Day was breaking when Drew came on deck the next morning. The noises of
the vessel, which had clanked and whined all night through his broken
sleep, seemed to him to take on new life as he reached the deck; but
the brig, as she lay rolling in the trough of the sea, had the gray,
tired look of ships coming home from long voyages. There were no clouds
in the sky, but the stars had faded out, and even as he gazed the rim
of the sun appeared above the sea, flattened out on the horizon, then
rose in an elongated ball. For an instant a red pendant seemed to cling
to the far edge of the ocean; then it vanished, and the sun, round
again and red, had broken free. Day had come.
The ocean had the glassy aspect of the preceding day; as far as the
eye carried not a catspaw darkened the surface. In every direction the
white sails of the Portuguese men-of-war rose and fell on the long blue
swells. Fifty yards astern the triangular dorsal fin of a shark moved
slowly across their track. Drew watched its silent progress with the
fascination that the landsman, seeing it for the first time, bestows
upon it as the embodiment of the cruelty and mystery of its abode.
He turned at the sound of a footstep, and, seeing Medbury beside him,
greeted him, and then nodded astern.
"It's a shark, isn't it?" he asked. "I never saw one before."
"Yes," replied the mate. "It's queer, but everybody seems to know them
right off. Sort of natural dislike, I guess."
Medbury watched it a moment and then looked aloft to where the fly hung
limp.
"It beats all," he muttered; "there isn't air enough to float a
soap-bubble." He walked to the pennant halyards, and, untying them,
jerked the fly free from its staff. "It hasn't lifted an inch in
fifteen hours," he said. "Confound it! I believe the world has died
overnight!" Then he laughed at his own ill-nature. "It always gets on
my nerves--weather like this," he explained to Drew.
He turned and walked to the other side of the vessel as Captain March
came on deck. He also looked aloft, glanced at the binnacle from mere
force of habit, and then swept the horizon with half-shut eyes. His
face was inscrutable, and absolutely without emotion. "It's going to be
hot," was his only remark. Then he walked to a camp-chair, and, drawing
it to the rail, sat down, and began to whistle softly.
A moment later Medbury crossed over to where he sat.
"I guess I'll rig up the triangle this morning and scrape the
mainmast," he said. "It's a good chance."
The captain squinted aloft, but said nothing.
"I'll start at the foot," continued the mate, as if in answer to
unspoken criticism. "Maybe it'll breeze up before the men get much
above the deck."
"All right," said the captain, and went on whistling.
"There isn't a breath of air," said Medbury. "I believe everything's
dead."
"Nothing dead about this roll," replied Captain March.
"Well, it ought to be," replied the mate, and walked forward.
"I don't know as the crew's going to rise up and call him blessed when
he orders them aloft on that job in a swell like this," said the
captain to Drew; "but then, as I said, I don't know."
Then the barefooted crew came aft with buckets and brooms to wash down
the decks, and he and Drew went below. When they came back to the
deck, after breakfast, two men were at the grindstone sharpening their
knives, and a third was scraping a bright pin-rail forward. Medbury sat
on the forward end of the house, making double-crown knots in the ends
of new man-ropes. He did not look up as Hetty and the minister came and
stood over him, watching his work. Captain March came past the group in
his morning walk.
"You're not going to scrape the mainmast, eh?" he said, as he went by.
His eyes twinkled.
Medbury did not look up as he answered:
"No; I guess I'll keep them on deck."
Hetty looked aloft at the mast thrashing through a wide arc.
"I knew you wouldn't," she said. "It would have been--unlike you."
Medbury glanced at her with a shamefaced smile, but he made no reply.
Drew laughed.
"Do you know, I had heard so much of the harsh treatment of sailors by
their officers that I came on this voyage prepared for something of the
sort, and dreading it," he said, in his slow, deep voice; "but I have
seen nothing but consideration."
Medbury's mouth twitched with scornful amusement; it almost seemed to
him that Drew had unknowingly called him pusillanimous. He was by no
means a hard man, and was popular with his crews; but he was young and
a certain amount of swagger seemed amusing, while, in addition, he had
all the contempt of the American sailor for the stolid alien creatures
who more and more were finding their way into the forecastles of ships
that carried his country's flag.
"I don't believe in being a brute," he began; "but--"
"Yes," broke in Hetty, eagerly; "it is only a brute who will take
advantage of his power. I have been going to sea all my life, but I
have never seen cruelty. All the sailors I know are the largest-hearted
of men. I hate the tales that blacken them."
"I have known them only ashore," said Drew, "and I certainly never knew
a more joyous, open-hearted people--hardly the sort to make tyrants
of." He turned to Medbury: "But you were going to say--?"
Medbury sharply drew the strands of his rope through the outer walling
of the knot as he replied:
"Oh, nothing."
"I fancy," began Drew, "that sailors are too practical a class,
too constantly surrounded by danger, not to know the value of
self-restraint. It is wise to keep far from one the passion that fires
the mind beyond the point where the every-day work of living is
accomplished with the least friction."
Medbury glanced up as he spoke, and caught the look that Hetty fastened
upon the speaker. There was nothing in the quiet gaze beyond interest
and the sympathy of kindred convictions, but it gave Medbury the
curious sensation of standing apart from them, of being irrevocably
alone. He turned away with a new pain about his heart. He was still
thinking of Hetty's look when Drew, busily erecting his card-house of
the sailor's life upon a foundation of calm philosophy, asked him if
he had ever seen cruelty on shipboard. His tone was the confident one
of the philosopher who, having formulated a theory, calmly awaits the
facts that will establish it.
"You two might call it that," Medbury answered, not without a touch of
resentment in his voice; "I shouldn't. It's easy enough to talk about
self-restraint, but when it means letting things go to the dogs, and
maybe putting your vessel in danger--" He thrust his fid between the
strands of his rope with an energy that seemed to him adequately to
complete his meaning.
Drew was dimly aware that the situation had somehow become charged
with feeling, and remained silent; but Hetty, with clearer instinct,
recognized the cause of Medbury's heat, and resented it, while she
recognized its potential force, feeling that she had unwittingly been
drawn from the calm current of broad discussion into an inner vortex of
personal emotion. That she had become unduly interested in Drew--she
clearly saw that the thought was in Medbury's mind--she indignantly
denied to herself. She turned toward the sailor with resentment shining
in her eyes; but at the sight of his head bowed above his work, there
flashed over her a strange revulsion of feeling. It was not tenderness,
though compounded of tenderness, pity, and the memory of many things.
His loyalty to her, which had lived on through long years in spite of
varying encouragement, had sometimes provoked her vexation, sometimes
her complacency; at this moment it suddenly appeared to her to be a
beautiful thing. His hair waved a little about his brows; his face,
though sad, showed the old fine courage. She saw his close-shut lips
held nothing of harshness. His hands, brown and sinewy, revealed
strength and skill, and were as yet uncoarsened by hard contact with
hemp and canvas in cold and wet and sun. "After all, _he's_ a man," she
thought, with tears welling in her eyes.
She turned and looked out across the shining sea, feeling its
immensity, its power in the moving waves, to be somehow strangely
like the life that inclosed her and swept her on without the power of
volition. She did not turn as Drew spoke.
"Shall we finish our book?" he had asked her.
From time to time in the last few days he had read aloud from the
"Idylls of the King" while she worked at some trifle, or sat with hands
clasped in her lap and watched the waves in a pleasurable emotion to
which his fine, unaffected voice had contributed quite as largely as
the words of the poet. At this moment his question, in its abrupt
withdrawal from the general interest, seemed tactless. For an instant
she made no answer.
"No, not now," she said at last. "Just at present it seems too unreal,
too far away, to move me. I don't believe I am an imaginative person;
life appeals to me too strongly."
She had turned to watch Medbury's work while she was yet speaking,
and Drew, lingering a moment, had gone away with the impression of
dismissal. This she felt, and was troubled by it, and vexed at finding
herself troubled. Her vexation had the effect of bringing her nearer
in spirit to Medbury.
"I believe I could do that," she said as she watched him.
He looked up with a flush of pleasure.
"Want to try?" he asked, and jumped to his feet. "I'll get a piece of
manila and teach you."
He threw down a coil of running rigging for a seat for her, and
together they laughingly began the lesson.
"I always envied the things boys did," she said. "I know how I used to
watch them, but was too afraid of being called a tomboy ever to attempt
anything. It's hard to be ambitious and sensitive, too."
"I know you could run when you were a child," he said, smiling. "Do you
remember the time you snatched my hat and I did not catch you till you
got to Martha Parsons's gate? Then you turned and looked so serious
that I did not dare to take it."
"Yes," she answered, with a laugh. "And I remember how frightened I was
when you followed me. I thought I had done the boldest thing. And when
we stopped and just looked at each other I was sure that you thought
so, too. Finally I said, 'Here's your hat,' and you said, 'Oh,' and
took it. I don't remember now how it ended."
"I do," he said promptly. "I took it and went away; afterward I went
back, but you had gone. Then I thought of all the things I ought to
have said and done when it was too late."
"Well, it was silly enough," she said, dismissing the subject. "I don't
know what made me do it."
He had unlaid the strands of the rope while they talked, and now,
placing it in her hand, he showed her how to make a bight with one
strand and pass a second around the first, and a third around the
second, and up through the bight of the first, forming the wall.
"Now you try," he said, and, undoing the knot, passed the rope to her.
In a moment she held it up triumphantly.
"What do you do next?" she asked.
"Now we will put on the double crown."
"It _is_ hard," she said after a moment more. "It looked simple enough
while you were doing it." She held the rope in her hand and looked at
him in smiling despair. "I shall never learn."
"Yes, you will," he assured her. "You only need a little patience."
"_You_ will need the patience," she answered.
"Haven't I always had it with you?" he asked in a low voice.
"Is that right?" she demanded, holding up the knot.
"Yes; now run the end--no, this end--through the bight. That's right;
now pull it taut. You haven't answered my question, Hetty."
[Illustration: "'_You_ will need the patience,' she said"]
"You haven't asked any," she replied quickly; and then added: "What
next?"
"Pull it tighter," he answered, and, leaning forward, drew it taut, for
an instant covering her hands with his own.
She drew hers away quickly and dropped them in her lap.
"It's no use," she told him; "I shall never learn."
"Try!" he urged.
"No; I cannot even try." She looked about her with restless eyes.
Something in her face stirred his foreboding.
"Do you mean, Hetty--"
"Oh, I mean nothing," she cried impatiently. "I wish the sea would go
down. It's dreadful."
She sprang to her feet, and, moving to the rigging, leaned against the
sheer-pole and watched the blue sea rise almost to the line of the
deck, then fall away with appalling swiftness. Medbury followed her
there.
"What's the matter?" he demanded.
"Why don't you whistle for a wind?" she asked him. "Why don't you? I
think I'll go below until you do."
"Isn't it pleasanter here?" he said. "You would call it a beautiful day
at home."
"Yes, I should," she acknowledged. "It seems like April--April at home.
I can shut my eyes"--she shut them--"and see just how it looks: the big
willow by our gate growing green in a night, and the grass, and the
sunlight on everything--or rain; only the rain makes the grass greener,
and you don't mind it at all in spring, as you do at other times."
He had watched her while she stood with eyes closed, but when she
opened them suddenly and looked at him with a smile, he turned away
in confusion, as if he had been caught watching her when he knew she
would not care to be seen.
"That's the way your face always looks to me," he said, with the
boldness of embarrassment.
"What do you mean?" she asked. Her lips parted as if to smile, but
closed again in a neutral line that was neither smile nor frown, but
might easily become either when she had heard his explanation.
"Like April--your face is like that. It's always changing. I like it
always, but best when you smile, of course."
"I cannot smile at a speech like that," she said primly, and turned a
serious face from him.
For five minutes he kept his eyes turned from her, and then looked to
see if her April face had changed again. It had not, and a sigh escaped
him.
At the sigh her face had become severe, but almost immediately he saw
her lips twitch, close firmly together, then part in a laugh.
"There!" he cried triumphantly, and laughed with her.
"Oh, Tom, you're ridiculous!" she cried, and struggled against her
laughter. But her face became serious again at once, and she added: "I
do not like such speeches. They sound silly."
"All right," he replied, but not in the tone of one cast down.
Captain March's keen eyes, as he walked the deck, looking aloft, saw a
slightly frayed spot in the maintopsail-halyard. Crossing the deck, he
stopped by the side of his mate.
"Looks as if that halyard wouldn't stand much strain," he said. "Better
look at it before long, Mr. Medbury." He pointed to the place as
Medbury looked up.
"I will, sir," answered Medbury.
"Hawkins never did look after the little things," the captain went on,
with gentle grumbling. "Good man, but didn't seem to have any eyes
sometimes. Still, I was sorry to have him go ashore sick. He can't
afford to lay idle long. Same with John Davis. I thought he'd jump at
the chance to take Hawkins's place. I didn't think it so strange in
Bob Markham's backing out: he'd promised his wife to stay ashore. But
Davis--I don't understand about him. I never knew folks to act so.
Davis seemed pleased when I asked him, and hurried right off to get his
things; but before I'd hardly turned my head, back he galloped and said
he'd changed his mind. It made me a little provoked; and when I asked
him why, he just winked. Well!" He walked away, still grumbling.
Medbury had not lifted his eyes from his work as the captain had
talked, but now he glanced up, to find Hetty's eyes watching him
keenly. Something in the intensity of her look stirred his foreboding.
He was not wholly unacquainted with the intuitive divination with
which women often flash upon the secrets men would withhold from them,
and now he braced himself for the question that he knew was coming.
"Do _you_ know why they would not come?" she asked. Her voice was tense.
He tried to show surprise at the question, but knew that he failed.
"I suppose they didn't want to," he answered.
"Don't you _know_?" she demanded.
He hesitated, and she sprang to her feet.
"You needn't tell me," she cried with suppressed passion. "I know. I
know you got them to. They'd do it for you. You seem to have obliging
friends. Oh!" She turned away, but came back immediately. "And now
I suppose everybody in Blackwater is laughing over the story. And
laughing at _me_! I didn't _want_ you to come; but if I'd known this,
do you think I would have set foot on this vessel while you were
aboard? I'd have _died_ first." She walked to the rail, but came
restlessly back. "Well, it's over now. Do you think I could go back
home and have people know that your--your trick had succeeded? There
have been times when I have thought that I could care for you in the
way you wish, but I couldn't be sure. If my face is like April, as you
say, I think my mind is, too. I cannot be _sure_. Sometimes I think I
do not care for anything; I think I have no heart. And then, when I see
you watching me, and I know what you are thinking, I almost hate you,
and want to go away from everything I've ever known. But now, after
this, it is ended. Oh, you make me ashamed!"
He had heard her in a tumult of contending emotions--shame and sorrow
for hurting her, pity, remorse. Heart-sick, he rose to his feet.
"I didn't mean to hurt you, Hetty. Good Lord! you know that! You _must_
know it!" he exclaimed. "And no one will know. You needn't care."
"Oh, needn't care!" she cried in scorn.
Then, manlike, because he was sorry, but had no answer, he became angry.
"You are a hard woman," he said, in a sudden letting-go of all
self-control--"a hard and heartless woman."
She shrank from him as if he had struck her, and her face grew white.
"I wish you wouldn't," she whispered passionately--"wouldn't speak to
me. You hurt me."
He did not understand, and his face hardened, and his eyes grew hot
with impotent anger. It was as if all the conventions had dropped away
from him, and he had become the primitive man. He could crush her with
one hand, he blindly told himself; yet she mocked him and his strength.
All his life he had loved her, followed her in devoted service, but
to what end? To be shunned, eluded, mocked, and scorned. He gripped
his hands tightly together in his revolt against his enforced inaction
because she was weak and a woman. But for once he would speak.
"You've hurt me for many a long year," he answered hotly, "but you'll
hurt me no more." With that he walked away as Cromwell must have gone
from the Long Parliament.