THE first morning in blue water developed the fact that breakfast
on the _Andromeda_ was destined to be a broken meal. In the
white-lacquered dining-saloon, only three members of the ship's
company, Major Terwilliger, Madeleine Barclay's father, and Professor
Sanford were at table, though Van Dyck and Billy Grisdale had been
still earlier, had already breakfasted and had gone on deck.
As I took my place, the major, affecting the bluff heartiness which
was merely a mask for an ease-loving, self-centered habit which
never for a moment lost sight of the creature comforts, was trying,
quite ineffectually, to draw Sanford into a discussion of the merits
and demerits of certain French liqueurs--a subject upon which the
clean-living, abstemious professor of mathematics was as poorly
informed as any anchorite of the desert.
"Vermuth, now; a dash of vermuth in your morning bitters," the major
expatiated; "there's nothing like it for an appetiser. I'm not saying
anything against the modern cocktail, properly compounded; it has
its place. But for a morning eye-opener it is crude. Believe me, a
Frenchman knows the meaning of the word _apéritif_ much better than we
do."
"Yes?" said the professor, with a palpable effort to galvanize an
interest which he was evidently far from feeling.
"Quite so," declared the major; after which he proceeded to enlarge
upon American backwardness in the matter of picking and choosing among
the potables, inveighing with all the warmth of a past master in the
art of good living against the barbarism of taking one's liquor raw.
While the major was giving his alcoholic homily, and not omitting,
meanwhile, to keep his plate well supplied with the crispest bits of
bacon and the hottest of the rolls, I had an opportunity to observe the
silent man whose place was opposite my own. Holly Barclay had changed
greatly in the three years which had elapsed since I had last seen him
in New York. I never knew--I do not yet know--what particular form his
dissipation took, but it had left its indubitable record in the haggard
face, the deep-sunken eyes, and in the womanish hands which trembled a
bit in spite of an evident effort to hold them steady.
Fragmentary gossip of former days had said that Holly Barclay's bane
was women; other whispers had it that it was the gaming table; still
others that it was the larger gaming table of the Street. Whatever
it was, it had apparently left him a rather ghastly wreck of a man;
a prey, not to remorse, perhaps, but certainly to fear. And with the
fear in the deep-set eyes there was a hint of childish petulance; the
irritable humor of a man who has fought a losing battle with life and
expects to be waited upon and coddled as a reward for his defeat and
humiliation.
It was a relief to turn from this haggard wreck, and from the
sham-hearty major, to the mild-eyed professor. Sanford I had known in
the university, and a less self-conscious or more lovable man never
lived. Deeply immersed in the natural sciences, which were his hobby,
and absent-minded at times to a degree that put to shame the best
efforts of the college-professor-joke makers, he was nevertheless the
most human of men; a faculty member whose door was always hospitably
open to the homesick Freshman, and whose influence for good in the
lush field of the college campus was second only to that of his
plain-featured, motherly wife.
"Ah, yes," he was saying, in answer to the major's eulogy of chartreuse
as a cordial, "it is said to be a distillation from the leaves of
_Urtica pilulifera_, the much-abused nettle, I believe. Those old
Alpine monks had a wonderful knowledge of the scanty flora of the high
altitudes where they built their monasteries. Which reminds me: I hope
Bonteck will give us an opportunity to study some of the remarkable
plant forms peculiar to the tropics before we return. It would be most
enlightening to a stay-at-home like myself."
The major's facial expression was that of a person who has been
basely betrayed into casting pearls before swine. That any one could
be so benighted as to associate a divine cordial only with the crude
materials out of which it might be made was quite beyond his powers of
comprehension.
"Hum," he muttered, "I've always understood that the process of
chartreuse-making was a secret that was most jealously guarded." And
with that he let the pearl casting stop abruptly.
Here was a striking example, one would say, of the ill-assortment
of our mixed ship's company manifesting itself at the introductory
breakfast at sea. Throughout the meal Barclay said nothing to any of
us. His few remarks were addressed to the serving steward, and they
were all in the nature of complaints. His coffee was too weak, the
bacon was too crisp, the cold meats were underdone. What with the
gourmet appetite of the major, and Barclay's apparent lack of any
appetite at all, the broken meal was anything but a feast of reason
and a flow of soul, and I was glad to break away to the freedom of the
decks.
Finding the after-deck untenanted, I strolled forward. The _Andromeda_
was loafing along over a sea as calm as a mill-pond, and her course,
as nearly as I could guess it from the position of the sun, was a
little to the east of south. Van Dyck and Billy Grisdale were on the
bridge, and one of the foreign-looking sailormen had the wheel. On the
main-deck forward three members of the crew were swabbing down, and
two others were polishing brass. As I paused at the rail in the shadow
of the bridge overhang, Goff, the sailing-master, came stumping along.
Though no one had as yet told me that he was a Gloucesterman, I took a
shot at it.
"This is not much like cracking on with a schooner for the Banks, is
it, Captain?" was the form the shot took; and the grizzled veteran of
the sea stopped and looked me over with an eye militantly appraisive.
"What you know about the Banks?" he inquired hostilely.
"Little enough," I admitted. "One trip, made when I was a boy, in the
schooner _Maria Ann_, of Gloucester, Captain Standifer."
"I want to know!" he said, thawing perceptibly. "Old _Maria Ann's_
afloat yit, but Standifer's gone; run down in a dory in a fog." Then,
lowering his voice: "You don't belong to this New York clanjamfry, do
ye?"
"Not strictly speaking; I signed on in New Orleans."
"Know these waters putty middlin' well?"
"I've sailed them a few times."
"Friend o' Cap'n Van Dyck's, I cal'late?"
"As good a friend as he has on earth, I hope."
At this the old sea dog thrust an arm in mine and led me aft until we
were out of earshot from the bridge.
"What d' ye know about this here winter cruise?" He fired the question
at me belligerently.
"About its course and destination? Little or much, as you choose to put
it. What should I know?"
He paid no attention to my question.
"Cap'n Van Dyck's all right, only he's too dum hardheaded," he
confided. "Picked up his 'tween-decks lackeys in New York an' Havana.
Don't like the looks o' some on 'em. If you're a friend of the Cap'n's,
you keep a weather eye on that slick lookin' yaller boy that waits on
table in the dinin'-saloon."
"How am I to keep an eye on him?" I asked.
"When you're eatin' with the folks, you keep 'em from talkin' about
things that yaller boy hadn't ought to hear," he bit out, and with that
he left me.
Here was a little mystery on our first day at sea. What was it, in
particular, that the mulatto serving boy shouldn't hear? My mind went
back to the talk of the previous evening, across the table in the
dining-room of the New Orleans hotel. Now that I came to analyze it,
I realized that it had been only cursorily explanatory on Van Dyck's
part. While he seemed at the time to be perfectly frank with me, it
occurred to me now that I had all along been conscious of certain
reservations. A winter cruise in the Caribbean; for the ship's company
a gathering of people whom he had threatened to know better before the
cruise ended; these were about the only definite objects he had set
forth.
But two things were pretty plainly evident. Goff was deeper in Van
Dyck's confidence than I was; and, beyond this, the sailing-master was
making the mistake of thinking that I knew as much as he did. It was no
great matter, I thought. If the mulatto under-steward needed watching,
I'd watch him, trusting to the future to reveal the reason--if any
there were--why he should be watched.
Making my way to the awning-sheltered after-deck lounge, which was
still untenanted, I picked out the easiest of the wicker chairs and
sat down to fill my pipe for an after-breakfast smoke. Before the pipe
had burned out, Ingerson put in his appearance, lighting a black cigar
as he came up the cabin stair. If I had been free to select, he was
the last man in our curious assortment whom I should have chosen as a
tobacco companion, but short of a pointed retreat to some other part of
the ship, there was no escape.
"Hello, Preble," he grunted, casting his gross body into a chair.
"Monopolizing the view, are you? Seen anything of Madeleine?"
"Miss Barclay hadn't appeared when I breakfasted," I returned; and if I
bore down a bit hard on the courtesy prefix it was because I hated to
hear Madeleine's Christian name come so glibly off his tongue.
"How many days of this are we in for?" was his next attempt.
"That, I suppose, will be left to the wishes of the ship's company."
"All right," he grinned; "I guess I can stand it as long as Van Dyck
can."
I stole a glance aside at his heavy featured, half-bestial face. It was
the face of a man prematurely aged, or aging, by the simple process of
giving free rein to his passions and appetites. Though he couldn't have
been more than thirty-two or three, the telltale pouches were already
forming under the bibulous eyes. Though I suppose he was fresh from his
morning bath, I fancied I could detect the aroma of many and prolonged
midnight carousals about him. Van Dyck's intimation that there was
even a possibility of Madeleine Barclay's throwing herself away upon
this gross piece of flesh came back to me with a tingling shock of
repugnance. Surely she would never do such a thing of her own free will.
We had been sitting in uncomradely silence for maybe five minutes
when Mrs. Van Tromp, mother of marriageable, and as yet unmarried,
daughters came waddling aft to join us. How far she might go in letting
Ingerson's wealth atone for his many sins, I neither knew nor cared,
but that the wealth had its due and proper weight with her was proved
by the alacrity with which she relieved me of the necessity of taking
any part in a three-cornered talk. So, when I got up to empty my pipe
ashes over the rail, I kept on going, quite willingly abandoning the
field to inherited money and its avid worshiper.
With such an unfruitful beginning, one might predicate an
introductory day little less than stupefying. But later on there
were ameliorations. After luncheon, which, like the breakfast, was a
straggling meal with only three or four of us at table at the same
time, I found myself lounging on the port promenade with Beatrice, the
middle member of the Van Tromp trio, a fair-haired, self-contained
young woman with a slant toward bookish things which set her well apart
from her athletic older sister and tomboyish younger.
"'Westward Ho!'?" I said, glancing at the title of the book lying in
her lap.
"Yes; I've been trying to get the atmosphere. But Kingsley takes too
much time with his introductions. Whereabouts are we now?"
I marked the slow rise and fall of the ship as it swung along making
its leisurely southing. As in the early morning, the _Andromeda_ was
logging only loafing speed.
"We are still a long way from the scene of Sir Francis Drake's more or
less piratical exploits," I told her. "Do you take Kingsley at his face
value?"
"He calls it war, but it seems to me more like legalized buccaneering,"
she rejoined. Then: "How much of it do you suppose is true?"