tell you."
Paul subsided with a wondering gaze fixed on the speaker.
"I've a lot to tell that'll make you want to live; that ought to bring you off your back quicker than you can say Jack Robinson," Winterton went on. "You haven't swallowed any steam—you're burned up a bit outside and you're just as good-looking as ever."
"But where am I? What has happened?"
"You're aboard your own bark—theDaphne. She's yours by the Lord Harry and I'd like to see anybody take her away from you. We'll be up with the Gate in another three hours. I'm having her mudhooks shackled up now. Along——"
A renewing of the chanty interrupted him.
"Mr. Yates! Mr. Yates!" called Winterton.
A young ensign appeared in the doorway.
"Tell 'em to cut that out!"
Paul shook his head.
"Let 'em go on," he asked. "Ask that fellow with the baritone voice to find a job and give us 'The Maid of Amsterdam.'"
"Anything his heart desires, Mr. Yates."
Yates stepped inside with his hand extended toward Paul.
"I just want to shake hands with you and say I'm proud to do it."
He lifted the hand which Winterton held and gave it a gentle squeeze through its bandages. He turned and went out quickly. Winterton picked up the hand again and met Paul's wondering gaze.
"That boy meant that," said Winterton. "Why——"
The strain of "The Maid of Amsterdam"—the most beautiful of all sailor work songs—came aft.
"That can't stop me," Winterton went on. "We ran afoul of your old packet about 11 o'clock yesterday morning, threshing around like a wild ship—two ships of the cruiser squadron; mine and another. TheCarolinahas gone on in. I'm stretching a hawser over your bows with my ship. Don't you remember anything about it? No? I sent Yates and a boat's crew aboard of you. They found you and that glorious girl trying to get aft. You wanted to get to the wheel and you not able to stand. Don't remember it, eh? I reckon you don't.
"Oh, my boy, that girl and you have had the whole lot of us miserable. We reached Honolulu from Callao ten days after theCambodiawent down. Department ordered us to join the search for survivors. Whaler picked up a hundred and forty. There was a kid of a quartermaster among 'em—he and a chap named Evans—he's in the consular service—were the heroes of the whole lot. It would take me a week to tell you the things they said about you. They weren't the only ones. To me it was like a poor man finding gold—every word they dropped was a chunk of gold. Say, don't mind, if I snivel a little bit. But I'm glad, glad! You under—you old——"
"My mother——Have——"
"Got a cable from her at Honolulu. Sent a wireless to her last night. She's waiting for you now in town.Cambodiahad no wireless. 'Twas a crime. Somebody ought to be hanged."
Paul nodded assent.
"Well, we combed out to the westward looking for you till it was hopeless," Winterton resumed. "We had nothing but gale upon gale. We combed through that chain of islands to the nor'west of the Hawaiians and at Midway we ran on the gang out of this ship. Oh, it isn't a pretty story: They'd made the island after being in the boats ten days. When they set fire to this ship they thought Midway was right aboard of them. None was a navigator. Second mate—a murdering hound named Morgan, who'd been taken aft from the foc'sle, was the ringleader. He killed McGavock, the skipper. The Jap cook killed the mate. Plain hellishness was at the back of it; that's all.
"McGavock had been logging both of them—knocked Morgan down one day for giving him back talk. Mate did the same to the cook. The Jap was crazy from opium smoking. After they'd done the killing they fixed the fire and the rest of the crew followed them over the side like rats—you know the kind. One of the outfit—sort of a third mate and bos'n—who'd put up a fight—they turned him adrift without water or a bite to eat. Told him to eat the oars if he got hungry; gave him the ocean to drink. Yes, that's the fellow you picked up. Miss Granville told me about it last night. He was with your father at Apia."
"But what of McGavock's wife? There was a woman, Tommy."
"She wasn't aboard. Seems poor McGavock lost his wife—died at sea with her little baby, away out to the westward there, a couple of years ago. He kept brooding over it—kept the wife's things aboard just as she'd left them. I saw the little ferns down there under the skylights yesterday evening. Seems that after crossing the line this voyage McGavock got it into his head to make the position where he'd buried the little woman. He had it marked on the chart with a little red cross. The mutineers stole the chart and they thought the red cross stood for an island. God knows why McGavock steered out there. Maybe he never intended to come away.
"The Jap committed suicide at Midway, but he told the whole story before he went out and we have the rest of it from the other swine. The whole outfit's aboard my ship. Something of the poetry of justice in that, eh? A British cruiser's waiting to take them aboard as soon as we get in. Had her by wireless yesterday.
"But, Paul, it's you I want to talk about—and I'll not answer another question till I have my say. When the news of theCambodia'sloss and what you'd done aboard of her went flashing round the world it set the old navy gang's hearts up. But it did more than that. It reached into the conscience of that fellow Graham. He was on his last legs in a hospital in San Francisco. He'd never had a ship since he'd lost theYakutat—just a beachcomber and a bum. A man can't do a dirty thing and stand up afterward. That's as sure as shooting. Well, with his last breath, Graham tells the truth about the night theYakutatwas lost; said if he'd done what you advised him to do the ship would never have piled up. He took back every lie he uttered on the witness stand—admitted that he'd ordered you to the boats. He even told how he looked down from the bridge and saw you fighting like a tiger to get women and children into the boats. The San Francisco papers—we picked 'em up at Honolulu—are full of it. Miss Granville has a lot of them.
"Lord, man——Why, Paul, you damned old pirate you! The fleet's been collecting a fund—one of the newspapers that roasted you the worst is backing it—to build you a memorial. Something in bronze. But it isn't going to be bronze. It's going to be silver—the damnedest, finest wedding gift a real man ever got."
Winterton's voice was husky with emotion. His big brown eyes were suspiciously misty. He had to stop.
"Farallones are abeam, sir," reported Yates, who was in temporary command of theDaphne, coming to the door.
"Must be getting back to my own ship, Paul. Regulations, you know. But I'll be aboard of you as soon as we get our mudhooks down."
"Carpenter's mate reports, sir," interrupted the ensign, "that the fire in the forehold is extinguished."
"See that!" exclaimed Winterton. "You beat that, too, you old beggar, even though you did come near blowing yourself to Kingdom Come!"
At that moment Emily, fresh from sleep and with the wonderful light of love transcendent in her being, came up through the companionway with the surgeon from Winterton's ship at her heels.
Sawbones caught Winterton's eye and followed him out on deck. The lounge door closed softly behind them and Emily Granville and Paul Lavelle were alone. He drew her precious face down to his and printed a kiss of life triumphant upon her expectant lips. Neither attempted to speak for several minutes.
The gold woman carried a small black book and she laid it in Paul's hands as she lifted her face from his.
"I want you to have this now, my prince, before the world renders you what it will in a few hours. I would have dragged from the world what it is going to give you willingly. I want all that comes to you to come through me. Darling, that is the woman of it. I have kept this a secret from you because I wished to be able to swear that it was not written at your suggestion; that you knew absolutely nothing about it. If I did wrong in keeping it from you—you——"
"Why, darling, what is it?"
"Can you bear to read?"
"Yes."
"Then begin here," and she opened the book in the middle for him and this is what Paul Lavelle read:
"At sea aboard the barkDaphne, March 31, 191-."In the presence of death and without the solicitation or the knowledge of any person hereinafter named I, Daniel McGovern, sometimes called Driscoll, and other names unknown to me, say: I was quartermaster aboard the steamshipYakutatwhich was wrecked on the California Coast in the month of March—the 15th—190-, through and by the carelessness of her first officer, William Graham, then acting as captain in the place of her dead commander. I joined the ship at Skagway. The shipping records there will show under what name. On the day preceding the wreck and when we were within thirty-six hours of our destination we encountered a dense fog in which the ship remained up to the time she struck. The fog closed in about 10 o'clock at night shortly after I took the wheel. Paul Lavelle, second officer of theYakutatand ranking next in command to William Graham, was on the bridge. About fifteen minutes afterward Graham came on the bridge. I heard Mr. Lavelle tell a steward to call Graham from the saloon. Lavelle said: 'We are standing in too near the land. There is a bad current along here.' Graham said: 'I've had enough of this talk from you. Hold your course. I'm in command here.' He left the bridge. The next night when I went on watch the course was the same that we had been holding for the previous twenty-four hours. This was at midnight. The third officer and the captain, Graham, were on the bridge. Mr. Lavelle was just being relieved. He said to the captain, Graham: 'I advise you to steer at least three points further to the southward.' We were making a course southeast by east. Graham answered: 'Take your orders or go to your room and stay there. Which will it be?' Mr. Lavelle said: 'I will take my orders.' Other things were said in both these conversations, but what they were I do not know. I give only the parts I heard and remember. The ship struck at fifteen minutes before two. The third officer signaled: 'Full speed astern.' If he had signaled 'Full speed ahead' there would have been but few lives lost. There was a ground swell running, but hardly any sea. Lavelle came on the bridge first. Then came Graham and the fourth officer. Graham was like a crazy man. He kept saying: 'All hands to the boats.' And there were not boats enough aboard for half the ship's company. Mr. Lavelle cursed Graham. Graham said: 'I order you to your boat.' I followed Mr. Lavelle. We had to fight like wild beasts. There were pistols and knives against us at every hand. 'Women and children first; remember, Driscoll.' That is what Mr. Lavelle said to me. The boats were being let go by the run, some half filled and others with not enough in them to man them. We gathered all the women and children we could see. The last we let in was an old gentleman who had been sick all the passage, and his wife. I lifted him in. Mr. Lavelle lifted the wife. One would not go without the other. Then the lights went out. When we cleared the side Lavelle started to climb the boat fall again to go back to the ship. I pulled him back. He was too brave a man to let commit suicide. He had absolutely no thought of himself. I have followed the sea forty-five years and I know brave men. I saw Paul Lavelle's father die at Apia. Nobody was driven from our boat but men. We gave their places to women and children. We did not beat anybody with oars. When we cleared the ship a negro—I had knocked him overboard myself—grabbed the gunwale of the boat. We could not take him in. Mr. Lavelle struck at him with an oar. Somebody stood up in the boat and the next second we were all gone. I did not remember what happened until one year ago. The minister at the Bethel in Hong Kong can tell you about that. The doctors there know, too. While I was on theYakutatI did not know who Paul Lavelle was.HISDaniel X McGovern.MARK"Witness:"Emily Granville."
"At sea aboard the barkDaphne, March 31, 191-.
"In the presence of death and without the solicitation or the knowledge of any person hereinafter named I, Daniel McGovern, sometimes called Driscoll, and other names unknown to me, say: I was quartermaster aboard the steamshipYakutatwhich was wrecked on the California Coast in the month of March—the 15th—190-, through and by the carelessness of her first officer, William Graham, then acting as captain in the place of her dead commander. I joined the ship at Skagway. The shipping records there will show under what name. On the day preceding the wreck and when we were within thirty-six hours of our destination we encountered a dense fog in which the ship remained up to the time she struck. The fog closed in about 10 o'clock at night shortly after I took the wheel. Paul Lavelle, second officer of theYakutatand ranking next in command to William Graham, was on the bridge. About fifteen minutes afterward Graham came on the bridge. I heard Mr. Lavelle tell a steward to call Graham from the saloon. Lavelle said: 'We are standing in too near the land. There is a bad current along here.' Graham said: 'I've had enough of this talk from you. Hold your course. I'm in command here.' He left the bridge. The next night when I went on watch the course was the same that we had been holding for the previous twenty-four hours. This was at midnight. The third officer and the captain, Graham, were on the bridge. Mr. Lavelle was just being relieved. He said to the captain, Graham: 'I advise you to steer at least three points further to the southward.' We were making a course southeast by east. Graham answered: 'Take your orders or go to your room and stay there. Which will it be?' Mr. Lavelle said: 'I will take my orders.' Other things were said in both these conversations, but what they were I do not know. I give only the parts I heard and remember. The ship struck at fifteen minutes before two. The third officer signaled: 'Full speed astern.' If he had signaled 'Full speed ahead' there would have been but few lives lost. There was a ground swell running, but hardly any sea. Lavelle came on the bridge first. Then came Graham and the fourth officer. Graham was like a crazy man. He kept saying: 'All hands to the boats.' And there were not boats enough aboard for half the ship's company. Mr. Lavelle cursed Graham. Graham said: 'I order you to your boat.' I followed Mr. Lavelle. We had to fight like wild beasts. There were pistols and knives against us at every hand. 'Women and children first; remember, Driscoll.' That is what Mr. Lavelle said to me. The boats were being let go by the run, some half filled and others with not enough in them to man them. We gathered all the women and children we could see. The last we let in was an old gentleman who had been sick all the passage, and his wife. I lifted him in. Mr. Lavelle lifted the wife. One would not go without the other. Then the lights went out. When we cleared the side Lavelle started to climb the boat fall again to go back to the ship. I pulled him back. He was too brave a man to let commit suicide. He had absolutely no thought of himself. I have followed the sea forty-five years and I know brave men. I saw Paul Lavelle's father die at Apia. Nobody was driven from our boat but men. We gave their places to women and children. We did not beat anybody with oars. When we cleared the ship a negro—I had knocked him overboard myself—grabbed the gunwale of the boat. We could not take him in. Mr. Lavelle struck at him with an oar. Somebody stood up in the boat and the next second we were all gone. I did not remember what happened until one year ago. The minister at the Bethel in Hong Kong can tell you about that. The doctors there know, too. While I was on theYakutatI did not know who Paul Lavelle was.
HISDaniel X McGovern.MARK
"Witness:"Emily Granville."
"Oh, you wonderful, wonderful woman!" cried Paul as he finished this amazing document and crushed Emily to him.
Contrition filled him as he remembered the picture of her standing beside the derelict's berth swearing him to the truth of his statement. He started to speak, but a hand over his mouth stopped him. The gold woman could read his thoughts.
"I should have answered you when you called me that night, Paul," she said, "but if I had done so I should not have been able to get the poor old fellow to make his mark. I had fought death from taking him until I could put in writing what he said. You——"
She did not finish, for he drew her cheek down against his.
Two hours later Paul Lavelle and Emily Granville sailed through the Golden Gate—the golden gate of the future which she had promised him.
The noble sea way was shimmering in the sunlight of a flawless Spring day. As theDaphnecame under the lee of the green-clad Marin hills the northwest wind, which had been her constant champion, withdrew like a courtier who has seen his lady to the threshold of her home.
"To live and to love!" exclaimed Paul, inhaling a deep breath of the crisp, sparkling air where he had been carried from the lounge to a chair against the taffrail.
"To love and to live," whispered Emily, pressing the hand which she held in hers against her heart. "Isn't life beautiful?"
"We are but coming through its gate, darling," he answered.
[The end ofThe Girl of the Golden Gateby William Brown Meloney]