Warned of a sudden that the sun was near the zenith, Paul hastened from
the engine room aft. Although he tried to go softly when he reached the
poop for fear of waking Emily he could not control the heels nor the
squeaking of his new slop chest shoes. He heard her calling him before
he was halfway to the wheel.
As he appeared in the lounge door she sat up in dumb fear. For the
moment she did not recognize him in the rough blue shirt and corduroys
and strange cap into which he had changed.
"It's I," he said, removing his cap with a smile.
"Oh, Paul--Paul," she sobbed hysterically and covering her face as if to
shut something unpleasant away from her. "I--I have had such--such a
horrible dream. I----"
"There, there," he said comfortingly and going in to her. She caught
hold of his hand. "Everything's going to come out all right. You know
you've been through an awful drive. If----I'm sorry I woke you. Try to
go back to sleep for another hour."
"I couldn't--I couldn't. I was dreaming that--that you were out there
in the sea and that the ship was falling on you--pressing you down,
down, down! It isn't true! It isn't true!"
Her voice rose nearly to a shriek in her effort to reassure herself. He
had won to his old control of himself.
"No, no, it isn't true. Now listen: We're playing a big, big game here.
You're my partner. The only one I can depend on----"
"Forgive me--I don't mean to be selfish or thoughtless or whimpery--or
the clinging-vine sort."
"It's all right. All right, partner. It's a wonder you've a nerve left.
There are mighty few men who could have come through what you have and
not be folded up now. But I want you to think of this game. It's so big,
so big, that it's worth winning!" His tone, his expression, brought a
smile of interest into her face. "If you think you can't sleep I want
you to go down below and get into a heavy shirt like mine--the
strongest, heaviest clothes you can find. I've pulled a lot out of the
slop chest--socks and things. Then, there's a little room--you'll find
it in a corner of the skipper's. It's filled with a lot of woman's
things. There's a cedar-wood chest----You will know what to take."
"A woman's things? There was a----"
"All I can say is that the _Daphne_ has known a woman's presence. When
she was here--what has become of her--God knows."
"Before I slept I said a prayer for her. And every time I lie down to
rest I will pray for her safety."
Emily stood up, but she hesitated as she started to descend the
companionway.
"It's all right. There is nobody down there now. We're absolutely
alone," Paul said, noting her trepidation. "'Home is the sailor, home
from the sea, And the hunter home from the hill.'"
Peace came to her spirit at the gentleness of his words and she went
below unafraid.
By the noon sights which the _Daphne's_ new master got he fixed her
position as Latitude 33:18 north; Longitude, 177:20 east. It astounded
him. He worked his calculations over and over again according to a
half-dozen different formulæ. The result was the same, except for an
unappreciable difference in longitude. So he made it 12 o'clock, setting
the local time by an old-fashioned silver watch which he had discovered
under the pillow in Elston's berth.
Assuming the correctness of his reckoning, the _Daphne_ was
approximately two hundred miles north and west of where the _Cambodia_
had gone down. In the light of this he had to accept it as a fact that
the island had drifted across the steamship lane. On the 29th the
_Daphne_ had been in Latitude 32:30 and Longitude 176:28. He visualized
that day on the island. There had been a light breeze from sunrise to
sunset out of the northeast. With the going down of the sun it had begun
to veer through the north until it brought out of the southwest. Hove to
on the port tack, the bark most have followed the hauling breeze until
she had circled the island and then drifted up on it with the swell. It
was the only satisfactory solution of which Paul could think.
There came to him now, with redoubled force, a thought which had formed
in the instant he had read in the log the port of the vessel's departure
and her destination: "What can have caused a ship bound from Sydney, New
South Wales, toward San Francisco, to be steered so far to the
westward?"
He was compelled to turn from the puzzle and admit that he was baffled.
During the half-hour preceding noon the swell had gone down
considerably. The breeze still continued steady from the southwest. An
aneroid barometer which he had discovered in the lounge, when he had
spread Emily's berth there, stood at an ordinary normal height. So he
decided to hold on as the bark lay until after luncheon, then get under
way, run before the wind for two hours, and take another altitude.
As Paul turned away from the barometer hanging over the chart table,
Emily came up through the companionway. She wore a heavy blue flannel
shirt such as he had told her to put on and a blue walking skirt which
came to the tops of a pair of tan tennis shoes. She had plaited her hair
again and wound it round her head like a crown. The shirt was unbuttoned
at the throat, the cuffs rolled back. She presented a figure of
beautiful, efficient womanhood where she paused at the head of the
companionway, her arms half raised as if seeking Paul's approbation.
Never since the first day he had seen her had she seemed so strongly
feminine.
"You are the----" There he broke an exclamation. He halted in the step
which he had taken toward her. Emily waited, her eyes half lowered. When
his voice broke she looked up in surprise. She was pale, despite the
soft tan with which exposure had dusted her face and throat. With an
embarrassed laugh Paul went on: "You would make gunny cloth seem like
the finest silk. Never ship sailed the seas with such a chief mate."
It was a disingenuous, awkward speech. Ill at ease he hurried on to tell
her of the _Daphne's_ position by the observations he had just made; of
the plans he had formed. All the while he talked, a thought, which had
been with him ever since the moment of madness in the galley and which
had lashed him all through the morning, sprinkled salt on the wounds in
his conscience.
"I felt as if I were committing a sacrilege when I went into the little
room where the cedar chest is," Emily told him as they went forward to
prepare luncheon. "The chest is filled with a girl's wedding things. The
hat--the baby slip--I laid them away carefully and shut the lid on
them."
She looked at the sea with a shudder. Paul noticed this and realized
that he must fight, too, to keep his companion's mind on pleasant
things. He quickly directed her thoughts to the future, explaining the
division of labor that must be theirs and the vigilance they must keep
to win a triumph of the sea. Her interest was enlisted more easily than
he imagined it would be, for her thoughts were busy with a future which
was calling her in all the beauty of life.
Emily insisted upon preparing the luncheon, permitting Paul only to
shake up the fire. She did it well and, the while she was about it, he
took the opportunity to reëxamine the _Daphne's_ log. He hoped to glean
from it some things which might aid him in the navigation of the bark.
It served, however, only to deepen the mystery.
It was a clean record of routine for two weeks after the departure from
Sydney. The crew had been received aboard on Christmas night. It was not
hard to visualize the condition of the lot on such a day--the sorriest
day in the year for an outward-bound. The following morning she had
sailed--three months and eight days gone, or, as Elston had written at
noon of the 29th: "Our 96th day at sea from Sydney." This was the 98th
day.
The first thing to seize Paul's professional eye importantly was the
absence of any designation of second or third mate. If the _Daphne_ had
sailed without these officers then they must have been recruited
afterward from the forecastle gang. There was no telling from the names
of the sixteen members of the crew who these might have been. The list
comprehended every nationality under the sun.
At the end of the first two weeks three pages had been torn from the
book. A week later another page was missing. There was not a week of the
entire ninety-six days up to the hour of abandonment which was complete.
Of course, it was plain to Lavelle that the man or men who had defaced
the book had done so to destroy something that had been written against
him or them.
"But why not have hove the book overboard and been done with it?" Paul
asked himself. He could not answer the question.
The _Daphne_ had spoken no other vessels; sighted no sail so far as the
log disclosed. Fair weather had attended her to the equator, which she
had crossed on the fiftieth day out with a proper casting--Longitude 119
west. This was in the track made by sailing vessels bound from Australia
to the west coast of the United States. Then had followed calms until
she had fallen in with the northeast trades in Latitude 8 north, but
there was no word to explain why she thereafterward had been steered
into this western sea more than two thousand miles off the course she
should have held!
Emily's summons to luncheon made Paul lay aside the log. It was a
surprisingly good and substantial meal that she had whipped together.
While they ate Paul undertook the gold woman's drilling in the details
of working a ship. On the island he and Chang had filled in many a
dreary minute with talk of ships. Chang had taught her how to box the
compass, and she was proud now, indeed, to exhibit this knowledge--eager
to put it to use. Her experience in the boat had taught her much, too.
She surprised Paul and made him proud of the intelligence with which she
was able to comprehend his explanations.
"You're bully!" he exclaimed finally in admiration. "You're a woman with
an efficient brain."
This little speech made Emily glow with happiness. She had had many a
pretty compliment addressed to her by artists at that game, but never
one which gave her this pleasure. Somehow she felt that thus he would
have spoken to another man whose work he wished to praise. She
understood that Paul Lavelle held order and efficiency above everything
else. She was efficient in his sight. She fairly ran when he gave her
the word to go aft and stand by the wheel.
The donkey boiler had made a full head of steam half an hour before. Now
Paul started the engine which was connected with two hoisting drums
protruding from each side of the forward house. He hoisted and hauled
with these drums--set an additional headsail, and hauled his main yards
round. Within ten minutes he had the _Daphne_ bearing away to the
northward with the wind over her port quarter. He ran aft and by hand
swayed up the peak of the spanker as best he could. Next he set the
patent log which was trailing over the stern.
Pausing to note the effect of the spanker he there and then stored in
his memory the fact that with the peak down and a slight lee helm the
_Daphne_, with the canvas she was now carrying, would practically take
care of herself hove to in a light breeze.
When he looked over Emily's shoulder at the compass he could hear her
heart beating wildly.
"How are you heading?" he asked with a slight brusqueness.
"Northeast by north, half north," she answered accurately and with a
sharp intake of the breath.
"Keep her so."
All the gold woman could do was nod that she heard. The power of speech
seemed to have gone from her. Awe of the big fabric of iron and canvas
and web upon web of ropes and gear obeying the impulse of her small
hands was upon her. It was a big game. It was a terrific, intoxicating,
joyous sensation. She had but one distinct thought: That was to go
sailing on in the _Daphne_--just she and this man alone--forever and
ever. All the years of her past faded away--the moment obliterated their
insignificance. Her eyes, alight with love, went seeking the man's face
and found him turned away from her, entering the lounge.
"Rouse me at the slightest weather change--in two hours anyway," he
called from within.
"I will," she managed to answer in a voice that seemed to belong to
somebody else. She was trembling from head to foot with wonder--wonder
of new strange forces clamoring through her being. The one thought which
her comprehension dragged out of the riot and held was that this man
through whom and by whom she lived trusted her so that he was lying down
to sleep in her keeping; that he was depending upon her. Her woman's
soul cried out in the pride of possession.