"Do you really have to live on pork and beans on a cruise?" asked
Katrine.
"Jerry was only speaking figuratively," explained Jack, with a laugh.
"Of course we do better than that. The only time we really suffered was
in a bit of a shake-up we had on the way over. The second week out we
had a blow, and had to live on hardtack and coffee for three days."
"And Gonzague must have stood on his head to make the coffee, too," put
in Tab.
"Was it really so bad as that?" asked Katrine. "I mean," she explained
as the others laughed, "did it really blow so hard he couldn't cook
things?"
"Well," responded Taberman, "for forty hours we had it so hard we jolly
well thought we'd have to cut."
"Cut?" queried Mrs. Fairhew.
"Yes, the sticks, you know," Jack explained.
From the expression on her face it was abundantly evident that the lady
did not know, but she said nothing. She had but the most casual
acquaintance with nautical affairs, and made no pretense of
understanding the speech of mariners; and she was always willing to let
a matter of this sort go, rather than to submit to a lengthy exposition.
Katrine, on the other hand, while of course not proficient in the art of
handling yachts, knew enough to appreciate that when cutting away the
masts had been contemplated, things must have been at a pass really
dangerous. Now she made no comment, but she gave a swift glance at
Jack, that had in it much of the admiration which Desdemona felt at the
recital of the perils through which Othello had borne himself bravely.
Jack happened to catch her eye; she flushed and turned to Jerry.
"Don't you tire of it all?" she asked. "I should think that to have the
monotony broken only by danger in which you can't have any rest or
comfort would be dreadfully wearisome."
"Oh, it's great sport!" cried Tab heartily. "Besides, you know, there
are no end of things to do."
"Such as what?" inquired Mrs. Fairhew. "I've always found the ocean
voyage the most boresome thing about traveling, although I'm a perfectly
good sailor."
"Oh," said Jerry, with a flourish of his cigarette,--for coffee had been
served and the ladies had permitted smoking,--"there are rope-ends to be
attended to, and gear changed, and all that sort of thing, besides
seeing that the men go over the brasswork properly every day; and there
is taking sights, and making reckonings, and all sorts of things."
"But I thought the men did all the work on the ropes and things."
"So they do," Jack said, with a smile; "but it is our business to tell
them what to do and to see that they do it. You must remember that we
are the ship's officers."
"We have to look things over all the time," Jerry added. "Just before we
went ashore to-day I saw a thing that'll have to be attended to as soon
as we get back at anchor. The fore-peak halyards are 'most chafed
through where they reeve through the block on the cap."
"Dear me!" said Mrs. Fairhew. "Is it dangerous?"
"Not in the least dangerous," Jack returned reassuringly. "Is it really
bad, Tab?"
"Oh, well, I fancy it'll hold; leastways if there's no sudden strain on
it. The rope's new enough; but it jammed there the other day, you
remember."
"Well, let's go on deck," suggested the captain. "It's such a gorgeous
day, it's a shame to miss any of it."
On coming up they found that the wind had so freshened that the
fore-topsail and staysail had been struck, as well as the outer jib.
"We can run on till about four o'clock," Castleport said, "and have
plenty of time to run back with this wind."
They still held to the westward, keeping about a mile off shore, now
and then passing fishing craft, headed for Nice, their big lateen sails
shining in the sunlight. Jack, watching Katrine keenly, read her delight
and enjoyment in her eyes, and could see how she responded to the beauty
of the day, the picturesqueness of the shore, the exhilaration of the
wind, and the sparkling sea. At eight bells they had tea _au Russe_ on
deck, and before they had finished drinking it the Merle was put about
and headed for the harbor.
They had hardly gone a knot before they fell in with a large black yawl
flying the English colors and the burgee of the Royal Yacht Squadron.
She was sailing easily along under all lower canvas, her black hull
lifting gracefully over the sloping seas at about two cable-lengths
ahead. She was in cruising rig, with no boom to her mainsail, yet was so
large that her spread of canvas was at half a glance much greater than
that of the Merle. She crossed the schooner's bows, and then, luffing
occasionally, waited until the American yacht was on her beam.
"Looks's though she wanted something of us," remarked Jerry. "Will you
take another look at her, Miss Marchfield?" And he handed her the
glasses.
"She is a beauty!" exclaimed Katrine, regarding the yawl through the
binoculars. "I can see her name now. I-s-i-s Isis, of--of Plymouth.
Don't you want to look at her, Aunt Anne?"
Mrs. Fairhew took the glasses with the air of a person doing a favor,
and stared at the yawl in a perfunctory manner.
"What an absurd bobtail of a sail that is set 'way back," she observed.
"It looks quite like a deformity."
"That's for balance in heavy weather," said Jerry, with gusto. "Hadn't
we better salute, Jack?"
"I suppose so," was the answer. "See; he's fallen off. Means to give us
a run for it, I fancy."
The Merle dipped her ensign, and the Englishman returned the salute in
kind.
"I say," cried Jerry, "they're setting their topsail. They want a race
in earnest."
"They've an able boat, to carry all sail when it's breezed up like
this," commented Jack, giving the black yawl a critical look.
"Come!" urged Tab. "Let's take a brace and give 'em a run for their
money. We can beat 'em all right enough, both sides of the Atlantic."
Jack looked first at Katrine and then at her aunt.
"Would you mind?" he asked.
"Mind?" cried Mrs. Fairhew, "I shouldn't mind it the least in the
world--especially if we beat them."
"All right," shouted Tab, leaping boyishly out of his wicker chair.
"We'll show 'em! Watch along!" he roared to the crew.
"Sway up on the main-peak halyards there," sang out Jack, who had also
started up quickly. "That's good! Fore-peak now--that'll do! Set
fore-topsail there--haul away! Good enough! All hands up to windward!"
Then he turned to the helmsman. "I'll take her," he said. "You get up to
windward with the rest."
The man handed the helm over to him, and the race began.
The yawl was on the windward beam, and both she and the schooner were
carrying so much sail as now and again to be heeled lee rail under. At
the end of twenty minutes the American boat seemed to be drawing ahead,
although the Englishman, his red flag blowing out from his maintop, was
still to windward.
Katrine and her aunt had abandoned their chairs for the weather transom
of the cockpit. Katrine was thoroughly alive to the excitement of this
impromptu contest, while Mrs. Fairhew's well-bred face wore a smile
which might be taken to signify either her superiority to such a
youthful means of enjoyment or confidence in the power of the Merle to
outstrip her rival.
Jack, his strong, shapely hands grasping the spokes of the wheel,
glanced only from the sails aloft to the yawl and back again. Katrine
watched him furtively. His keen, eager pose, wholly free from
self-consciousness and suggestive of power and vigilant activity, his
masterful management of his craft,--she noted them all, and felt a
certain pleasure in them, as if in some way she were responsible for
them.
"Think we'll come 'round, Jerrold," said the captain.
He gave a rapid succession of orders as he twirled the spokes to port.
The Merle came about on the other tack, the men got to stations on the
weather side, and the ladies changed their places.
"Now we'll see how much we've gained on them," said Jerry, half to the
guests and half to himself.
They drove toward the shore in the roughening sea, the port runway being
now covered with a thin sheet of hissing green water. Up forward an
occasional wave would come slap against the yacht's shoulder with a
sound like a rifle-shot. The Isis crossed their bows at a distance so
little ahead of them that her name and hail could be read easily
without the aid of a glass.
"We're outfooting them, Jack. We'll have 'em cold in twenty minutes!"
cried Tab enthusiastically.
"Don't count your chickens before they're hatched," laughed Katrine.
"Oh, but we can't help doing 'em," he responded. "We'll have 'em so
walloped that they'll go into dry-dock for a month."
"You'd better rap on wood, Mr. Taberman," cautioned Mrs. Fairhew, with a
smile. "I don't wish to be a croaking raven, but surely they're ahead
now."
Mrs. Fairhew had, as the race went on, grown more and more alert. Her
eyes had in them the spark of a genuine lover of sport, and all the
womanly love of contest and conquest showed in the eagerness of her pose
and air.
"Of course they're ahead," Jerry answered; "but we have the wind of them
by a good deal."
"I hope that means something," the lady commented, with a movement of
the head half eager, half humorous, "but I confess that it is all Greek
to me."
Jerry began to explain, but before he could make things clear to the
lady's unnautical mind, the yacht came about again to the port tack.
The Merle was then so far to weather of the yawl that Jack ordered the
sheets to be started a trifle.
"Now then, Jerry, here's where we overhaul them," Jack cried exultingly.
"Just set the balloon-jib outside the headsails. I think she'll stand
it."
"Want the staysail?" asked the mate.
"No--'twould spoil her helm," returned the captain. "Jump along, old
man."
The change was effected as quickly as might be, and the yacht's speed
was visibly increased.
"That yawl's better on the wind than off," the captain commented. "We're
picking up on 'em now like smoke."
After an hour's chase and half an hour's jockeying off the mouth of the
port, the Merle was about to run in when the English yacht luffed up and
crossed the schooner's bows. Both boats were close-hauled, but the
American was on the starboard tack and had the right of way. The
helmsman of the Isis gave Jack his choice of running the yawl down or
luffing himself. Jack chose the latter alternative; although naturally
angry at such an unsportsmanlike trick, he could not take risks with his
uncle's yacht, least of all with the ladies on board. The Englishman did
not spare him, but first blanketed him, and then, putting his helm up
and leaving the Merle with a small ledge frothing to leeward, forced the
schooner about. Under his tan Jack grew white with indignant anger. He
was not the man to lose his temper in his pastimes, but he had a strong
sense of justice, a thorough contempt for trickery, and he was quick to
resent a deliberate outrage of this sort. The performance was so
evidently premeditated on the part of the Isis that it amounted to a
most flagrant insult, a cold-blooded piece of sporting caddishness. The
only remedy possible under the circumstances was a desperate one, but in
his state of mind he did not hesitate.
"Stand by to jibe!" he roared. "Cast off the topsail halyards! Now aft
on the sheets!"
It was blowing too hard for jibing with safety even under reduced cloth,
and barring staysail and topsails, the Merle was under full canvas.
"My God!" exclaimed Jerry to the winds, as he tumbled aft to help on the
sheet, "he'll pull the sticks out of her! Something's bound to go!"
Jack held the wheel hard up, and the schooner swung steadily off. The
booms rushed over the decks, fetched up with a crash, and then swung out
as the men payed off the sheets. The lee rail went clean under, and for
a second or two unpleasant and portentous creakings and groanings
filled the air. The men flew about with wonderful dexterity, while the
two ladies held on to each other to avoid being pitched headlong.
"Are any of your teeth shaken out, Katrine?" Mrs. Fairhew inquired, when
they were able once more to sit up. "All mine were loosened by that
awful jerk."
"They are all safe, Aunt Anne," Katrine cried, her voice vibrant with
delighted excitement. "Isn't it splendid?"
Her hair was blowing about her face, her eyes were shining, her cheeks
were flushed; and Jack, though his swift glance merely caught a view of
her as it flashed up to the sails, carried the alluring picture in his
mind for many a day. The thought of it was for the time being instantly
crowded out of his mind as he caught sight of the rigging. As the Merle
had leaped ahead, the fore-peak halyards, which had not been started
before the yacht was jibed, had parted. The gaff hung nearly at right
angles to the boom, and the sail was being strained out of shape. The
captain was so upset that in his rage he was guilty of swearing before
ladies.
"What shall we do?" sang out Jerry.
Jack's cry had called his attention to the mishap, and he had run
forward.
"Really this grows exciting," remarked Mrs. Fairhew, as if she were at
the theatre.
"Oh, what a shame! what a shame!" wailed Katrine, looking despairingly
up at the drooping gaff.
"Get some half-inch on it!" shouted Jack, almost beside himself at
having been bullied into this predicament. "Take it out as far as you
can! Reeve it through the cap-block first. Move along there! Smartly!"
"All right!" cried Tab; and in the same moment, with a coil of new rope
over his shoulder, and followed by one of the men, he ran up the weather
rigging.
On reaching the cross-trees, Tab passed the end of his rope through the
block on the masthead cap and fastened it to his belt. Then he swung
himself down to the jaws of the gaff and lay out along the spar. The big
stick threshed about wildly, threatening to snap him into the sea at
every fling. Slowly and painfully he worked his way out. He clung on
desperately, so that it seemed like a conscious fight between himself
and the plunging spar whether he should be shaken off. It was like a
man's trying to tame a bucking horse, only a hundred times more
exciting, and Katrine grew pale as she watched, while even Mrs. Fairhew
set her lips closely. The three minutes it took Jerry to reach the
peak-halyard block seemed to every person on the Merle all but
interminable. Twice he nearly fell,--once at the outset when he slipped,
and again when he had to crawl around the throat halyards between rolls.
The second time he was actually thrown off the spar, but fortunately he
held his grip on the halyards. The next lurch of the yacht playfully
tossed him into the air, and he was lucky enough to regain his position
on the spar.
Getting to the peak-block, he unknotted the rope from his belt, passed
it about the spar, and took a "timber-hitch." He then slowly worked his
way back, and eventually reached the cross-trees in safety. The nervous
tension had been so strong that when the men saw him coming down the
ratlines they fell to cheering lustily, Gonzague, his white hair ruffled
by the wind, waving his arms and out-shouting the whole of them. They
speedily got hold of the jury halyard, and even before Jerry had reached
the deck, the gaff was again well raised, and the topsail set.
In the mean time the Isis had in her turn got into difficulties. It is
poor business jockeying among reefs, and the yawl had been forced to
come about, luff up, and drift sternwards until her chances of beating
the Merle were utterly gone. The fact seemed to be that the English
captain had counted upon the Merle's not daring to jibe, and so had been
too clever by half.
Jerry came aft, very red in the face, and with the customary twinkle in
his eye. The ladies were evidently greatly impressed by his feat, and
Jack, who of course understood more clearly than they how dangerous the
task had been, took one hand off the wheel and wrung Jerry's.
"Awfully sorry, old man," he said. "But I was so hot at that Englishman
I lost my head for a minute."
"Oh, go 'long!" returned Jerry, grinning. "Don't you suppose I was hot
myself?"
He dropped on to a seat beside Mrs. Fairhew, to recover his breath.
"Mr. Taberman," said that lady, "I'm an old woman,"--it was one of Mrs.
Fairhew's idiosyncrasies to call attention thus whimsically to the fact
that she looked hardly more than thirty,--"I'm an old woman, and
consequently I disapprove of rashness; but I don't mind saying that I
like your pluck."
She looked at him in a curious way, as if he were an amusing case of
arrested development, but her glance was full of kindliness.
"Thank you," Tab answered, with a smile which was too confused not to
be almost a grin. "It's more a sound wind than pluck, I assure you."
"It was perfectly magnificent!" Katrine cried. "You're a perfect hero!"
They all laughed, more perhaps from the nervous reaction after the
strain than from any especial amusement, and Jerry blushed more than
ever.
"I'm afraid you're inclined to make a mountain out of a molehill," he
said. "We don't allow heroics aboard here, you know. Jack did the
only"--
"That'll do, Jerry," called Jack from the wheel.
"All right, captain," Tab returned, laughing. "Under orders."
"Oh, but that's not fair," cried Katrine. "If Mr. Castleport played the
hero too, we want to know all about it."
"I'll masthead that mate if he goes on talking about his superior
officer," Jack threatened. "See, the Isis has given the whole thing up."
"She'd better," commented Jerry, "though I don't see that she had
anything left to give."
The yawl was well astern now. Her sailing-master had for a little time,
in a vain endeavor to overtake his rival, pinched his boat unmercifully,
so that with her nose in the wind's eye her sails were every now and
then a-shiver. Now she had evidently accepted the inevitable, and was
making quietly for an anchorage.
"Tell us about Mr. Castleport," Katrine said to Jerry in an undertone.
"Oh," returned Tab, "he stuck to the wheel over forty-eight hours when
we had that blow we were talking about. It was a magnificent thing to
do, and I think he saved us from everlasting smash. Of course he
pooh-poohs the idea, but Jack's never willing to have anybody say he's
done anything big. He's as modest as he is stunning," he ended warmly,
throwing at the captain a glance of admiration and affection.
Katrine made no audible comment, but her glance followed his, and had
Jack intercepted her look at that moment, he might have felt his heart
beat more briskly.
The superior speed of the Merle, aided by the poor tactics of the
skipper of the Isis, who seemed to lose his head when he found he was
beaten, gave the American so much the lead that the schooner had dropped
her anchor a minute or two before the yawl rounded the inner mole.
"I never had so splendid a sail in my life," Katrine said.
"I was sure you would beat that other boat, Mr. Castleport," Mrs.
Fairhew told him, "and I confess I enjoyed seeing you do it."
"I couldn't be so rude as to let you ladies be beaten in a race," the
captain responded, laughing.
"Of course not," put in Jerry; "no gentleman would let a lady be
beaten."
"What an atrocious pun!" cried Katrine; "and Mr. Taberman looks actually
wistful for fear we shouldn't see it."
"Well," her aunt said, moving toward the ladder, where the cutter was in
waiting, "it has been a delightful day, and we are greatly obliged."
While the ladies were being pulled ashore, and before Jack and Jerry had
returned, everything on the Merle was put in order. Just as they went
below to dress for going ashore for dinner, a boat from the yawl came
alongside with a note for the "Captain of the Merle; sch. Y't." Gonzague
brought it to Castleport, who looked at it, and then read it aloud to
Jerry.
YAWL YACHT ISIS. Y. S.
Lord Merryfield presents his compliments to the gentleman who
handled the Merle in such a masterly fashion this afternoon, and
requests the honor of his presence at dinner on board the Isis this
evening at six bells, A. T. It will be an additional pleasure to
Lord Merryfield if the gentleman who so pluckily rose to the
occasion in the matter of a parted halyard will accompany the
captain of the Merle.
R. S. V. P.
NICE, July 17, 1902.
"Rot!" said Jerry inelegantly. "Let me answer it."
"Get out!" responded Jack. "I think I can settle him."
He got out the President's most elaborate stationery, and after some
meditation and the destruction of one or two epistles which would not go
quite to suit him, he handed to Jerry the following:--
SCH. YT. MERLE, E. Y. C.
Captain John Castleport and Mr. Jerrold Taberman present their
compliments to Lord Merryfield and regret that, owing to a previous
engagement, it is impossible for them to accept the invitation so
kindly tendered to them. Captain Castleport further desires
earnestly to express his opinion in regard to having been forced
about by the Y. Yt. Isis this afternoon when he had the right of
way; and to say that he considers such a manoeuvre so
unsportsmanlike and insulting that it should be impossible in a
gentleman's race. As the injured party, he ventures to remind Lord
Merryfield that the only reparation that can be made is the
severest reprimanding of the sailing-master, or whoever was
responsible for this inexcusable expedient.
NICE, July 17, 1902.
"You see," Jack explained, "we let him know what we think of that
caddish trick without being in the least rude ourselves. Of course the
chances are that he was responsible for the thing himself, and there we
have him on the hip."
"I suppose it's all right," grumbled Jerry. "You know best; but if I 'd
written it, I should have told him straight out that I thought him a
damned cad!"
[Illustration: Decoration]
Chapter Eight
A CHANGE OF TACTICS
As they sat that evening in the garden of the hotel drinking their
after-dinner coffee, which the gentlemen accompanied with cigarettes,
they discussed the news from home contained in a batch of letters Mrs.
Fairhew and her niece had found awaiting them on their return from the
yacht. The announcement of an engagement, rumors of flirtations which
might end in others, the latest gossip about people they all knew, were
mingled with chat about an extraordinary yacht race at Northeast Harbor,
a Russian princess at Nahant, an automobile accident at Lenox, and a
fresh divorce at Newport.
"Everything else," Mrs. Fairhew said at length, "is simply nothing at
all in comparison to a piece of business news I received. Have you heard
of the Tillington failure?"
"What!" cried Jack. "R. B. Tillington?"
"Yes. Their own notice was with the other mail this afternoon," she
responded. "Liabilities something like a third of a million and their
assets nothing."
"How in the world did it happen?" asked Tab. "I knew they had a lot to
do with mines, and of course those are always risky; but Tillington
always had the name of being awfully clever."
"Perhaps he was too clever," Jack suggested.
"Clever or not," Mrs. Fairhew said, "he has come to grief, and, I am
ashamed to confess, he has lost some money for me."
"I am very sorry for that," Jack responded. "I'll wager you'll have
plenty of distinguished company. I'm awfully afraid Uncle Randolph got
his fingers burned. He's had dealings with Tillington for ever so long.
I never took kindly to the man myself, but Uncle Randolph had a great
opinion of his business sagacity."
"I'll wager Mrs. Fairhew's bound to be in good company even in
misfortune," Jerry declared with his usual somewhat clumsy gallantry.
Mrs. Fairhew smiled, and made a little sweeping gesture with her fan as
if the subject were a disagreeable one and should be waved aside.
"Even that," she said, "doesn't soothe my wounded vanity. The money I've
lost is fortunately not very much, but I pride myself on my business
head, and I made this investment in spite of the advice of my banker.
Think how he will chuckle! I'd rather have lost three times as much on
an investment he selected."
"How thoroughly feminine!" Jack laughed.
"Of course you can't understand," Katrine struck in. "I agree with Aunt
Anne entirely. Of course one would rather lose money than to give a man
a chance to crow over her."
The talk was thus drawn into the inexhaustible discussion of feminine
and masculine characteristics, that topic about which revolves two
thirds of all the small talk of the world. Then it drifted back to the
personal news of the letters.