VALENTINE'S PAID HAND
It was about five o'clock in the evening when Jimmy stood on the
Vancouver wharf beside an express wagon, from which the teamster had
just flung down what appeared to him an inordinate quantity of baggage.
He was then attired in a steamboat officer's jacket, from which he had
removed a row of buttons as well as the braid on the cuffs, an old pair
of Valentine's white duck trousers carefully mended with sail-sewing
twine, a pair of canvas shoes with a burst in one of them, and a
somewhat dilapidated man-o'-war cap. In this get-up he expected to pass
muster as a professional yacht-hand, though as yet there were very few
men who followed that calling in Vancouver or Victoria. Had he been
brought up in England he might have felt a little more uncomfortable
than he did, but the average Westerner is troubled by no false pride,
and is usually willing to earn the money he requires by any means
available. Still, Jimmy was not altogether at ease, for he had, at least
to some extent, become endued with his comrades' notions during the time
he had spent in the mail-boats and the English warship.
A little farther up the wharf Valentine was talking to a gray-haired
gentleman whose immaculate blue serge, level voice, and formal attitude
seemed to stamp him as different from the men of the Pacific Slope, who
have as a rule no time to waste in considering appearances. Two young
ladies stood not very far away, and, though the breeze was no more than
pleasantly cool, one of them was wrapped in a long cloak and shawl.
Jimmy could not see the other very well because of the wagon, but when
she moved across the wharf her lithe step and graceful carriage at least
suggested vigorous health.
By and by the rattle of a neighboring steamer's winch ceased suddenly,
and he heard the voice of the elderly gentleman, who had been glancing
in his direction.
"I suppose that is your man," he said, with a clear English intonation.
"Couldn't you have got him up a little more smartly? That man-o'-war
cap, for instance, is a little out of keeping with the rest of his
things."
Jimmy saw Valentine's badly suppressed smile, and caught his answer. "He
was in one of the warships, sir, and is a reliable man. I can warrant
him civil and sober."
"Well," said the other, "we may as well go off while he brings down the
baggage."
The party moved toward the _Sorata_'s dory, and Jimmy was not exactly
pleased when he found himself left to carry their baggage, which
appeared to be unusually heavy, down a flight of awkward steps. It was
not very long since he had stood beside a mail-boat's hatch, and merely
raised a hand now and then while her deck-hands stowed the baggage under
his direction; but he found something faintly humorous in the situation
until, hampered by an awkward load, he lost his balance and fell down
the steps. Still, he contrived to deposit the charterers' possessions
at the water's edge, and when Valentine came back he packed them into
the dory, and about fifteen minutes later staggered into the little
white ladies' cabin on board the _Sorata_ with a big trunk in his arms.
One of the girls was busy unstrapping a valise, but the other looked
around as he came in.
"Put it there!" she said, with a swift glance at him, and then, though
he noticed that apparently she had something in her hand, she seemed to
change her mind and turned around again.
Jimmy went out backwards, with a faint warmth in his face, and when he
had brought in the rest of the baggage he went up and assisted Louis,
their third hand, to break out the anchor and get the _Sorata_ under
way. She was sliding out through the Narrows when he dropped through the
scuttle into the forecastle, and found Valentine filling a tray.
"It's part of your business to carry the baggage," he said. "You want to
remember they're particular people, and you're expected to make yourself
generally useful and agreeable. Still, I guess there's no need to talk
as you would in a mail-boat's saloon."
Jimmy took the tray, but, as it happened, the _Sorata_ lurched on the
wash from a passing steamer as he went through the sliding door in the
bulk-head, and, plunging into the saloon with arms stretched out, he
fell against the table. It was a moment or two before he partly
recovered his equanimity, and then, as he looked about him, a hoarse
laugh fell through the open skylights. To make things worse, he fancied
that the elderly gentleman cast a suspicious glance at him, while he was
quite sure that there was a twinkle in one of the young ladies' eyes.
She leaned back somewhat wearily upon a locker cushion, and her face was
thin and fragile; but her companion sat upright, and Jimmy saw that she
also was regarding him. She was tall and somewhat large of frame, with a
quiet face that had something patrician in it, and reposeful brown eyes.
Jimmy fancied that she and the others must have heard the laugh above.
"It's only that idiot Louis, sir," he said. "It's a habit he has. You'll
hear him laugh to himself now and then when he's at the helm."
Then it occurred to him that he was speaking more familiarly than an
Englishman would probably expect a yacht-hand to do, and, pulling
himself up abruptly, he commenced to lay out the table and pour the
coffee.
"You take sugar, miss?" he asked.
"She does," said the man dryly. "When a spoon is not available she
prefers her own fingers."
The delicate girl laughed a little, and Jimmy felt his face grow warm,
for he was conscious that her companion was watching him with quiet
amusement; but he contrived to find the spoons he had forgotten, and
when he was about to withdraw the girl with the brown eyes made a little
sign.
"I suppose we are at liberty to read any of those books?" she asked,
pointing to the hanging shelves. "They are the skipper's?"
Jimmy knew what she was thinking, because the works in question were by
no means of the kind one would have expected a professional yacht-hirer
to own or to appreciate. He also knew that the forecastle slide was
open, and that Valentine was probably listening.
"Of course, miss," he said; "take any of them, if you can understand
them. I think it's more than the skipper does. Still, he has a little
education, and bought them cheap at book sales. They give a kind of tone
to the boat."
"I see," said the girl with the reposeful eyes, and Jimmy backed out in
haste. He fancied a little ripple of musical laughter broke out after he
had closed the forecastle slide. Then he glanced deprecatingly at
Valentine, who did not appear by any means pleased with him.
"I didn't expect too much from you, but the last piece of gratuitous
foolery might have been left out," he said. "Did you ever come across a
yacht steward who took passengers into his confidence in the casual way
you do?"
"No," said Jimmy candidly, "I don't think I ever did. Now, I don't in
the least know what came over me, but I can't remember ever losing my
head in quite the same way before. It must have been the way the girl
with the brown eyes looked at me. In fact, she seemed to be looking
right through me. Who is she?"
"Miss Merril."
"Ah!" said Jimmy, a trifle sharply. "Still, it doesn't seem to be an
unusual name in this country, and, after all, one couldn't hold her
responsible for her father's doings--if she is the one I mean. It's
quite possible they wouldn't please her if she were acquainted with
them. In fact, it's distinctly probable."
"I wonder why you seem so sure of that? She is the one you mean."
"From her face. You couldn't expect a girl with a face like that to
approve of anything that was not----"
He saw Valentine's smile, and broke off abruptly. "Anyway, it doesn't
matter in the least to either of us. What is she doing here, and who are
the others?"
Valentine laughed. "I don't think I suggested that it did. The man is
Austerly, of the Crown-land offices, and English, as you can see--one of
the men with a family pull on somebody in authority in the Old Country.
I believe he was a yacht-club commodore at home. The delicate girl's his
daughter. Not enough blood in her--phthisis, too, I think--and it's
quite likely she has been recommended a trip at sea. Miss Merril is, I
understand, a friend of hers, and she evidently knows something of
yachting too."
"What do you know about phthisis?"
A shadow suddenly crept into Valentine's brown face. "Well," he said
quietly, "as it happens, I do know a little too much."
Jimmy asked no more questions, but got his supper, and contrived to keep
out of the passengers' way until about ten o'clock that night, when he
sat at the helm as the _Sorata_ fled westward before a fresh breeze. To
port, and very high above her, a cold white line of snow gleamed
ethereally under the full moon. A long roll tipped by flashing froth
came up behind her, and she swung over it with the foam boiling at her
bows and her boom well off, rolling so that her topsail which cut black
against the moonlight swung wildly athwart the softly luminous blue.
Jimmy was watching a long sea sweep by and break into a ridge of
gleaming froth, when Miss Merril came out from the little companion and
stood close beside him with the silvery light upon her. She had a soft
wrap of some kind about her head and shoulders, and, though he could not
at first see her face, the way the fleecy fabric hung emphasized her
shapely figure.
"I wonder whether you would let me steer?" she asked.
For a moment or two Jimmy hesitated. The _Sorata_ was carrying a good
deal of sail, and running rather wildly, while he knew that a very small
blunder at the tiller would bring her big main-boom crashing over, the
result of which might be disaster. Still, there was something in the
girl's manner which, for no reason that he could think of, impressed him
with confidence. He felt that she would not have asked him for the helm
merely out of caprice, or unless she could steer.
"Well," he said, remembering he was supposed to be a yacht-hand, "we
will see what kind of a show you make at it, miss. Take hold, and try to
keep her bowsprit on the island. It's the little black smear in the
moonlight yonder."
The girl apparently had no difficulty in doing it, though for a while he
crouched upon the side-deck with a brown hand close beside the ones she
laid on the tiller. Then as, feeling reassured, he relaxed his grasp,
she appeared to indicate her hands with a glance.
"They are really stronger than you seem to think," she said, "and I have
sailed a yacht before."
Jimmy laughed. "I only thought they were very pretty."
The girl looked around at him a moment, without indignation, but with a
grave inquiry in her eyes which Jimmy, who suddenly remembered the role
he was expected to play, found curiously disconcerting.
"What made you say that?" she asked.
"I really don't know;" and Jimmy had sense enough not to make matters
worse by admitting that he had said anything unusual. "It seemed to come
to me naturally. Perhaps it was because they--are--pretty."
This time Miss Merril laughed. "Well," she said, "I should just as soon
they were capable. But don't you think she would steer easier with the
sheet slacked off a foot or two?"
Jimmy had thought so already, but while he let the sheet run around a
cleat he asked himself whether this was intended as a tactful reminder
that he was merely expected to do what was necessary on board the
vessel. On the whole he did not think it was. One has, after all, a
certain license at sea; and though he had naturally met young ladies on
board the mail-boats who apparently found pleasure in treating every man
not exactly of their own station with frigid discourtesy, he fancied
that Miss Merril differed from them. However, he sat silent and out of
the way upon the _Sorata_'s counter, until presently a lordly,
four-masted ship swept up out of the soft blueness of the night.
She crossed the _Sorata_'s bows, braced up on the wind, and, for she
carried American cotton sailcloth, she gleamed majestically white, with
four great spires of slanted canvas tapering from the great arch of her
courses to the little royals that swayed high up athwart the blue above
a long line of dusky hull. It was hove up on the side nearest the
_Sorata_, and the sea frothed white beneath her bows, which piled it
high in a filmy, flashing cloud. Miss Merril could hear the roar of
parted water, and, as the great vessel drove by, the refrain of a
sighing chantey that fell amidst a sharp clanking from the black figures
on her spray-drenched forecastle.
"Ah!" she said, "that is a picture to remember. I wonder what those men
have undergone, and where they come from?"
Jimmy smiled, presuming that she was addressing him, though he could not
be sure of it.
"Well," he said, "I should fancy they have borne 'most everything that a
man could be expected to face, except want of food, while they thrashed
her round the Horn. She's American, and, if they drive men hard on board
their ships, they at least usually feed them well."
"You know what they have done?"
Jimmy laughed, and forgot his man-o'-war cap as he saw that she was
interested. "I believe I do. They've crawled out on those long topsail
yards probably once every watch by night and day, clawing at thundering
folds of hard, drenched canvas, while the ship lay with her rail in the
water when the Cape Horn squalls came down thick with blinding snow.
Then they've crawled down with bleeding hands and broken nails, and
flung themselves, in their dripping oilskins, into a soddened bunk to
snatch a couple of hours' sleep before they were roused to get sail on
her again. They have lived for days on cold provisions soaked in brine
when the galley fire was drowned out, and it is very likely have not
stripped a long boot off for a week. She carries a high rail, but the
icy sea that chilled them to the bone has poured across it at every
roll."
"Ah!" said the girl; "going west it would be to windward. In one way
it's almost an epic. I suppose it's always more or less like that?"
"Yes," said Jimmy; "one of the epics nobody has ever written, perhaps
because nobody really could. There are a good many of them. As you say,
when one has to fight to windward, things generally happen more or less
that way."
Miss Merril turned and looked at him as he sat on the _Sorata_'s counter
in the navy cap, and a smile crept into her eyes.
"Still," she said, "perhaps it is, after all, worth while to face them."
They both remembered that afterward, but in the meanwhile it did not
strike Jimmy as in any way incongruous that she should talk to him in
such a fashion or credit him with more comprehension than one would
expect from a professional yacht-hand.
"I don't know," he said simply. "One's heart is apt to fail when one
looks forward and sees only the snow-squalls to drive one back to
leeward, and the steep head seas."
Then he stood up suddenly with a little laugh as Louis came slouching
aft from the forecastle scuttle.
"I'm relieved, and I had better see whether they want anything in the
saloon," he said.
It appeared that they wanted nothing, and when he crawled into the
forecastle Valentine looked at him with evident curiosity.
"You had apparently a good deal to say to Miss Merril," he observed.
"Might one ask what you found to talk about?"
"The last topic was whether it is worth while to hang on and fight one's
way to windward when the outlook is black. If I understood her
correctly, she seems to believe it is."
Valentine grinned sardonically. "Did you discuss it like a German
philosopher, or as a forecastle hand? I suppose it never struck you that
it's rather an unusual subject for a yachting roustabout to go into with
a young lady passenger?"
"It is," agreed Jimmy, making a little deprecatory gesture. "I'm afraid
I didn't remember that before; but it probably doesn't matter, since
it's hardly likely that she did either."
His comrade looked at him, and shook his head. "You can believe that--at
your age?" he said. "My dear man, a young woman of Miss Merril's
intelligence would notice anything that wasn't quite in character the
moment you said it. Still, that is your affair. It's the other one I'm
worrying about."
"The other one?"
"Miss Austerly. The girl's very sick--probably worse than her father
realizes--and it's rather on my conscience that I told them that Louis
could cook. Anyway, if this breeze holds we'll bring up off Victoria
early to-morrow, and though we're not going in, I'll slip ashore before
breakfast and see what one can pick up at the stores."
Jimmy asked him no more questions, but crept into his bunk. About nine
o'clock on the morrow, when the _Sorata_ was lying in a bight on the
south coast of Vancouver Island, he was aroused by the dory bumping
alongside, and he went out on deck. It was then raining hard, and all he
could see was a stretch of gray sea and a strip of dripping boulder
beach on which a little white surf was breaking. There was a good deal
of water in the dory, and Valentine's oilskins were dripping when he
climbed out of her with several packages under his arm. Stores open
early in that country.
"Now," he said, "you can bail her out, and come down in half an hour
when I've fixed up a breakfast that any one could eat."
Jimmy did so, but it was with some little diffidence that he carried the
tray into the saloon. It occurred to him that Miss Merril might regret
that she had unbent so far the previous night, and he wondered uneasily
whether he had ventured further than was advisable. He was also
conscious for the first time that the repairs Valentine had made in his
garments were less artistic than evident. The girl, however, looked up
with a smile, which might have meant anything, and afterward confined
her attention to the articles he was laying on the table. There were
Chinese preserved dainties and fruit from California, as well as the
ordinary fare.
"An unusually good breakfast," said Austerly. "Does your skipper always
treat his charterers so well?"
"Yes, sir," said Jimmy. "That is, when he can. You see, he couldn't get
these things in Vancouver; there isn't the same demand for them as there
is in the capital."
Austerly did not appear altogether satisfied with the ingenious
explanation, but he said nothing further. Indeed, he was not a man who
said very much on any occasion; and while he commenced his breakfast
Miss Merril looked at Jimmy with her little disconcerting smile. Still,
there was no malice in it.
She was as fresh that morning as when she came off the previous evening,
though both Austerly and his daughter appeared a trifle the worse for
the night's run. Miss Merril was wholly unostentatious in speech or
bearing, and there was a certain gracious tranquillity about her which
suggested latent vigor instead of languidness. She was then, he decided
tolerably correctly, in her twenty-fifth year, brown-haired and
brown-eyed, with broad, low forehead, unusually straight brows, and, in
spite of her smile, a curiously steady gaze. Her face was a full oval,
her mouth by no means small, and, while he had seen women of a somewhat
similar type whose vigor was tinged with coarseness or a hint of
sensuality, there was about this girl a certain daintiness of thought
and speech, and a quiet dignity. What she said was, however,
sufficiently prosaic.
"I presume that means he went to Victoria for the extra stores this
morning; but how did he get there? It must be some distance, from what I
know of the coast, and he would have a head-wind all the way back."
"He walked," said Jimmy. "It's necessary for him. One doesn't get very
much exercise of that kind at sea. In fact, he walks miles whenever he
can."
Miss Austerly appeared a trifle astonished, and her father looked up
from his coffee.
"It's a trifle difficult to understand how he manages it," he said.
"One would consider the _Sorata_ forty feet long."
Jimmy felt Miss Merril's gaze upon him, and, as had happened before, his
ingenuity failed him. Her smile vaguely suggested comprehension, and,
for no ostensible reason, that disturbed him. He also saw Louis grinning
down at him through the skylights.
"Sugar, sir?" he said; and this was so evidently an inspiration that
Miss Austerly laughed, and when her father said that he had been offered
it twice already, Jimmy went out with all the haste available. He closed
the forecastle slide somewhat noisily, and then sat down and frowned at
Valentine.
"Well?" said the latter dryly. "Been making an exhibition of yourself
again?"
"I'm afraid I have," said Jimmy. "If it happens another time you can
carry the things in yourself and see how nice it is. Still, I don't
quite know why I lost my head. I have naturally met quite a few young
ladies in my time. I suppose it's wearing that confounded cap and these
more confounded clothes."
He kicked one foot out, and disgustedly contemplated a burst white shoe,
while the duck trousers cracked. Valentine leaned back against the
bulkhead and laughed.
"Don't be rash, or they'll split; and the jacket's opening at a seam,"
he said. "It's rather a pity a man can't rise above his clothes. Anyway,
you may as well give Louis a hand to get the mainsail on to her. As soon
as they've finished breakfast we'll break out the anchor."