The third day out they were well below Formosa, which had been turned on a
wide arc. The sea was blue now, quiescent, waveless; there was only the
eternal roll. Still Jane could not help comparing the sea with the
situation--the devil was slumbering. What if he waked?
Time after time she tried to force her thoughts into the reality of this
remarkable cruise, but it was impossible. Romance was always smothering
her, edging her off, when she approached the sinister. Perhaps if she had
heard ribald songs, seen evidence of drunkenness; if the crew had loitered
about and been lacking in respect, she would have been able to grasp the
actuality; but so far the idea persisted that this could not be anything
more than a pleasure cruise. Piracy? Where was it?
So she measured her actions accordingly, read, played the phonograph, went
here and there over the yacht, often taking her stand in the bow and
peering down the cutwater to watch the antics of some humorous porpoise or
to follow the smother of spray where the flying fish broke. In fact, she
conducted herself exactly as she would have done on board a passenger
ship. There were moments when she was honestly bored.
Piracy! This was an established fact. Cunningham and his men had stepped
outside the pale of law in running off with the _Wanderer_. But piracy
without drunken disorder, piracy that wiped its feet on the doormat and
hung its hat on the rack! There was a touch of the true farce in it.
Hadn't Cunningham himself confessed that the whole affair was a joke?
Round two o'clock on the afternoon of the third day Jane, for the moment
alone in her chair, heard the phonograph--the sextet from Lucia. She left
her chair, looked down through the open transom and discovered Dennison
cranking the machine. He must have seen her shadow, for he glanced up
quickly.
He crooked a finger which said, "Come on down!" She made a negative sign
and withdrew her head.
Here she was again on the verge of wild laughter. Donizetti! Pirates!
Glass beads for which Cleigh had voyaged sixteen thousand miles! A father
and son who ignored each other! She choked down this desire to laugh,
because she was afraid it might end suddenly in hysteria and tears. She
returned to her chair, and there was the father arranging himself
comfortably. He had a book.
"Would you like me to read a while to you?" she offered.
"Will you? You see," he confessed, "I'm troubled with insomnia. If I read
by myself I only become interested in the book, but if someone reads aloud
it makes me drowsy."
"As a nurse I've done that hundreds of times. But frankly, I can't read
poetry; I begin to sing-song it at once; it becomes rime without reason.
What is the book?"
Cleigh extended it to her. The moment her hands touched the volume she saw
that she was holding something immeasurably precious. The form was unlike
the familiar shapes of modern books. The covers consisted of exquisitely
hand-tooled calf bound by thongs; there was a subtle perfume as she opened
them. Illuminated vellum. She uttered a pleasurable little gasp.
"The Song of Songs, which is Solomon's," she read.
"Fifteenth century--the vellum. The Florentine covers were probably added
in the seventeenth. I have four more downstairs. They are museum pieces,
as we say."
"That is to say, priceless?"
"After a fashion."
"'Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it; if a
man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly
be contemned!'"
"Why did you select that?"
"I didn't select it; I remembered it--because it is true."
"You have a very pleasant voice. Go on--read."
Thus for an hour she read to him, and by the time she grew tired Cleigh
was sound asleep. The look of granite was gone from his face, and she saw
that he, too, had been handsome in his youth. Why had he struck Denny on
the mouth? What had the son done so to enrage the father? Some woman! And
where had she met the man? Oh, she was certain that she had encountered
him before! But for the present the gate to recollection refused to swing
outward. Gently she laid the beautiful book on his knees and stole over to
the rail. For a while she watched the flying fish.
Then came one of those impulses which keep human beings from becoming half
gods--a wrong impulse, surrendered to immediately, unweighed, unanalyzed,
unchallenged. The father asleep, the son amusing himself with the
phonograph, she was now unobserved by her guardians; and so she put into
execution the thought that had been urging and intriguing her since the
strange voyage began--a visit to the chart house. She wanted to ask
Cunningham some questions. He would know something about the Cleighs.
The port door to the chart house was open, latched back against the side.
She hesitated for a moment outside the high-beamed threshold--hesitated
because Captain Newton was not visible. The wheelman was alone. Obliquely
she saw Cunningham, Cleve, and a third man seated round a table which was
littered. This third man sat facing the port door, and sensing her
presence he looked up. Rather attractive until one noted the thin, hard
lips, the brilliant blue eyes. At the sight of Jane something flitted over
his face, and Jane knew that he was bad.
"What's the matter, Flint?" asked Cunningham, observing the other's
abstraction.
"We have a visitor," answered Flint.
Cunningham spun his chair round and jumped to his feet.
"Miss Norman? Come in, come in! Anything you need?" he asked with lively
interest.
"I should like to ask you some questions, Mr. Cunningham."
"Oh! Well, if I can answer them, I will."
He looked significantly at his companions, who rose and left the house by
the starboard door.
"They can't keep away from him, can they?" said Flint, cynically.
"Slue-Foot has the come-hither, sure enough. I had an idea she'd be hiking
this way the first chance she got."
"You haven't the right dope this trip," replied Cleve. "The contract
reads: Hands off women and booze."
"Psalm-singing pirates! We'll be having prayers Sunday. But that woman is
my style."
"Better begin digging up a prayer if you've got that bug in your head. If
you make any fool play in that direction Cunningham will break you. I saw
you last night staring through the transom. Watch your step, Flint. I'm
telling you."
"But if she should happen to take a fancy to me, who shall say no?"
"Hate yourself, eh? There was liquor on your breath last night. Did you
bring some aboard?"
"What's that to you?"
"It's a whole lot to me, my bucko--to me and to the rest of the boys.
Cleigh will not prosecute us for piracy if we play a decent game until we
raise the Catwick. On old Van Dorn's tub we can drink and sing if we want
to. If Cunningham gets a whiff of your breath, when you've had it, you'll
get yours. Most of the boys have never done anything worse than apple
stealing. It was the adventure. All keyed up for war and no place to go,
and this was a kind of safety valve. Already half of them are beginning to
knock in the knees. Game, understand, but now worried about the future."
"A peg or two before turning in won't hurt anybody. I'm not touching it in
the daytime."
"Keep away from him when you do--that's all. We're depending on you and
Cunningham to pull through. If you two get to scrapping the whole business
will go blooey. If we play the game according to contract there's a big
chance of getting back to the States without having the sheriff on the
dock to meet us. But if you mess it up because an unexpected stroke put a
woman on board, you'll end up as shark bait."
"Maybe I will and maybe I won't," was the truculent rejoinder.
"Lord!" said Cleve, a vast discouragement in his tone. "You lay a course
as true and fine as a hair, and run afoul a rotting derelict in the
night!"
Flint laughed.
"Oh, I shan't make any trouble. I'll say my prayers regular until we make
shore finally. The agreement was to lay off the Cleigh booze. I brought on
board only a couple of quarts, and they'll be gone before we raise the
Catwick. But if I feel like talking to the woman I'll do it."
"It's your funeral, not mine," was the ominous comment. "You've been on
the beach once too often, Flint, to play a game like this straight. But
Cunningham had to have you, because you know the Malay lingo. Remember, he
isn't afraid of anything that walks on two feet or four."
"Neither am I--when I want anything. But glass beads!"
"That was only a lure for Cleigh, who'd go round the world for any curio
he was interested in."
"That's what I mean. If it were diamonds or pearls or rubies, all well and
good. But a string of glass beads! The old duffer is a nut!"
"Maybe he is. But if you had ten or twelve millions, what would you do?"
"Jump for Prome and foot it to the silk bazaar, where there are three or
four of the prettiest Burmese girls you ever laid your eyes on. Then I'd
buy the Galle Face Hotel in Colombo and close it to the public."
"And in five years--the old beach again!"
Flint scowled at the oily, heaving rolls, brassy and dazzling. He was
bored. For twelve weeks he had circled the dull round of ship routine,
with never shore leave that was long enough for an ordinary drinking bout.
He was bored stiff. Suddenly his thin lips broke into a smile. Cleve,
noting the smile, divined something of the impellent thought behind that
smile, and he grew uneasy. He recalled his own expression of a few moments
gone--the unreckoned derelict.
* * * * *
"Thank you for coming up," said Cunningham. "It makes me feel that you
trust me."
"I want to," admitted Jane.
A disturbing phenomenon. Always there was a quickening of her heart-beats
at the beginning of each encounter with this unusual gentleman rover. It
was no longer fear. What was it? Was it the face of him, too strong and
vital for a woman's, too handsome for a man's? Was it his dark, fiery eye
which was always reversing what his glib tongue said? Some hidden
magnetism? Alone, the thought of him was recurrent, no matter how
resolutely she cast it forth. Even now she could not honestly say whether
she was here to ask questions of Cunningham or of herself. Perhaps it was
because he was the unknown, whereas Denny was for the most part as
readable as an open book. The one like the forest stream, sometimes
turbulent but always clear; the other like the sea through which they
plowed, smooth, secret, ominous.
"Do your guardians know where you are?"--raillery in his voice.
"No. I came to ask some questions."
"Curiosity. Sit down. What is it you wish to know?"
"All this--and what will be the end?"
"Well, doubtless there will be an end, but I'm not seer enough to foretell
it."
"Then you have some doubts?"
"Only those that beset all of us."
"But somehow--well, you don't seem to belong to this sort of game."
"Why not?"
Unexpectedly he had set a wall between. She had no answer, and her
embarrassment was visible on her cheeks.
"Here and there across the world rough men call me Slue-Foot. Perhaps my
deformity has reacted upon my soul and twisted that. Perhaps if my
countenance had been homely and rugged I would have walked the beaten
paths of respectability. But the two together!"
"I'm sorry!"
"A woman such as you are would be. You are a true daughter of the great
mother--Pity. But I have never asked pity of any. I have asked only that a
man shall keep his word to me as I will keep mine to him."
"But you are risking your liberty, perhaps your life!"
"I've been risking that for more than twenty years. The habit has become
normal. All my life I've wanted a real adventure."
She gazed at him in utter astonishment.
"An adventure? Why, you yourself told me that you had risked your life a
hundred times!"
"That?"--with a smile and a shrug. "That was business, the day's work. I
mean an adventure in which I am accountable to no man."
"Only to God?"
"Well, of course, if you want it that way. For myself, I'm something of a
pagan. I have dreamed of this day. When you were a little girl didn't you
dream of a wonderful doll that could walk and make almost human noises?
Well, I'm realizing my doll. I am going pearl hunting in the South
Seas--the thing I dreamed of when I was a boy."
"But why commit piracy? Why didn't you hire a steamer?"
"Oh, I must have my joke, too. But I hadn't counted on you. In every
campaign there is the hollow road of Ohain. Napoleon lost Waterloo because
of it. Your presence here has forced me to use a hand without velvet.
These men expected a little fun--cards and drink; and some of them are
grumbling with discontent. But don't worry. In five days we'll be off on
our own."
"What is the joke?"
"That will have to wait. For a few minutes I heard you reading to-day.
Your voice is like a bell at sea in the evening. 'Many waters cannot
quench love,'" he quoted, the flash of opals in his eyes, though his lips
were smiling gently. "The Bible is a wonderful book. Its authors were
poets who were not spoiled by the curse of rime. Does it amuse you to hear
me talk of the Bible?--an unregenerate scalawag? Well, it is like this: I
am something of an authority on illuminated manuscripts. I've had to wade
through hundreds of them. That is the method by which I became acquainted
with the Scriptures. The Song of Songs! Lord love you, if that isn't pure
pagan, what is? I prefer the Proverbs. Ask Cleigh if he has that
manuscript with him. It's in a remarkable state of preservation. Remember?
'There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I
know not: The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a
rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with
a maid.' Ask Cleigh to show you that."
Cleigh! The name swung her back to the original purpose of this visit.
"Do you know the Cleighs well?"
"I know the father. He has the gift of strong men--unforgetting and
unforgiving. I know little or nothing about the son, except that he is a
chip of the old block. Queer twist in events, eh?"
"Have you any idea what estranged them?"
"Didn't know they were at outs until the night before we sailed. They
don't speak?"
"No. And it seems so utterly foolish!"
"_Cherchez la femme!_"
"You believe that was it?"
"It is always so, always and eternally the woman. I don't mean that she is
always to blame; I mean that she is always there--in the background. But
you! I say, now, here's the job for you! Bring them together. That's your
style. For weeks now you three will be together. Within that time you'll
be able to twist both of them round your finger. I wonder if you realize
it? You're not beautiful, but you are something better--splendid. Strong
men will always be gravitating toward you, wanting comfort, peace. You're
not the kind that sets men's hearts on fire, that makes absconders, fills
the divorce courts, and all that. You're like a cool hand on a hot
forehead. And you have a voice as sweet as a bell."
Instinct--the female fear of the trap--warned Jane to be off, but
curiosity held her to the chair. She was human; and this flattery, free of
any suggestion of love-making, gave her a warming, pleasurable thrill.
Still there was a fly in the amber. Every woman wishes to be credited with
hidden fires, to possess equally the power to damn men as well as to save
them.
"Has there never been----"
"A woman? Have I not just said there is always a woman?" He was sardonic
now. "Mine, seeing me walk, laughed."
"She wasn't worth it!"
"No, she wasn't. But when we are twenty the heart is blind. So Cleigh and
the boy don't speak?"
"Cleigh hasn't injured you in any way, has he?"
"Injured me? Of course not! I am only forced by circumstance--and an
oblique sense of the comic--to make a convenience of him. And by the Lord
Harry, it's up to you to help me out!"
"I?"--bewildered.