FELLOW VOYAGERS
Belinda had seen Frank Sanderson at the captain's table; but he had
not spied her. She sat with her back to him while listening to the
talk of the Yankee shipmaster. The aviator arose and strolled out on
deck without glancing in her direction. Then she went to see how Aunt
Roberta fared.
Of course, the Red Cross recruit did not expect to remain undiscovered
to Sanderson for the entire voyage. Indeed, she was not altogether sure
she wished this. If he chanced to read the list of passengers he would
be sure to see her name. But she preferred to choose her own time for
first speaking with him.
Belinda Melnotte was quite sure the aviator's reason for crossing the
ocean was somewhat the same as her own--a desire to help the embattled
French. His intention was to join those other American flying men over
there and do actual fighting for the Allies.
Because of the strict neutral attitude of the United States at that
time, these volunteer aviators could not fly under their own flag; but
the so-called Lafayette Escadrille was doing notable work for what
Aunt Roberta so vigorously called "_la patrie_."
The general conversation in the saloon--all over the ship, in fact--was
about the war. After Belinda had assured herself of Aunt Roberta's
comfort, she slipped into her coat and sought the open deck. Every
group she passed was eagerly discussing some phase of the great
struggle.
Fire Island light was already dropping below the horizon. She noted
that there were few lights on deck--by no means as many as are usually
displayed on a passenger liner. Ordinarily in the evening, these big
ships sparkle with chains of lamps.
She saw the wireless operator in his house amidships. Unexpectedly the
poles began to spark and crackle. A message was being received. She saw
the mate who had introduced her to Captain Dexter run to the door of
the wireless room for the message.
A minute later bell signals were sounding all over the great, throbbing
ship. Several series of lights were snuffed out. The stewards went
along the corridors rapping on stateroom doors and ordering lights
shrouded or shades drawn at the ports. It was an order that bred
fear in many hearts. Peril, unknown and from an unknown direction,
threatened.
Belinda met the old shipmaster cheerfully pacing the deck and whistling
softly to himself.
"Oh, Captain Dexter!" she demanded, tucking her hand into the crook of
the arm he offered her with his old-fashioned air of courtesy, "what is
the matter? What could that message have been, do you suppose?"
"I calc'late," said the runaway captain, "that we just got wind of a
submarine somewhere in these waters. The mate says she was spied from
Nantucket lightship and that the news was relayed across to us. Maybe,
however, she was just one of our own subs out on scout duty."
"Do you suppose she would attack us so near shore?" Belinda asked.
"Not knowin' the submarine's orders, I couldn't say, ma'am," declared
Captain Dexter. "But whatever them undersea navigators are told to
do, they _do_. To my mind they come nearer bein' marionettes with the
strings pulled by their superiors at home than any human bein's since
the world began. The blind obedience of Hannibal's hordes you read
about, or that of the fanatic Mussulmen, never had nothing on these
Germans. They've been trained for generations to let other folks think
for 'em."
"Oh, no! Oh, no, Captain Dexter! We think for ourselves!" cried Belinda
hurriedly.
"_We_, Miss?"
"Oh, I know I have a French name. But some of my people were German. I
can sympathize--I _do_ sympathize--with my mother's people."
"Yet you are going to nurse the French wounded?"
"But I sympathize with the poor _poilus_ much more than with the
Germans," she said, shaking her head. "I cannot feel bitterness for
either side, Captain Dexter. But I hate the war itself."
"Then you are more nearly neutral than most of us," commented the old
shipmaster shrewdly.
They paced the deck together while the throbbing ship drove on through
the sea and the night, an unlighted bulk upon the face of the waters.
The twinkling stars were all that lighted their way. Patches of the sea
here and there were faintly phosphorescent; otherwise the heaving water
was scarcely visible from the high deck.
"It is mysterious--almost terrifying," the girl said in a low voice.
"So it is," the captain rejoined in his brisk way. "I've felt it oft
and again when I was pacin' my own quarter on a moonless night--for a
sailin' ship is never lighted like a steamer. I've looked off over the
water and wondered what was under it, and imagined more monsters than
ever lived back in those early ages that the scientific books tell us
about."
"But you never expected a submarine to bob up out of the sea," the girl
suggested.
"Not much!" he chuckled. "Once I thought I saw a sea serpent."
"Really! And what was it?"
"A school of porpoises chasing each other, head to tail. And maybe we
won't see anything more excitin' than that this trip."
It was not until the following day that Belinda met Frank Sanderson.
The submarine scare of the first evening at sea was all but forgotten
in the morning sunshine and with the _Belle o' Perth_ plowing through a
perfectly placid sea.
The calm was not sufficient, however, to tempt Aunt Roberta on deck--or
even out of her stateroom.
"An absolutely horizontal posture for forty-eight or sixty hours
after leaving port is the only safeguard against _mal de mer_," the
Frenchwoman declared. "How you can be so reckless I do not see,
Belinda. It is almost a crime for a woman to possess such robust
health."
So, after breakfasting with Aunt Roberta in the stateroom, Belinda
sought the deck alone, and under the pilotage of a deck steward found
her chair in the lee of a forward house. It was a sheltered situation
in all weathers and there were few other passengers in view when she
settled herself comfortably in it.
Indeed, she had met nobody as yet save the Yankee shipmaster; and he
scorned such artificialities of life aboard ship as reclining chairs.
He paced the bridge with a friendly watch-officer, or encircled the
ship on a "two-hour constitutional" for exercise.
"I couldn't sit mum by myself in one o' these chairs and do nothing,"
he confessed to the nurse. "I'm not a readin' man. Long watches below
at sea I used to play push--and I play it yet."
"What is 'push'?" she asked curiously.
"It's seaman's solitaire. Ain't once in five hundred times it comes out
right. But it keeps the mind occupied. And that's a blessin', as you'd
very soon learn if you was master of a windjammer, months and months
away from port."
"With the expectation of another daughter arriving during your absence
whom your wife would be sure to christen to displease you," Belinda
suggested slyly.
"By Hannah! Yes. And more'n that. Why, I've seen the time at sea when
I've buried all my friends and relations--in my mind, of course--and
preached their funeral sermons. It does beat all how a person that's
lonesome will get so low in his thoughts."
Belinda did not feel in the least lonely, despite the fact that Aunt
Roberta remained in her berth. Although there were not many first
cabin passengers and the opportunity for meeting pleasant people was
therefore limited, there was much else about the ship that interested
the girl. The sea itself was always changing, and she had not crossed
often enough for the small details of life on board ship to bore her.
Before she had read a dozen pages in her book (it was "The Flying Faun"
she had brought with her) she saw the trim figure of Frank Sanderson
coming down the deck. The aviator was not a large man--not many men who
follow the flying game are large men--but Belinda had already noticed
that he was very well built, and walked "with an air," as Aunt Roberta
would have said.
He was looking at the cards on the empty chairs, searching for his own.
Suddenly he spied it, and without troubling the deck steward started to
move the chair to a position that better suited him.
It was at this juncture that he raised his eyes and found himself
looking squarely into Belinda Melnotte's brown orbs. She saw him start,
pale a little, and then the blood flooded into his neck and face until
the sprinkle of little freckles across the bridge of his nose--that
looked as though they had been shaken out of a pepperbox--became a
bright copper color.
"Miss Melnotte!" he gasped.
"Bring your chair here, Mr. Sanderson," she said with perfect composure.
The suggestion relieved a very awkward moment for her. She felt that
his greeting might be too warm. But a man with a deck-chair in his
arms cannot display over-exuberance of feeling upon greeting an
acquaintance. And then--Belinda was so perfectly self-possessed.
"Why, I had no idea you were aboard, Miss Melnotte! Er--are you
traveling alone?" was Sanderson's first query, when he had placed his
chair beside her.
"My aunt is crossing with me," she said. "But I am not so surprised to
see you."
"No?"
"I fancied you had it in your mind to join your comrades already in
France."
"And you?"
She told him of her sudden decision. He beamed upon her.
"That's bully!" he cried. "The Red Cross is doing all kinds of good
work. I honor you nursing recruits, especially when so many of you do
not favor war."
"Who does favor war, Mr. Sanderson?" asked the girl seriously. "Surely
the poor men fighting in the trenches are not in favor of it. Their
masters all publicly deplore it. And the neutral peoples condemn it
utterly. Still----"
"Still Mars reigns," he interposed. "To take their word for it, nobody
is to blame and nobody wants to continue fighting. Yet the munition
factories and gun works keep busy. There will be plenty of work for you
good women--and plenty for me to do too," he added in a lower tone.
"It is so dangerous--your work," she sighed.
"I was just thinking that about yours," he returned, smiling. "You will
work within sound--perhaps within reach--of the guns if you serve in
the field hospitals."
"While you will be in the very midst of battle," she returned more
lightly. "Yet you would not falter?"
"No-o. Nor I wouldn't have you, as long as you have signed up for the
job," he admitted. "You know, we Americans have our national reputation
to keep up. We aren't supposed to get cold feet."
"I am not sure that I am an American," she murmured.
"Why, of course you are! I've thought a good bit about what you said
once of your mixed ancestry, and how you felt the German part of you
and the French part of you at war. I reckon such a mixture makes
exceedingly good American timber, after all."
"I wish you might prove that thesis to my satisfaction, Mr. Sanderson."
"Why, if the German part of you is dissatisfied with the French part of
you, and _vice versa_, then throw the opinions and prejudices of both
away and declare yourself an out-and-out Yankee. As they used to say in
the old-time revival meetings, 'Claim the blessing, and it's yours!'"
"Oh, Mr. Sanderson, that sounds very encouraging indeed! But it's not
so easy to 'claim the blessing,'" and she sighed.
They talked of other things. Belinda's manner had denied any
familiarity on Sanderson's part had he been inclined to assume such an
air. But she was kind.
Nor did her manner change appreciably toward him during the bright days
that followed. She met his advances toward warmer friendship with a
reserve that he could only accept as final.
Although Doctor Herschall was not on board the ship, Sanderson feared
that there was an understanding between the black-browed surgeon and
Belinda Melnotte.
He met Aunt Roberta in a day or two, and the little Frenchwoman--who
wore just as decisive an air and carried herself with as much
_sang-froid_ afloat as ashore--showed that she liked the young man. She
approved of his purpose in crossing the Atlantic too.
"_Ma foi!_ you are the only _Américain_ I have met that I could marry,
M. Sanderson," she said gaily. "You appreciate _la belle_ France."
But she amended this statement when Belinda introduced Captain Raphael
Dexter into the little group.
"But yes, he is a fine man," she confided to her niece. "Did you ever
see such a be-au-tiful head of hair? And his eyes--so keen; they
twinkle like boulevard lights on a winter night. My faith! he is a
fine man."
"Oh, Aunt Roberta! I have never heard you rave over a man before. You
make me anxious. Remember I need a chaperon for a while yet."
But Aunt Roberta was quite in earnest.
"Perhaps these _Américains_ improve as they mellow. And how brave of
him! He is an old war horse."
"A sea-horse, you mean," laughed Belinda. "He is a dear old man, I
agree. But remember, Aunt Roberta, he has three daughters. They might
object very vigorously to the captain's assuming new marital duties at
his age."
Aunt Roberta laughed gaily.
"Does he not say they are all three pacifists? They surely then cannot
be militant. _Ma foi! Non!_"
The _Belle o' Perth_ plowed as gaily through the sea as though no
submarine menace was known. The wireless crackled a staccato warning
now and then. Twice the ship's course was changed suddenly, but the
officers made no public explanation.
Anxiety, however, set the officers' features in grim lines. There was a
tenseness in their manner--a strained air like that of men waiting for
a threatened catastrophe. Once the ship was convoyed all day and night
by a great, gray-hulled cruiser that signaled back and forth to the
liner, but flew only a small ensign at her peak.
It was hard to arouse any spirit of gaiety among the passengers. They
partook of the expectant manner of the ship's officers. Many of them
spent most of their waking hours sweeping the sea with opera glasses
and binoculars. There was a reluctance to go to bed at night; yet the
first cabin was not a cheerful place in which to spend the evening. No
ship ever had a keener lookout than this, for passengers as well as
crew were continually on the watch. Just what they were looking for,
however, few could have told.
"They used to have pools on shipboard on the day's run, I remember,
and on how many whales we'd spot, and the like," observed Sanderson.
"I wonder how it would do to make a pool on whether or not we sight a
submarine."
In a group by the rail on this supposedly next-to-the-last day of the
voyage, were standing Belinda and her aunt, Captain Dexter and the
aviator. The captain seldom troubled to use a glass.
"There's nothing the matter with my eyes," he often said, "if the
rheumatism does ketch me in my game leg now and then.
"There's something adrift yonder," he observed, pointing. "Stickin' out
of the water. Looks like a spar."
Sanderson, with his glasses to his eyes, wheeled till he got the
direction of the captain's pointing finger.
"I see it. No spar, Captain," he said swiftly. He glanced up at the
first officer on the quarter-deck. "Mr. Orcutt!"
"Aye, aye!" replied the officer, coming to the rail.
"They've spotted us," the aviator said, his voice unshaken. "See
yonder?"
His own glasses found the object again. Captain Dexter uttered a
startled expletive. Aunt Roberta grasped Belinda's arm. The latter
asked:
"Surely, it isn't a submarine, Mr. Sanderson?"
"That is a periscope. I've seen one before!" cried Sanderson, his eyes
glued to his glasses. "Yes, she is approaching! She'll be near enough,
if we follow our present course, to launch a torpedo in five minutes!"