DAWN was just breaking over a sea that was like a caldron of
half-cooled molten metal for its colorings when Van Dyck came to take
his turn on the _Andromeda's_ bridge, and he rated me soundly for not
having called him earlier.
"It is one thing to be generous, and quite another to be a
self-immolating ass," was one of the compliments he handed me. Then:
"By a streak of luck, one of our Portuguese fishermen turns out to be
a passable cook. Get below and you'll find breakfast of a sort waiting
for you in the saloon. Fill up, and then go to bed and sleep until
you've caught up with the procession."
Being by this time in a receptive mood on both counts, I obeyed
the double injunction literally, and ten seconds after rolling,
full-stomached, into the comfortable bunk in the stateroom which
had been mine before the age of romance took us in hand, I was dead
to the world and so continued while the clock-hands made a complete
revolution, with some hour or so added thereto.
When I awoke it was pitch dark in the little stateroom cabin, and
somebody was knocking at the door. It proved to be Fernando, the new
cook, and he was telling me in broken English that he had my dinner on
a tray, by which I was made to understand that I had slept past the
regular dinner hour.
Turning out for a bath, a shave, and the first change of clothing that
had been vouchsafed me in many a long day, I ate the hand-in dinner
with the ravenous appetite of the half-famished, and fared forth.
Stepping into the brightly lighted saloon, it was hard to realize that
Pirates' Hope and all that it stood for in the lives of eighteen of us
had ever existed.
If the mutineers had left any traces of their short reign in our dining
saloon they had all been carefully expunged. At one of the sections of
the divisible dining-table Mrs. Van Tromp, Aunt Mehitable, Madeleine
Barclay's father and Ingerson were playing bridge. Through the open
door of the smoking-room opposite I could see Major Terwilliger
lounging at ease in the deepest wicker chair, with a glass and a bottle
and the ingredients for mixing his favorite after-dinner beverage
on the card table at his elbow. At another section of the divisible
dining-table the professor and his wife were at work classifying a lot
of leaves and roots gathered on the island.
Down the companion stair came the tinkle-tinkle of Billy Grisdale's
mandolin to tell me that the younger members of the ship's company
had already slipped back into the aforetime habit of whiling away the
evenings under the after-deck awning. I smiled as I went forward to
look for Van Dyck, and the smile wasn't as cynical as it might have
been on the other side of the island avatar. The prompt rebound to the
normal and the conventional was merely an example of human nature at
its most resilient--and best.
Van Dyck was on the bridge, or, more strictly speaking, in the little
chart room, pricking out the yacht's course with a pair of dividers,
and one of the Provincetown loyalists was at the wheel.
"You, Dick?" Bonteck said, when I drifted in and took the stool across
from him. "Had a good nap?"
"If I haven't, it wasn't your fault," I returned. "Whereabouts are we
by this time?"
"Off the Venezuelan coast, and only a few hours run from La Guaira.
It's the majority vote of the ship's company that we ought not to be
cheated out of the best part of our winter cruise, and we'll put in
at La Guaira and take a run up to Caracas while Goff is refitting the
yacht and laying in stores. I hope that falls in with your notion."