voice, "that this trustee--of course the chap is his nearest relative,
you know--has an able schooner yacht. Now if the chap simply couldn't
stand it, but captured that yacht--not violently, of course, but by
stratagem,--and came over to see his friend, and to ask her"--
"Why, Jack Castleport!" cried Katrine, with eyes open to their widest.
"You don't mean that you ran away with the Merle! I never can believe
it!"
"It's true, though," he responded. "Do you blame me so very much?"
Her glance dropped before his, and her manner instantly lost its
boldness.
"I--Why, of course that depends," she murmured.
"Depends on what?"
"On--how--how necessary it was for him to see his friend."
"Oh," Jack cried. "I had to see her! You know I had to come, Katrine! I
had to tell you I love you, and I stole Uncle Randolph's yacht because
he wouldn't let me come any other way. I had to come."
He sprang up in his excitement, and stood before her, his hands twisting
each other in a way odd enough for one of so much self-control.
"You must have known how I cared for you, Katrine. I couldn't tell you
without making a clean breast of this, but don't be too hard on me. I
had to come."
She flashed up at him the merest hair's-breadth of a glance, and with
her hands pressed to her bosom, said softly, "I never could have
forgiven you if you hadn't come."
He simply stooped over and took her unceremoniously in his arms, and it
was several moments before she had breath and presence of mind to
protest.
"Heavens!" she cried with mock terror. "Am I in the arms of a pirate?
Jack, I never knew anything so shocking in my life! How could you do
it?"
"I had to get across the Atlantic to you," he answered, as if that were
an excuse all-sufficient.
And the sun shone down on the sea and on Vesuvius and on Vergil's tomb,
and on that which is more enduring than all these,--the sweetness of
young love.
[Illustration: Decoration]
Chapter Thirteen
A BID FOR THE ODD TRICK
While the captain was looking with Katrine down on the Merle, as the
yacht lay quietly at anchor in the harbor, a notable conversation was
taking place on board. At no very early hour Tab had risen, tubbed with
difficulty, and, with some aid, got into his clothes. His left arm was
stiff and very sore, but beyond that he felt no discomfort. His
magnificent physique, improved by the hardy life he had been leading,
saved him from any consequences more serious; so that the archæologist,
who was in capital spirits, rallied him on the prodigious appetite he
displayed at breakfast.
"I have to eat double to make up for the blood I lost last night," Jerry
said, with a grin. "I find there's nothing for the appetite like a
regular brush with the police. I've found it so before, when I was in
college."
After breakfast the two went on deck, and seated under the awning, with
the beautiful bay before them and a soft air to bring a delicious
coolness, they talked over the adventure of the previous night. Then
from this they branched off to more general matters. Mr. Wrenmarsh was a
man of wide experience and of good observation, and was well informed on
almost every topic the talk touched upon. His tricks and eccentricities
had been for the time being laid aside, or showed only as a flavor of
personality piquant and attractive. Jerry found himself soothed and
entertained, although, remembering his previous experience with the
collector, he was not without a feeling that Wrenmarsh had a propensity
to use speech as a squid does his ink, to conceal his course, and so
wondered what the collector had still to gain. Wrenmarsh suddenly took
to intricate and unintelligible sentences without warning and equally
without apparent excuse, when Jerry brought him back to earth with a
question what he intended to do next.
"Do?" exclaimed Wrenmarsh, as if shocked and astonished by such an
inquiry. "Of course I shan't think of setting foot on shore again till I
get to England."
Jerry hardly suppressed an instinctive whistle, and for a brief instant
he had nothing to say; but after all he was not without a shrewdness of
his own. He was still chagrined to remember that the archæologist had
played upon him once for his own purposes, and he had at least learned
that in dealing with this man it was necessary to be cautious.
"To England?" he repeated in a voice so casual as to rouse Wrenmarsh and
to tickle himself inwardly. "How do you go?"
"Go?" once more echoed the other. "With you, of course."
"Oh, are we going to England?" Jerry asked more carelessly than before.
"Surely you are," Wrenmarsh retorted with some sharpness.
"Are we really?" was Jerry's comment. A refrain from a song in a Pudding
play popped into his head, and he hummed it in derision hardly
disguised,--
"You surprise me!"
"Will you--er--say that again?" asked the collector most courteously.
"Oh, quite unnecessary," Tab returned, not to be trapped into an
apology. "It was only a bit of a song."
He was filled with a pleasant feeling that he was bothering the
collector, astute as that person was, and he determined, as the
circumstances certainly were in his favor, to hold his own with him
this time at least.
"I don't think you have a very clear view of the case," Wrenmarsh said,
after a moment of silent musing with contracted brow. "If you had, you'd
see that it isn't possible for me to go ashore now, after that beastly
business of last night. I assure you, I'm awfully sorry for that mess.
There's another thing,--I couldn't get those boxes ashore from the yacht
without their being examined, and then there'd be the devil of a row."
"That must have occurred to you before you left Pæstum," Jerry remarked
with coolness.
Mr. Wrenmarsh did not move a muscle.
"So it did," he said blandly; "but of course I knew it must have been
evident to you also."
Jerry laughed in spite of himself at the cool impudence of this.
"I confess that it wasn't," he responded.
"Even if it wasn't," the other went on, as smoothly as ever, "I never
for an instant supposed that when once you'd started out to help me,
you'd funk. That is a contingency, I confess, never occurred to my mind.
I thought you were made of different stuff. You were clear game last
night."
Jerry looked at his guest and burst into deep-throated laughter.
"Well, for clean cheek!" he cried. "Do you think I'm going to tote you
about in a yacht I don't own for the rest of my life?"
"Would you like to?" asked the collector, with a fresh aspect of
interest. "Because in the Ægean Sea I've a"--
"Whatever it is, please keep it to yourself, or you'll insist that I
promised to help you with it," interrupted Tab grimly. "As for going to
England in the present case, that's quite out of the question. What are
you going to do? If you stay on board, you'll land in Boston."
Mr. Wrenmarsh's face took on for an instant a look distinctly ugly. It
suddenly occurred to Taberman that the collector was in rather an evil
plight,--worse, indeed, than that from which the Merle had rescued him.
"Surely you're not serious?" Wrenmarsh asked slowly.
"I think I am," Jerry responded pleasantly. "What are you going to do?"
"Damn!" the other broke out explosively, lying back in his chair and
running his fingers through his gray-sprinkled locks.
Jerry was too soft-hearted not to be touched by the other's perplexity,
but an involuntary movement of sympathy which he made happened to give
him a painful twinge in the arm, and he hardened his heart. There was a
silence of some minutes, during which he tried to make out from the face
of his companion what thoughts were passing behind that mask. Suddenly
the cloud lifted from the face of Wrenmarsh, and he flashed a bright
glance on Jerry.
"Bless me," he cried gayly. "I might have thought!
Plutus--Mammon--filthy lucre! But how extraordinary in an American--not
to ask for it, you know! What'll you take for it?"
"For what?" responded Tab, not catching his drift.
He had a dreadful feeling that by becoming incomprehensible, the other
might be getting the better of him.
"What's to pay for a passage of myself and my boxes to--let us say
Plymouth?"
Indignation for the instant flared up in Jerry.
"This is not a passenger ship," he responded brusquely.
"Oh, of course not, my dear fellow; but as every man has his price, I
suppose a yacht has too."
Common-sense and indignation worked together now to keep Taberman from
an angry retort. It flashed upon him that here was a chance, one in a
thousand, to pay off the hands of the Merle without troubling the
President; it was a chance, too, to score off this cheeky archæologist.
Taberman had already noted that Wrenmarsh was a penurious soul who hated
to part with money, and he felt something of the godly joy of the
departing Israelites when Moses announced the project for the spoiling
of the Egyptians. England was not such an impossible distance off. They
might take the Great Circle track home. Surely if Jack--
"Don't you see my position, Mr. Wrenmarsh?" he asked. "I haven't the
power to dispose of the Merle. I'm simply in charge of her while the
captain's ashore, don't you see? Still"--
He paused dramatically.
"Well?" ejaculated Wrenmarsh, apparently keeping his gaze fixed in the
closest interest on the red sails of a big felucca that was standing in
toward the Mole.
"Well, I think I might be right in making a sort of conditional--a
purely conditional"--he repeated the word for caution, wondering if he
ought to make it any stronger--"arrangement. It wouldn't be valid
without the sanction of the captain. You see that, of course."
"Well?" repeated the other.
"Do you see--merely conditional?" insisted Taberman.
"Yes, I suppose so," assented the other grudgingly.
"I might make a sort of conditional arrangement, then, to go to
Plymouth, or perhaps to any other English port not too much out of the
way, for a consideration of"--He paused again.
"Ten pounds," suggested the archæologist.
"Two hundred," said Jerry coolly.
He could have hugged himself with joy at the sound of his own voice
naming the sum in such a matter-of-fact fashion. He knew well enough
that but for the enormous handicap which circumstances had put upon the
archæologist he would have had no chance whatever to outmanoeuvre him,
but this he did not bother to reflect on at the moment and might have
had scruples about if he had. He gave himself up to the delight of
feeling that he had distinctly the better of the man who had so carried
him off his feet at Pæstum, and who had involved him in an affair of the
seriousness of which Jerry had had good reason to meditate in the times
in the night when his arm kept him awake. It was certainly something to
have the upper hand now; and two hundred pounds, which he had named
almost at random, multiplied itself in his head into a most satisfactory
number of dollars.
"Two hundred pounds!" cried out the archæologist, nearly jumping out of
his chair.
His affected surprise was dramatic, but unfortunately for its effect it
was overdone, so that even Jerry felt it to be theatrical.
"Shall we call it two hundred and fifty?" the mate asked, enjoying
himself more every minute.
"Two hundred and fifty devils!" shouted Wrenmarsh, who appeared more
irritated, it seemed to Jerry, on account of being outmanoeuvred than
because the price was so high.
"Not devils--pounds," Tab responded, smiling at his own wit.
"Leave off the two hundred," begged the collector.
"The agreement is only conditional anyway," Jerry said, with something
of an air, "but if it seems to you fairer, we'll leave off the fifty,
and call it an even two hundred--one for you and one for those precious
boxes, to be paid on arrival. I'm not a Neapolitan. Will you go ashore
here or wait for the captain?"
"I'll wait for the captain, Mr. Taberman," Wrenmarsh replied. He
glowered across the bay for a moment, and then added, "He may not be so
infernally exorbitant as you are."
Jerry smiled secretly to himself, and resolved that at least Jack should
be persuaded to make no easier terms. Then he went to write a note to
summon the captain to come aboard to consider this proposition of taking
a passenger.
[Illustration: Decoration]
Chapter Fourteen
CLEARING THE DECKS
When Jack appeared on the Merle, rather late that afternoon, Jerry met
him by the steps, his arm in a sling.
"Good heavens, Tab," cried the captain, "what's the matter? What have
you done to your arm, boy?"
"Nothing much," Jerry answered. "Just got a little piece of the cutter
in it in a night engagement. What the deuce kept you so long?"
"But was it last night?" Jack insisted. "Did you get into trouble?"
"We were under fire," Jerry laughed; "but I had the only casualty."
"The devil you did! What sort of a trap did your infernal Englishman
lead you into?"
"That's just what I want to tell you before you see him. What in the
world made you so late? I've been waiting all the afternoon."
The captain's face grew radiant.
"Well, you see," he returned, with a little laugh in his throat, "time
passed so quickly, and Katrine and I had so much to talk about"--
"Jacko! You've done it!" shouted Tab, loud enough to be heard from one
end of the yacht to the other.
The captain grinned warmly, and nodded with sparkling eyes.
"Oh, good man!" cried Tab, wringing his hand. "Good old Jack! Long life
and all happiness to you, you dear old pirate!"
His words tumbled out helter-skelter, and his honest blue eyes were
moist with pure joy at his friend's happiness. He admired Miss
Marchfield from the bottom of his heart, and Jack was the dearest friend
he could ever have. He rejoiced as sincerely and as warmly as if the
good fortune of the captain had been his own.
"Thank you, old man," laughed Jack, bubbling over with good spirits;
"but if it hadn't been for you, I--I'd never have done it."
"Tush!" flouted Jerry. "Don't talk bosh! It was only a matter of time
anyway. But I'm glad it's all right."
They had been standing at the head of the steps, and now the captain
moved along the deck.
"What did you send for me to come out in such a hurry for?" he
inquired.
"Hurry!" ejaculated Jerry. "Do you call this coming out in a hurry? If
it hadn't been that you left a born diplomat in charge, you might have
lost two hundred pounds by being so slow."
"Two hundred pounds?" the other echoed. "What on earth are you talking
about?"
"Come into the cabin before you go aft," was Jerry's answer. "I want to
tell you about that."
"And about your arm, old man. What is the matter with you?"
"That's part of it," Tab returned, as they went below together. "I'm
trying among other things to recover damages."
When some little time later the two friends came on deck and went aft to
where the guest was sitting, Jack was in full possession of the whole
situation.
"Jack, Mr. Gordon Wrenmarsh; Mr. Wrenmarsh, Captain John Castleport,"
Jerry said.
"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Wrenmarsh," Jack said, extending his hand.
He was evidently in the best of humor. His spirits on that day could
hardly be other than at their highest, and he had been vastly amused by
Jerry's plan of raising funds to pay off the men.
"Thanks," responded the archæologist. "I was afraid the pleasure was
largely mine. I've been expecting you all day."
"Well," Jack said, seating himself comfortably, "I am here at last. I am
sorry if I kept you waiting. You might have arranged anything with Mr.
Taberman, though."
"I tried to," Mr. Wrenmarsh responded dryly, "but he seemed to me so
unpractical in his ideas that I thought it better to wait for you."
"I hope you won't find me unsatisfactory in the same way," Jack
returned. "At least I am practical enough to know that in this weather
it will be more comfortable if we have something."
He summoned Gonzague, and the trio were soon furnished with tall glasses
of sangaree, which they sipped with relish.
"Mr. Taberman has suggested,--though I fancy he's half in jest," began
the collector, when these preliminaries had been attended to, "that two
hundred pounds is a fair price for such a trivial service as running up
to England and landing me and my boxes."
"I am glad you think the matter trivial," observed Jack, with a smile;
"it makes it so much easier for me to say that I do not find it
convenient to go to England at all."
"Oh, I say now," Wrenmarsh responded, with a sudden keen glance at Jack
as if he were surprised at the quickness with which his remark had been
met and turned against him; "of course you'll go to England. That was
settled long ago, you know."
"Was it? I supposed that I, as captain of the Merle, had some voice in
such a matter."
"Of course nothing was settled," broke in Jerry. "I made a conditional
arrangement--entirely conditional, mind you--with Mr. Wrenmarsh that you
would take him to England."
"Yes; that is what I said," the collector asserted imperturbably. "Only
the price that you named"--
"Seems to me a very reasonable one," interpolated Jack.
"Not seriously?" Wrenmarsh said, evidently determined not to show that
he was at all ruffled. "Only consider, if I go ashore here, I may get--I
might become a national complication. And you wouldn't want to be mixed
up in that sort of a thing," he added, with a chuckle. "An international
complication," he murmured to himself, as if the idea appealed so
strongly to his vanity that he was half tempted to be put on land at
once to take up the part. Then he recalled his wandering thoughts, and
looked Captain Castleport in the eye. "If you land me in any country
except England, I am quite done for, as you Americans would say. It
stands to reason if there is any paying to be done, you should pay me
for keeping you out of a scrape; for of course if I go ashore it will be
known that the Merle ran away from the _carabinieri_ at Pæstum, and"--
"Rubbish!" interrupted Jack brusquely. "Don't talk that kind of
poppy-cock! Even if there were any truth in it, it wouldn't be decent
for you to say so after getting the Merle into the scrape."
"And giving me your word that the yacht was in no possible danger," put
in Jerry indignantly.
"Oh, no real danger, of course," Wrenmarsh said hurriedly, "only it
might be unpleasant for you, and you might not like to be detained."
"Why must you go to England?" asked Castleport. "Why not to Malta or
Cyprus or Korfu even? They're protectorates and English ground."
"The sun never sets, you know," responded Wrenmarsh, with his
extraordinary ventral chuckle. "The truth is they won't do. Korfu and
Cyprus would be as bad for me as Naples, on account of my reputation.
I'm known to have run out a lot of things, you see. Gibraltar or Malta
would suit me well enough--if it weren't for the same reason. There
isn't a hotel on the entire shores of the Mediterranean that I could put
up at with those boxes in safety."
"I hardly suppose I'm expected to take that too literally," Jack said,
with a smile.
He reflected a moment. He could see that the collector certainly had
good reason for wishing to remain on the yacht, and that it could not
but be of very great convenience to him to be taken to England. He was
no less convinced from what Jerry had told him that the antiquities
which the archæologist had on board must be worth thousands of pounds,
and that their possessor could afford to pay well for their safety. He
was thoroughly stirred up, moreover, by the thought of the episode of
the night before. That Jerry should have been put in actual peril of his
life by Wrenmarsh for his own purposes was to Jack so outrageous that he
was half tempted to order the collector and his boxes off the Merle at
once to take his chances with the officials on the quays of Naples. As
Jerry had planned reprisals along another line, however, and as after
all Jack could not have brought himself to desert a man in extremity,
the captain determined to go on as they had begun.
"Two hundred pounds strikes me as fair enough," he said.
"Too much--too much! Make it fifty," responded Wrenmarsh.
"Two hundred!" repeated Jack.
"I'm sorry; I can't do that," the collector said, with a great show of
decision. "You'll have to take me to Malta. What'll you do that for?"
"Three hundred," Jack returned quietly, although he could not refrain
from a secret exchange of glances with Jerry.
"What!" the other cried, in an exaggerated shriek. "A run like that?
Three hundred pounds! It's not a twentieth the distance to England."
"That's so," was the captain's answer, "but you see we should have a
good deal less value in your company. Besides, you'd get your boxes _ex
territorio_ a great deal quicker."
He had by this time become so interested in the game he was playing that
the beating of the collector seemed in itself a thing worth straining
every nerve to gain.
"They're _ex territorio_ now," Mr. Wrenmarsh said, "as they're on a
foreign yacht. But no matter about that. What'll you take to set me over
to Gibraltar?"
"Oh, that would cost you three hundred and fifty, because there you're
so much nearer England than you'd be at Malta."
He glanced again at Jerry, with an inward chuckle at the utter
balderdash he was talking and a consciousness how closely it resembled
the nature of the arguments with which Wrenmarsh had beguiled Tab. For a
minute there was silence, and then the archæologist spoke angrily.
"You're too commercial," he said, with an unconcealed sneer. "I see no
way in which we can come to an agreement. I never was equal to trading
with a dollar-getting Yankee."
Tab started and looked to hear Jack break out at an insult so gross, but
the captain merely smiled.
"As you are our guest," he said, "there's no chance for me to answer you
properly, but you must remember we're not looking for a job. Shall I
send you ashore now, or would it suit you to take a boat with me in half
an hour? Or perhaps," he added, his manner most elaborately courteous,
"on account of your boxes, it would suit you better to be set ashore
after dark."
"Give you one hundred pounds," the collector said, still fighting, and
ignoring the captain's words entirely.
"We need not go on with the wrangle," Jack said, rising. "I'm not
bargaining with you. If it's worth two hundred pounds to you, all right.
If it isn't, we'll part here, and hope you have the gratitude to
appreciate what has already been done for you at the risk of Mr.
Taberman's life. Come, we've wasted too much time over this already."
"Do you think my time isn't worth anything?" cried the
other,--apparently losing all control of his temper. "I've wasted too
much already. Get up your damned anchor, you mercenary Yankee"--
"Come, sir!" broke in Jack sharply, "apologize at once! At once! You
have been insulting us this half hour like an utter cad, and I've made
all the allowances I'm equal to."
The collector regarded him with furious eyes, but seemed struggling with
himself until he could command his manner and his voice.
"I--I beg your pardon," he said in a hard tone. Then he added, in a
voice softer and more grave, "Indeed, I beg your pardon most sincerely.
My cursed temper got the better of me. Does your offer still hold?"
"If you wish," Jack answered stiffly.
"Then--two hundred pounds--I accept it. Two hundred pounds sterling, to
be paid on our safe arrival in port at Plymouth." He sighed, and put
out his hand to the captain. "Will you pardon my tongue?" he asked.
There was more ingenuousness in this trifling act than in anything Tab
or Jack had yet seen in him. The real man seemed for a moment to show;
and as Jack accepted the collector's apology and took his hand, Jerry
had a fleeting glimpse--short as a flash of changing light--of another
and franker Wrenmarsh, accustomed to hide under a veil of shams and
mockeries made necessary by his difficult vocation.
Wrenmarsh then asked if he might have some letters mailed ashore, and
Jack offered to take them himself in half an hour's time. While the
collector was below writing these, the captain and the mate talked
things over on deck. Tab had to congratulate Jack again, and over and
over, fairly beaming with delight whenever he thought of the happy stage
to which affairs had been brought. When he discovered that the captain
had confessed the lifting of the Merle, he was for a moment
disconcerted.
"Oh, Jacko, how could you give that away?" he cried.