“Why did you suggest that I leave, Mr. Pitt?”
“Miss Baldwin,” said I, “I do not wish to alarm you, but I do not
think this yacht at present is a place for a young woman to take a
pleasure trip in. It is Chanler’s place to tell you this, but I am
quite sure he will not do so.”
“Go on,” she said, “you must explain fully now.”
“Well, to be blunt, the yacht is in the hands of Captain Brack and the
crew.”
“Yes?”
“You saw Captain Brack, Miss Baldwin; I saw that you studied him with
interest.”
“Yes!” she said eagerly, and at the sudden play of excitement in her
expression I once more felt the old familiar chill creeping up my
spine.
The power, the fascination, the dominant will of Captain Brack
suddenly took on new possibilities. How would those terrible,
compelling eyes affect a woman, a young girl? How had they affected
her? For it was obvious that Miss Baldwin’s brief meeting with him had
left its mark.
“He has,” said she, “such strange eyes.”
“Miss Baldwin,” I said, “when you came on board the crew practically
was in a state of mutiny. Captain Brack sided with them. The crew is
composed of a choice lot of brutes, ex-criminals, who may do Heaven
knows what.”
Miss Baldwin stood firmly upright and looked at me, her eyes alight
with excitement. Her thin nostrils widened and trembled.
“Oh, how you thrill me, Mr. Pitt!” she said. “Tell me honest
truth—you’re not joking? Is it really true, about the mutiny and the
crew of choice brutes?”
“Miss Baldwin,” I stammered. “Do you mean to say that you’re pleased
to hear this? That you’d wish to stay on board if I assured you that
we are practically in the hands of a crew of dangerous men, with no
knowing what sort of adventure they may be going on?”
“Would I?” she cried promptly. “Why, it’s what I’ve been longing for
all my life.”
“You—you have—what?” I stammered.
She smiled mischievously at my astonishment.
“Mr. Pitt, who was it that said, ‘most men lead lives of quiet
desperation’? No matter. He should have included girls, too. Did you
ever think that we, too, sometimes might get tired of the hum drum
lives we’re born to and long for something wild to flavor our
existence?”
“Good Lord, no!”
“Of course, you haven’t. Well, possibly I’m different from other
girls. I don’t know. But I’ve always felt that if I had to live all my
life without one great adventure I—I’d burst.”
“The great adventure for a girl,” said I severely, “is to love, marry,
and——”
“Ah, yes! But somehow I seem to recall having heard that before.”
A sea-gull, following the _Wanderer_ in search of galley droppings,
swooped past us, struck the crest of a small wave with a splash, and
soared upward and away.
“There,” she said quietly, “that’s what I’ve longed for; just once, to
be absolutely free. Do you understand?”