Together the castaways went forward to the galley, passing out of the
cabin through the starboard alleyway so that Emily might not see again
what was in the mate's room. As Paul stepped out on deck he mentally
marked the time by the sun's ascension. It was not later than 8:30
o'clock.
Signs of hurried departure met the eye on every hand in the galley.
Chief among them was a batch of bread which had been put to rising
beside the range. But Paul did not pause to make any examination until
he had rattled up a fire. He had picked up a box of matches in
McGavock's room. There was a bin of kindling and plenty of coal in the
scuttles, and it took only a few minutes to get a meal together. It was
the warmest and best breakfast they had enjoyed since they had been cast
away, albeit the mainstay was a porridge of canned corn which Paul had
hit upon as the most promising thing in a quick search of the stores
aft. For the rest there was hard tack and marmalade and coffee. This
coffee, a strong brew, was really the crown of the breakfast. Its very
odor was life-giving; strength-restoring.
Over the breakfast Paul related with all the gentleness at his command
the facts which had been revealed by his search through the cabins.
There was little to add to what Emily had seen herself.
"We are alone, Emily," he said, "except for those who will never wake
again."
Fearful that similar heart-harrowing sights might be held by the forward
part of the vessel as those which the sore-beset girl had discovered aft
he induced her to remain in the warmth of the galley while he pressed
his search in the forecastle.
"Don't--please don't stay long," she pleaded. "I feel--that--that I will
never be able to bear it--to have you go out of my sight again." A
shudder shook her. "When I saw you--a little while ago----Oh, the ship
fell on you! The bows came down and--buried you in the water----"
"There, there, dear. Let us never think of it again. I have only a
glimmer of an idea--of what happened. I don't know what happened; in
fact, I don't want to know. All I do know and all I care about is--that
somehow I had the sand--the brute strength to save you. Just you of all
the world!"
He seized her passionately as he spoke and kissed her. The pressure of
her firm, lithe body against his sent his blood clamoring. The natural
perfume of her hair made his brain hammer drunkenly. Still above the
tumult which beset his senses rang a mocking laugh--a devil's laugh. As
he caught it a chill went over him. He put Emily away from him as
fiercely as he had taken her and, crying, without a word, she sank on
the bench in front of the fire and hid her face in her hands. As he
turned away his brow was clouded with anger; his eyes filled with
bitterness.
A second Lavelle stood motionless, his trembling breath an unuttered
curse of himself. Then he turned to the door at his side and banged it
open. It was the entrance to the cook's cubby-hole of a room. A piece of
matting and a wooden pillow in the bunk told that its late occupant had
been either a Chinese or Japanese. There was an odor, too, that bespoke
the recent presence of an opium smoker. He had departed in a hurry.
There was another door leading aft from the galley. This was the
entrance to the carpenter shop and donkey engine room. A cubby-hole with
a bunk in it to port had been the carpenter's abode. Lavelle noted with
satisfaction the equipment of glistening, well-kept tools on the engine
room bulkheads.
Hurrying forward, Paul entered the forecastle. It was an exceptionally
large one for a vessel of the _Daphne's_ size. Echo answered his hail.
Mattresses--the straw pallets which sailors call "donkeys'
breakfasts"--clothes' bags, ditty bags, oilskins, sea boots,
sou'westers, an assortment of greasy pots, pannikins, and spoons, and
two filthy kids littered the black deck. Half a dozen chests gaped open,
their contents falling over their sides. The hands that had gone through
them had sought only the bottoms where money, trinkets, and supposed
valuables had been hidden by their owners. So had he found the chests in
the rooms of the second and third mates, the carpenter, and the cook. In
their extremity they had all acted alike--thought only of useless
baubles and left useful, necessary things behind.
A sailor before the mast, used and inured to hardship, living by the
hour hand in hand with death, trained in the expectancy of sudden
danger, ever aware of the constant attendance of peril, might be
expected to act with more intelligence in an emergency which may cost
him his life than the humdrum-going citizen ashore. Left to himself, he
will go out of a ship in mid-ocean with a few shillings he has stored
in the bottom of his bag or chest, a model upon which he has been
spending most of his watches below, a derby hat or flash necktie for
which he paid four times too much at his last port. Rarely has he a
thought of necessary things--the countless useful articles of clothing
such as Paul Lavelle saw on every hand--overcoats, jackets,
underclothing--which a day or an hour in an open boat can make worth a
king's ransom.
The forecastle had been emptied in a hurry, but it told no other tale
than that. There is no lair of mankind, no habitation of man's
devisement more cheerless than a ship's forecastle. There is no sight
more depressing, more dismal than one deserted.
Paul, with a shudder, crossed from the starboard side, through which he
had entered, to port. The breath of fresh air which he caught as he
threw back the door and stepped out on deck was like a draught of wine.
His spirits lifted as it dissipated the sea-sour stench which his
nostrils were carrying. He turned forward immediately to at last come
upon an explanation of the exodus from the _Daphne_.
The fore hatch was open. The covers were strewn about the deck. Up out
of the glistening cargo of coals came an odor of fire. There was no
smoke, but fire had been or was down there.
He recognized the dangerous quality of the coals at once. It was fear of
it that had emptied the crew overside in panic. His mind, in the stress
which had been upon it while he was aft, had not grasped the probable
character of the cargo when he read in the log book with what the
_Daphne_ was laden.
Dropping down through the hatchway his bare feet felt no heat. None of
the signs of "trouble" which he knew so well was present. He had fought
cargoes like this one.
All was cool below; not the faintest indication of gas. But still there
was an odor of fire. He crawled out into the wings, and as he did so his
eyes became accustomed to the semi-darkness. Thus by sight he located
the source of the baffling fire smell. It was under the deck just
forward of the hatch--a heap of ashes burned from all sorts of old junk.
Mattresses had made part of the fire.
Not two feet away from where the fire had burned most briskly lay a
five-gallon tin of kerosene on its side. The arsonist who had carried it
there either had lost his nerve at the end and been afraid to open its
cock, or else he had depended upon it to explode.
Still this fire which had been set with the intention of destroying the
_Daphne_ had made much smoke and burned out impotently. The deck above
it was only slightly charred.
Paul raked through the ashes feverishly. The coal underneath was as cool
to the touch as it was elsewhere. Not more than a handful of it was
blistered.
When he drew himself up on deck again he hauled a couple of buckets of
water from over the side and threw it on the spot where the fire had
burned as a matter of extraordinary precaution. Nor did he forget to
bring the kerosene out of the hold.
Emily met him with a smile of gladness, which immediately turned into a
laugh of humor as Paul stepped into the galley again.
"Where have you been--what have you been doing?" she asked.
"Why--what is the matter?"
"You should see yourself in a glass. You're as black as a moor."
He paused a second to survey himself. He indeed was a sorry sight. The
thin tattered shirt and the trousers which he had slashed off at the
knees when he struck out from the island still clung to him damply. His
limbs were black with coal dust.
"I can imagine the color of my face," said he, and he rubbed the stubble
of beard on his cheeks. "But never mind my appearance--only pour me a
cup of that strong coffee."
While he drank the black brew he summed up for Emily their exact
situation:
"We're all alone, partner--just us. A fire panic emptied the vessel--a
fire which the murderers of the skipper and chief mate believed would
destroy the ship and the evidence of their crimes. The ship's laden with
Australian coals--a treacherous cargo. Knowing its dangerous character,
it is easy for me to understand what the first flash of smoke meant to
the minds of the sort of gang for'ard. They believed the cargo was
afire. With those in authority plying them with fear and not a voice to
steady them, they must have gone over the side like rats. The more haste
that marked their going the better were the plans of the ringleaders
suited. I cannot help believing that what happened aft was known to only
a few--the second mate and perhaps the third. Yet how was it explained
to those outside of the secret of the assassinations--the absence of the
skipper and chief mate? The ringleaders could have reported them as dead
without explaining what had killed them. They could have reported them
to have killed each other. They could have reported them as having
fallen overboard. They could have told the others even that the men had
been murdered, without giving any proof against themselves. But I must
have done with this conjecturing. It is idle."
Paul put down his empty cup with impatience.
"But where could they have gone?" Emily asked.
"_Chi risponde presto, sa poco._ That is as the Italians have it: Who
answers suddenly knows little. The fact that they took provisions and
the three boats which the empty chocks show to have been in the bark
seems convincing that they did not flee to another ship. Perhaps they
believed they were near some land."
"Maybe another island--a trap like ours? I looked for our island--out
there----It is gone."
Paul nodded.
"But these things--these sandals. There was a woman----"
"I am thinking of a woman's presence in the mystery. The French say
there is always a woman."
He spoke with an attempt at lightness which he was far from feeling. A
wince of unpleasantness indicated his true thoughts.
"Do you agree with the French adage?" Emily asked. An enigmatical smile
played across her face as she put the question.
"There is always one woman--one woman out of all the world," he
answered. His tone thrilled her. He studied her for a second
mysteriously. "You are very wonderful to me," he added, but his voice
was so low that it seemed that the thought back of it forced itself to
unconscious utterance. She met his gaze frankly; the unconcealed light
of love was in her eyes.
Paul turned away from her abruptly and a chill came into her heart. She
saw the old expression of pain in his face--the expression she had
beheld there the day she had seen him first in the steamship agency in
Yokohama. It always came so unexpectedly.
Looking out of the galley door to windward, Paul saw a clear sky. The
breeze from the southwest held steady at about six or seven knots. All
overhead signs promised fine weather, but the swell was ominous. Still
all the indications were that it was the aftermath of a storm which had
passed far to the westward.
"You're the chief mate of the _Daphne_ now," he said, facing her again,
"and it's your watch below. You slept but little last night, you know."
"Last night," she said, repeating the words with a shiver. "Nor did you
sleep."
"I will sleep when you have had yours."
"But I want to be with you--to help--all I can."
She felt that even sleep must not be permitted to take him from her
sight.
"You will help best by obeying orders, little woman. The first rule of
the sea is obedience. Come."
Paul started aft and Emily followed him in silence. She who had never
known mastership in her life went whither this man led and with no
thought of doing otherwise. He handed her up on the poop over the
weather gangway.
It was an exceptionally long quarter deck for a vessel of the _Daphne's_
size. Abaft the mizzenmast and the saloon skylights stood a small
teakwood deck house comfortably furnished as a sort of lounge. It was
lighted by four large ports. Through the center of this house the after
companionway led below. On each fore and aft side was a leather
cushioned bench or divan, both long and wide enough to afford good
berths on which to steal a sleep and at the same time remain within
quick access of the deck. Against the forward bulkhead was a collapsible
chart table. The deck entrance opened on the steering compass and the
wheel. Running forward on each side of the vessel from the break of the
poop to the forward house were two pipe-railed bridges. Similar bridges
connected the forward house with the forecastle head. One might cover
the length of the ship from the mizzenmast to the eyes of her without
putting a foot on the main deck. Halfway between the mizzen and
mainmasts the bridges were connected by a platform on which stood the
standard compass.
It was in the companionway deck house or lounge, as the castaways came
to call it, that Paul spread a berth for Emily with some blankets which
he took from one of the staterooms. Although she protested that she
would find it easy to remain awake if she could drink as much coffee as
he had--that she really wasn't sleepy--her head had hardly touched its
clean white pillow when her eyelids closed fast in a deep slumber. Sheer
will power had been keeping her up.
There was grim work ahead of Paul Lavelle and he hurried to do it. It
must be finished when Emily awoke. Before entering the cabin, however,
he went forward and put a fire under the donkey boiler. Here was an
auxiliary crew--this engine--a good thirty horsepower at least. Hope
mounted in his breast as he examined it and found it in first-class
condition. For that matter, everything about the _Daphne_ was strong and
good. She had been "kept up" is the way Lavelle would have described her
to another seaman.
A plan of action which he had been formulating he now confirmed. He
would let the _Daphne_ lie along hove to as she was until he could fix
her position and then, from that point attempt to work her, with Emily's
aid and the engine's, into a frequented track of vessels. Having made
such a track, he would hold on there the while he did his best to make
the nearest land. If what the bark's log said were true it would not be
long, the gods of the winds being kind, before they were in the track in
which the _Cambodia_ had been lost.
Thoroughly this man realized the seriousness of the situation which
confronted him. Before him was a task to give any man pause--a
twelve-hundred-ton bark at the mercy of the sea to be handled by
himself, a woman, and a donkey engine. There was no alternative to the
plan his mind had outlined. While he tested it from every angle,
instinct led him to many necessary small tasks. He sounded the ship's
well. There was no telling how much water might have entered her
through the open fore hatch. The rod came back as dry as a bleached
bone. It had not even rained since she had been abandoned. This
suggested examining her fresh-water supply. He sounded these tanks. They
held a supply for fifty days even if the bark had been manned by her
full complement. Besides, the donkey engine had a condenser attachment
for its own purposes and also for ship use in the event of a shortage.
Paul Lavelle had never been aboard a handier vessel than the _Daphne_.
John McGavock and her young chief mate must have been very proud of her.
She was molded on clipper lines. In her heyday undoubtedly, judging from
the size of her mizzenmast, she had been rigged as a ship. That day had
been when the taunt, white-winged tea clippers were the mail carriers
and passenger greyhounds of the seas; and the men who mastered them
veritable nabobs of the deep. The lounge on the _Daphne's_ poop, the
rich India teak and mahogany and bird's-eye maple of her commodious
saloons, the many staterooms, the appointments of her large galley
bespoke her as having been not among the least of these fliers.
Certainly she must have been a flash packet in the days of her youth
when she could have mustered twenty-five men in a watch to fist a
topsail. Paul knew that vessels like this had carried tremendous
crews--sometimes fifty, sixty, and seventy-five, idlers and all--in the
days of their pride when an hour cut from a passage meant gold for
owners and masters. His mother's father had been master and afterward
owner of such ships as the _Daphne_. But he had sailed them under a
different flag than hers--a flag which had driven him, the grandson,
away from it and to be a marked wanderer.
This unpleasant personal thought turned Lavelle aft. He entered the
cabin through the door on the starboard side. Here he found three more
staterooms, which opened off an alleyway similar to the one on the
opposite side. These rooms had been long given up to storage purposes.
One was filled with barrels of flour and biscuits; the others held
cordage and bolts of untouched canvas. He carried away a bolt of the
newest, whitest duck and a coil of marlin.
No tenderer hands could have given the _Daphne's_ master and mate to the
sea; no voice could have bespoken their souls a kinder journey than the
stranger who shrouded and weighted them. He sent them away with a prayer
and a heartfelt farewell that a friend who had known them and loved them
a lifetime might have breathed.
Paul was near breaking down when it came to the parting with William
Elston. Among the papers scattered around the lad he found the first
page of a letter which the boy had started to his mother on the day
after the _Daphne_ had put out from Sydney. That was the day after
Christmas.
"I'll be home in England--merry England--with you next Christmas, mother
mine----"
That was as much as he could read. He put the crumpled sheet in the dead
boy's hands where he had already folded a photograph which had hung over
the berth. It was a picture of a simple vine-covered cottage such as are
to be met in the byways of villages and towns throughout England.
Clusters of roses peeped and seemed to nod over a hawthorn hedge in the
foreground. A collie stood at the gate, head lifted, ears cocked, and
muzzle searching the distance as at a master's coming. On the back of
the photograph was written in the hand which had kept the log: "My
Sussex Home.
"'In a fair ground--in a fair ground--
Yea, Sussex by the sea!'"
While the mystery which Paul met at every turn beckoned him on in
pursuit of it, he was careful to guard against giving any time except to
necessary things. He was compelled to give his attention to the donkey
boiler and galley fires forward as well as keep an eye on the sun's
ascension toward noon. The _Daphne's_ position was the most important
thing to be ascertained. To this end he searched high and low for a
sextant. The mate's was missing; the skipper's, too. He found McGavock's
empty case in a corner of the chart room, where it had been thrown and
smashed. A mercurial barometer lay crushed beside it. Nor could he
discover the sailing chart of the bark's present voyage nor any other
chart of the Pacific.
Abaft the companionway staircase he came upon a room which had escaped
his attention before. It opened upon a short alleyway into the
lazarette. Here were stowed the ship's slop stores. A door on the left
hand, as one went aft, led into the skipper's room. He had noticed it
when he had returned to get the ulster for Emily. Immediately opposite
was the entrance to a snug bathroom.
Paul took advantage immediately of his discovery of the slop stores to
levy upon them for an outfit of clothing and shoes. When he had found
how plentiful was the vessel's supply of water he had vanquished the
dust and grime of his venture into the fore hold. The touch of the fresh
clothing, rough though it was, was pleasant. It was a link with the
world again.
The while he dressed in the bathroom he observed many things which told
of a woman's presence--articles of the toilet too fine and dainty for a
man's use. A leather traveling dressing case lay on a small stand. It
contained a silver-mounted assortment of brushes and screw-top bottles.
He paused to examine them for a marking. There was none but the English
Sterling impression. Another thing which indicated to him that this room
had known a woman's presence was a tiny fern basket which swung over the
bath. Similar baskets hung in the skylight of each saloon and from the
ceiling in the skipper's room. These meant a woman's watchfulness and
tender care. Men who live and die by the sea know no green-growing
things; no flowers. The sea gives no flowers to its children; no sweet
odors for memory. It has gardens, but they are scentless and one may
enter them only when life is done. So perhaps it is just as well that
its flora is without fragrance.
At one moment Paul was convinced that a woman had been in the _Daphne_
but recently: the next he doubted it. He did not wish to think that she
had been carried off in those small boats. The thought sickened him.
He crossed from the bath into the skipper's room again, hoping that he
might have overlooked there some place where a sextant or quadrant might
be stored. Alongside the desk he spied a silver frame. It contained the
photograph of a laughing, blonde-headed girl of not more than two and
twenty--an wholesome English type of face; just such a woman as he
imagined a man like McGavock would go a-wooing and take to wife. He
regretted that he had not found it sooner. John McGavock might have
wished to take it with him. Paul set it on top of the desk again, from
which it had evidently been knocked, and turned away cudgeling his brain
to suggest where he might carry his search. His glance picked up a
knobless door in the bulkhead to the right of the desk. He dimly
remembered noticing it when he had taken the mackintosh and of fixing it
in his mind at the time as the vessel's medicine chest. It was fastened
with a spring lock. He stepped back from it, hesitated a second, and
with a heave of his shoulder burst it in.
An odorous wave of English lavender rolled out upon him. The man closed
his eyes and inhaled the sweet freshness with a lingering breath. It
conjured memories of mother, sister, home, boyhood--all the tender
recollections of the days which had known no clouds; no bitternesses.
The room which the door revealed was half filled with a woman's skirts
and gowns and coats hanging in order from the beams overhead. Along a
shelf against the forward side stood a neat row of six or seven pairs of
shoes and slippers. The drooping tops of some of them suggested little
soldiers grown tired of marching. The invader felt as if he had broken
into a holy place. A cedar-wood chest stood open on his left. On top of
a filmy heap of woman's things lay a Leghorn straw, trimmed with a
wreath of faded red silk roses. Across the hat was a baby's dainty
underslip.
Turning away from the chest with a pang in his heart and a tightening at
the throat latch his eyes found the object of his search. A sextant lay
on top of the medicine chest which was built into the vessel's side. As
he picked it up eagerly and examined it, he discovered two new chart
pipes standing in the corner. In one of these was a new Admiralty chart
of the North and South Pacific Oceans.
Carrying the pipes and the sextant, Paul Lavelle backed out of the
little room, and as he went he could not help feeling that he had
violated a shrine.