Pain which stabbed with daggers of fire and ground and twisted like the
working of cogs stirred Paul about noon into consciousness. He lay
across the wheel grating where he had dropped, nor had the gold woman's
strength been equal to moving him inside. A pillow was under his head; a
blanket covered him. At his feet wrapped likewise in a blanket and her
head on one of the lounge cushions slept his "partner." As the hard deck
was his pallet, so she had chosen to make it hers. He realized the
wonderful meaning of this with a thrill which lifted the daze from his
aching brain and eyes.
With the instinct which has been given to women alone to serve and watch
by sense Emily awoke in the instant that Paul moved to a sitting
posture. Their glances met in a smile of trustful, mutual understanding.
"Well, partner," Paul said drily and looking round the _Daphne_, "we are
a bit battered, but I think we may say--we are still in the ring."
The humanness of the little speech lifted the cloud of the night from
her spirit. She laughed. This man could fight as she had never dreamed
it possible that human brain and flesh could, and when it was all over
he could smile. She brushed away a mist which gathered on her lashes and
struggled to her feet.
"And it is worth everything to be--be here in the ring--all the
battering--all the strife--with you--a partner like you."
"Thank you. That pays for everything."
As Paul spoke he struggled halfway to his feet only to sink back again
with his breath catching in pain. His left hand, with which he had tried
to pull himself up, fell from the wheel. He compared it with his right.
Both were swollen and purple. The cuffs of the oilskin coat dropped back
and showed his shirt wristbands choking the flesh. But it was not his
hands that hurt so much as it was his feet. They seemed ready to burst
the shoes.
A sob broke from Emily at his helplessness. She dropped on her knees at
his side and picked up his right hand. All the tenderness of her woman
nature was alive in the instant.
"What is it, Paul? Your feet--your hands!"
Tears choked further utterance. Alarm for his safety seized her. A
terrible apprehension touched her heart.
"There never was a battle fought without somebody getting hurt." He
tried to smile despite his pain. "Remember I was at the wheel a pretty
long time."
"More than thirty hours."
"That long?" He nodded. "Please get me a knife--there ought to be one in
the pantry."
"A knife?" she repeated with misgiving. He nodded.
Emily hastened below and returned with a small sharp carver. Paul held
out both hands to her.
"Cut----"
She shrank from him with a cry. His smile at the thought which he read
in her eyes made her study him with a strange, frightened glance.
"Not my hands--the wristbands, partner."
She severed the wristbands and the tears which fell on the bruised hands
seemed for the moment to salve their hurt. He offered to take the knife
then, but she knelt quickly at his feet and slashed the wet, binding
leather from them. The while she did it he kept abjuring her to be
careful not to cut off a foot by mistake. He would have been silent
could he have known how sacred to this woman was the doing of this
personal service for him. But it was just as well that he was not
silent, for as she saw what the sea had done to him it took the last
element of her will to keep from breaking down.
"Now you must go and lie down," she urged when she had helped him to get
up to a standing position.
"No, I must keep going. I----"
He swayed and sank to his knees. His will nor her strength could keep
him up. He gritted his teeth in rebellion.
"I must get up! I will--and go on!"
This came from him in a savage cry. He tried to rise again. He got one
foot under him and then fell inertly with his back against the side of
the lounge house. Abused Nature would have her due.
The sight of this strong man down, helpless, tore the heart of the gold
woman from its moorings. She knelt beside him, agony blinding her with
tears.
"Paul, you must listen to me," she pleaded passionately. "You must let
me help you inside--where you can rest--where I can do something for
you--something to bring back your strength--bathe your hands and feet."
"No, no; not that," he protested faintly.
A gentle relaxation of mind and body was stealing over him under the
pressure of the arm with which she supported his head.
"But you must," Emily went on. "It is my part--my duty, my privilege! I
will do it! You must do as I say until you are well and strong. It will
not be long."
The rebellion of his spirit grew quiet under the influence of her
surpassing tenderness. He thought it pleasant to have somebody say must
to him.
"Look, Paul, the ocean grows calmer with the minutes. The skies are
clearing. There is nothing we could do----"
"But there's so much to do----" His senses began slipping away. He was
able to murmur only, "Water," before a long blank came.
The gold woman looked round for the water canister which she had filled
and brought aft when Paul had collapsed and fallen asleep. It lay
overturned down to leeward. Laying his head on a pillow she ran forward
and refilled the canister. At the first sup which she was able to force
into his month he opened his eyes.
"More, more," he pleaded when she would have taken the canister from his
lips, thinking he could drink no more. "Oh, that is so good," he sighed,
finishing the draught. "I feel much better already."
Although Paul smiled bravely, his eyes betrayed him. Emily saw that he
was fighting to conceal a great pain.
"Come, Paul." She lifted his head again. "You must try to get inside.
You must do this for me."
He looked up into her face, and there was that in it which filled him
with meekness.
"I'll do what you say," he answered in a whisper, and he summoned his
last reserve of strength.
On hands and knees he crawled into the lounge, Emily taking as much
weight from his swollen wrists as she could. She cut the oilskin coat
from his shoulders so that he should not suffer the pain of having the
sleeves drawn over his hands. She spread a berth deftly, hurried below,
and returned with dry comfortable clothing which she found in the
lockers under the skipper's bed. The slop-chest supplies were soaking in
the water which had come in before she had succeeded in shutting the
alleyway door. She went below again and brought lint and bandages from
the medicine chest. All of these things she did without suggestion. It
was part of the new efficiency unto which she had won. Had she been
trained to do what she did she could not have done it more thoroughly.
This man whom she served might have been her own child.
Watching her quick movements from where he sat on the floor of the
lounge, Paul wondered whence she was drawing the strength that was
denied him. Nor was it given to either of them to understand this
strength which love can bring to its service. It is something not to be
understood.
"Why are you able to do this and why am I----"
"Because you have rendered your service," she interrupted. "You made me
rest. You stood alone through all the fight. At times I rebelled at it,
but now I am glad. I slept this morning and----" She paused with a
shudder. "I know I must have slept--or gone out of my senses--during the
storm. There are blanks--so many----We are all alone again, you know.
The derelict----"
"I know. Please don't think of it now. Please----"
"No--we will not think of it," she said with an effort. "Come."
She bent over him to help him to the waiting berth. A plait of her hair
swept his lips. He kissed it as she drew it back and tossed it over her
shoulder. Her bosom touched his head. She did not know that she was but
adding torture to his pain.
"No, partner," he protested quickly. "I have let you do too much
already. Let me try alone."
By elbow and knee he crawled up on the berth and sat down.
"There," he said with a small note of triumph, and he was fearful of
meeting her gaze, for he sensed that she stood waiting. "I
think--if----See how she's heading, please."
He looked out through the door at the wheel jerking in its beckets like
a horse champing a bit.
Emily went swiftly to the binnacle.
"West nor'west," she called.
"Then this breeze ought to be about nor'nor'west." He paused, and then
added quickly as he saw her, in all her innocence, coming back:
"If I could get something warm to drink--some coffee--or tea. Do you
think----"
"But you----"
"I'm sure I can do a lot for myself now. See."
He lifted his arms over his head. By a levy on all his will he concealed
the pain which tore him at the effort. It satisfied her.
"You shall have something warm to drink as soon as these hands can make
it," she said, and as he heard her going forward he threw himself on the
berth and buried his face in the pillow to smother the cry of anguish
which his lips refused to stay.
Swiftly as Emily moved to her task, it took her longer than she had
imagined it would to prepare something. The galley was in a litter of
wreckage and the range was water-soaked where the sea had poured through
the unprotected vent left by the swept-away stovepipe. When she returned
aft again it was to awaken Paul from a doze. In the meantime he had
succeeded in changing into the dry clothing she had laid out for him. He
had also bandaged his ankles and wrists.
The gold woman brought tea and hardtack biscuits and a jar of marmalade.
"It was the best I could do quickly," she explained, raising the chart
table and placing the things on it. The table had fallen some time
during the night and the silver watch lay dashed in pieces on the door,
its parts mingling with the internals of the barometer which had been
torn from its fastenings. The sextant, undamaged, lay where it had been
hurled on the starboard bench or berth opposite Paul.
"It's all right, partner," Paul said as Emily discovered the broken
things. "Don't worry."
When it came to drinking his tea his hands could not hold the mug in
which she was compelled to serve it. She gave it to him mouthful by
mouthful. The hot drink was stimulating. There was satisfaction of
hunger, too, in the biscuits and marmalade. She stopped feeding him and
drank and ate something only when he closed his lips firmly and turned
his face from her.
And all the while there was raging within him a battle against the
impulse of his consuming love to take this wonderful innocent woman to
his breast. Had he not won the right to tell her that he loved her? a
voice within kept repeating, and always the specter of the past, armed
with the resolution of silence he had formed two days before, cried:
"No; unless you are a coward."
"I think I will sleep," Paul said presently, when Emily offered to rub
and rebandage his ankles.
"Is it because you do not wish me to do it?"
"Why, no. Of course not."
"You thought nothing of doing it for me. You have done everything for me
and with a tenderness that I can remember only as part of my mother.
You are so tender and again you are so harsh--as hard and cold as
steel."
"The sea makes one harsh----" He could not control his voice and he
stopped short in fear of whither he might be led. He noticed then for
the first time that Emily's skirt was clinging to her damply. "Do please
go below and get into some fresh, dry clothing. The thought that you are
looking out for yourself will help me to sleep. Do try to lie down,
too."
"If there is nothing more I can do here I will go," she said obediently.
"But it is a strange thing: With all the wetting I have undergone I have
not the sign of a cold."
"Salt water ought to have at least one virtue," he answered. As he spoke
he nodded for her to go below.
Paul Lavelle slept only for a few minutes at a time, if he really slept
at all during the next couple of hours. He heard the gold woman descend
the companionway and he followed her footsteps through the cabin. Even
when all was quiet below and he knew that Emily must be lying down
wakefulness rode his brain. He could see the future stretching away in
loneliness without this woman in his life, and for the first time in all
the suffering he had known he thought of a way out. In his blackest
hours of the past ten years this had never occurred to him. To fight on
to the end without cease, with never a let-up in the drive, had been the
ruling impulse of his spirit. To fight on now in silence and give life
to this precious woman; to stand up manfully no matter what the odds,
with his whole soul in the battle, until he should bring her to
safety--this was the one course. After that there would be a way if it
were denied him that he should not suffer death in the giving of life to
her. A gnawing pain in his left hand finally drew his attention to it.
He saw that the green jade ring which he had worn constantly since
leaving Yokohama was choking the finger which it encircled. He sat up to
take it off, and as he did so he was startled to hear a strange heavy
footfall in the cabin. He was on the point of trying to rise when Emily
came up through the companionway. It was her footfall that had alarmed
him. As her head and shoulders rose above the teakwood rail around the
staircase, the sun, now far down in the west, shot a golden beam through
the port over Paul's berth. It touched her head with the fire of a
divine beauty.
"Oh, I woke you," she whispered tremulously, and at the same time she
sensed his depression of spirit.
"No, I was awake," was all he could say for the moment. It came from his
lips in a barely audible voice.
To be loved by and by love to possess a woman like this--the world, aye
a thousand worlds--were well lost! That was the thought which excluded
everything else from his mind.
The glow of a sleep which had refreshed and restored lingered in the
cheeks of the gold woman and in the tips of her shelly ears. Her mouth
was retouched with its natural delicate scarlet. Her sensitive nostrils
quivered at the sunlight's touch. Her blue-shirted bosom, heaving ever
so slightly from the exertion of climbing the companionway, moved the
loose plaits of her hair hanging over her shoulders like ropes of molten
gold. Hardship had drawn her features only slightly. Youth's capacity of
quick recovery was hers. Physically she was little changed, but there
was a subtle difference in her. Her whole being now seemed to breathe:
"I have no doubt of life."
"I've changed and slept," she said as Paul's glance swept her. "I feel
as if there had never been a storm."
She stepped backward with a smile.
"Are you laughing at them?" she asked. She drew back her skirt slightly
and exhibited a pair of rubber sea boots which were inches too large
for her. There was something boyish in the action that did draw a smile
from Lavelle. "You are laughing," she went on, and pouted prettily. "But
do so as much as you wish. They're sensible."
"Right you are. They're the very thing for decks like this. We should
have thought of them before."
"They're much too large, but I've put on socks and socks and stuffed the
toes with things."
This statement of a most obvious fact brought a genuine laugh from Paul.
It passed quickly as the pain caused by the ring reasserted itself.
"Oh, let me do that for you," Emily said, crossing to his side. Before
he could object she had knelt by him and taken his hand. "Why did I not
think of this hours ago? Poor, poor fingers. Am I hurting you? There?"
The perfume of her hair, of her breath, of her whole being was about
him. As the ring came off his hand closed on hers and he slipped the
jade, with its strange seal in Chinese hieroglyphics, over her third
finger. It was her left hand that he had chosen.
"I want you to take this, Emily--to wear it." He was fighting hard to
control his voice. "Chang gave it to me the day I left Yokohama--when
the old chap thought he would never see me again: the day you and I
met."
"But, Paul, I----Poor old Chang would----"
"You must keep it. Have I never told you what it says--that seal?" She
shook her head. "In Canton there is a very old temple. It is doubtful
who built it. It stands near--not far from the Hall of the Five Hundred
Wise Men. This seal is copied from its altars: 'Man has many reckonings
with man, but only one with God.'"
The gold woman looked up, starting to repeat the line as Paul finished
it. What was on her lips died there, unutterable in the light of his
gaze, and what it awakened in her. Her eyes flashed back to his an
answer of fire. The barriers of his determination crashed.
"Oh, my darling!" he cried in anguish, and he drew her head to his
breast.
The gold woman's mouth met his and clung, rendering with flame its first
kiss of love.
"Oh, I love you, woman of all the world, love you, love you! I am living
alone by the power of this love. It has been mine for ages. It has
been--it is my strength! It is my soul! It is the breath of my soul!
Its single impulse, its desire, its law, its life!"
He held her from him and searched her face.
"And I love you. I have always loved you, my----"
A burning kiss blurred the words on her lips.
In silence they held each other's gaze in adoration until suddenly a
shadow of dread darkened the man's face.
"Another storm such as we have just passed through----We could not live
through it, darling. There was hardly a minute of last night or the day
before which did not come armed with a summons to judgment. And, oh, the
bitterness that was mine when I thought that you could not know; that I
could not tell you what was in the soul of me!"
"But, Paul, even had death come to us then, I should have known
it--afterward. I should have known it and you would have known that I
loved you."
The firm conviction of this speech filled Paul with a new kind of awe of
her.
"Darling," he murmured, and yet, as he kissed her eyes, the specter of
the past laid its cold finger upon his lips. He drew back. "Some day you
may hate me."
"Paul, Paul! Stop!"
Her voice was fraught with fear.
"If we live the days will come when--I come to you a broken, spurned
thing. I have no place among the men of my people. I am wild! Crazy! My
tongue should be torn from me for telling you what I have. I have no
right to tell--I have no right to love! And you of all women----Emily,
there is something--that night on the _Yakutat_, I must tell you--we
cannot----"
Her hand closed his lips.
"No, no, no, Paul. You mustn't. I know. There is nothing to tell me.
There is no past to come between us. From the moment that I knew on the
_Cambodia_ that you were Paul Lavelle I knew the truth. There is no
past. But there is a future, my darling--our future." She drew his head
to her and kissed his eyes. "My fearless stars. For my faith's reward I
ask only this: Your silence until I say you may speak. Promise."
"I promise," he answered, with a strange, indefinable hope burgeoning in
his heart.
As he spoke the sun passed from the ports of the lounge and brought Paul
Lavelle from his dreaming to the reality of a peril which he had too
long forgotten. Emily read his thought.
"I will go forward and prepare our evening meal," she said. She kissed
him and went out of the lounge, and at her going torment ruled his
heart.
"My God, what have I been doing! What have I been thinking? Where is my
manhood that I should be lying here sacrificing her? What a weak,
shameless love mine must be!"
A feeling of abasement scourged him as each thought clamored for an
answer. Although his body rebelled, he arose and kept his feet. Groping
below, he found a pair of boots which would admit his ankles and went
forward.
Emily, with a cry of amazement, discovered him suddenly, standing in the
engine room door.
"Paul, you must go back. You must rest," she commanded. "It's clear. Go
back. How can you stand?"
"There's too much Irish in me, dear," he answered, forcing a smile. "You
must never let an Irishman stop to nurse his hurts. He can't keep his
mind on pain and the fight at the same time."
"But the fight is over."
"It's never over--when the sea's on the other side."
He was determined and she wisely forbore to say anything else about his
physical condition. The meal that she prepared--the hot coffee, the
warmth of the galley fire--brought life in them to a glow. Tomatoes
formed one of the dishes she cooked. Paul shuddered at the sight of it.
"Not unless I am starving," he said solemnly.
As they rose from the meal Emily sensed that something was lacking.
"Isn't there something else, dearheart? What is it you wish you had?"
"A good cigar--a big, fat, black fellow!" he laughed. "Then, the world
would be complete." His glance interpreted his meaning.
"But there is tobacco aboard to chew," she suggested with a smile.
"I never attempted to chew tobacco but once in my life. I was only a
little fellow visiting my grandmother's. The gardener provided it, or
rather I took it from his workbench. Just as I settled down to prove to
myself that I was a man grandmother called me into the house. I was
caught. In my fear I swallowed the cud." He made a wry face and then
went on in a dreamy way: "During the storm--whether it was last night or
the night before, I can't remember--I thought if I could only get a
piece of tobacco to chew there was no storm that blew that could put me
down. Funny, wasn't it?"
Emily was silent, nor did Paul seem to notice it. She could think only
of what his stress of mind must have been during those long black hours.
It was his last personal reference that evening to what had happened
during the two nights and a day of the _Daphne's_ war with the sea. She
felt that he did not wish to speak of it. Nor did she.
"As soon as the stars come out I am going to find out where we are----"
Emily interrupted him with a laugh. "Where the _Daphne_ is," he added,
catching her thought, and joining her laugh.
"I am with the stars, Paul. I feel as if we were alone in space
together."
She was standing beside him, looking out through the galley door at the
setting sun. He stooped and kissed the crown of her head reverently.
He told her presently that it was more important to put the bark in a
condition to get away from where she was than to find out where she was.
One thing was certain: the _Daphne_ had plenty of sea room. The weather
promised fair and therewith he summoned all his strength to take
advantage of it.
While Emily busied herself about the galley, Paul renewed the fire under
the donkey boiler.
"Bully old crew," he said to the engine and patting its piston in the
familiar way men come to treat inanimate things which serve them. "Only
you can't go aloft. You can set sail, but you can't furl it. But you're
not going to fail us. You won't, will you?"
He was starting aft to fill the lamps there when Emily came to the
engine room door. The impulse of action that was driving him was in her,
too.
"Only give me something to do, Paul, and I'll do it just like a real
sailorman."
"Keep your eye on this steam gauge. When it goes to sixty, open the fire
door. It mightn't be a bad idea if you learned to sound the ship.
There's the sounding rod on that hook. You will find the well between
the pumps. Come. I'll show you."
"I know where it is," she said eagerly.
A half-foot of water was sloshing in the port alleyway and in and out of
the rooms opening upon it as Paul entered the cabin. He found the plug
of a scupper just inside the door and pulled it out. Glancing out on
deck, he saw the vent of another scupper. He located this in the mate's
room. As he pulled the plug free and withdrew his hand a sheet of paper
stuck to it. Half curiously he carried it into the after saloon where he
filled the lamps which would be most useful. It was some writing of the
poor Sussex lad's, was his thought. As he lighted the first lamp the
paper caught his eye again. He picked it up. The first line startled him
and led his eyes leaping through the rest of the water-blurred text in a
breathless comprehension.
"In the name of God, Amen: Being of sound and disposing mind, I,
Emily Granville, spinster, of San Francisco, California, do declare
this my last will and testament: After the payment of all just
debts the rest, residue and remainder of my estate, real and
personal, wherever it may be, of which I die possessed, is
bequeathed to Paul Lavelle, sometimes called Whitridge. I hereby
revoke all wills heretofore made by me. In the event of the said
Paul Lavelle, sometimes called Whitridge, not surviving, I direct
that one-fourth of my entire estate be divided, share and share
alike, among those named in said former wills and that the
three-fourths remainder be converted by the State into a fund to be
used and administered by the State for the succor and assistance of
all persons, regardless of race or creed, who may suffer by
disaster upon any of the seas. I further direct that this fund
shall be known as the Lavelle-Granville fund. If any heir under the
said former wills shall contest this will, Paul Lavelle surviving
or not surviving, they shall forfeit to him or the said fund any
interest they may have had or may claim in the said estate and
receive $1. I do this in the realization of the imminent peril of
death and as a testimony to the genuine manhood of Paul Lavelle;
and also in memory of my father. My faith is that Paul Lavelle in
justice must survive and that this will shall come to the eyes of
men properly and without suspicion. The language I have used is
remembered from my father's will with the hope that it will be
binding legally.
"Aboard the bark _Daphne_ at sea, March 31, 191-.
"EMILY GRANVILLE."
Paul Lavelle read this wonderful document a second and even a third
time. It was epic in his sight. He really had no distinct thought. His
mind was whelmed by awe of the character of the gold woman which the wet
sheet of paper revealed. There came to him a picture of her writing at
the desk in Elston's room on the evening of the day they had come aboard
the _Daphne_. It was then that she had written this will. He kissed the
paper because it seemed part of her and then tore it into little bits.
Emily was withdrawing the sounding rod from the well when Paul returned
to the deck. Plainly she was in distress.
"I'm afraid, Paul, I'm a poor sailor," she said as he came to her side.
"I can't tell anything from this."
Paul took the rod from her and dried it.
"You sounded as the ship rolled. The way to do is to wait until she
comes on an even keel. Like this. Now."
"That is just the way I did."
A moment later he hauled the rod out and gasped in dread. It showed four
and one-half feet of water in the _Daphne's_ hold!
There surged through him a second later the rage with which he had met
and fought the storm. Here was a new and unexpected gage of battle. It
swept from him the last vestige of pain and fatigue. Instantly the
suggestion of flame, characteristic of the man in action, marked his
every movement.
"She's an iron vessel with a coal cargo," he hurriedly told Emily. "If
the storm has strained her----" A mist came into his eyes and he glanced
overside. "That cursed sea isn't going to get you! It isn't! Come on!"
Emily exhibited but a momentary apprehension of danger. The joy of
working with Paul in a freely admitted equality swept it away. The only
recognition of her femininity was his insistence upon her wearing a pair
of gloves which he had brought from McGavock's room.
Together they got the pumps rigged to the donkey engine and started them
sucking two black streams out of the hold.
"Two hours will tell us whether the enemy's in force or not--maybe
sooner," Paul said as he left Emily to go about the ship with a lantern
to discover if possible if the _Daphne_ had sprung a leak in her
topsides. When he came to the fore hatch his hopes lifted at the thought
that the sea might have entered here through the uncalked and
untarpaulined covers. It was a dreary tangle of hamper which met his
gaze in this part of the vessel. For an instant he was puzzled to
observe that everything he touched left a black, oily smear. He crawled
up under the forecastle head and there found what he considered an
explanation of the _Daphne's_ survival. Two barrels of engine oil were
lashed to the heel of the bowsprit. One of these had been sprung by the
storm and was still weeping its contents upon the deck. It was this oil
running out of the hawse pipes and the scuppers which had calmed the
bark's tempestuous way.
This discovery relieved Paul's mind. He had felt compelled to believe
that at times during the storm either he or the vessel had been
bewitched. In all his long experience he had never seen a vessel make
such good weather of things as the _Daphne_. If he had been in command
with a full crew under him he would have poured out oil just as accident
had done it. Going aft he paused to tell Emily about the oil and to
report everything apparently tight forward.
"A barrel of oil didn't stand for more than thirty hours' steering, did
it?" she asked, with pride flashing from her eyes.
In silence Paul went on aft to complete his examination of the ship. It
felt strange to have a champion. He found the cabins practically free of
water. Everything seemed tight. He stopped for a second in the
derelict's door.
"Poor old fellow was out of his head," he muttered. There came to him a
picture of the stranger's departure. The loss of this man, with only a
flicker of life and mind in him, was but a small thing compared with the
destruction of the four-master and all hands in the fullness of
strength. But the thought of the derelict moved Paul with a great
tenderness. This man had known his father.
"He believed I was 'The Prince,'" he mused. "Well, father, if there's
any way of knowing--and I'm sure there must be--you know I've tried to
play the game squarely."
An unsettling thought broke in upon this. What had made him think that
the derelict was Driscoll, a quartermaster of the _Yakutat_? He shut his
mind against what he believed was a vagary. There was no doubt that he
must have been out of his senses many times during the storm.
Making his way through the lounge to the poop he paused to examine the
sextant. It was undamaged. It made him think of the chronometer. He
hurried below to the chart room and wound it and then went forward.
The pumps were still bringing forth their two black streams. Emily stood
beside them oiling their bearings with the touch of an engineer.
"I can't make out where this water is coming from. Either she's strained
or it pounded in through the fore hatch," he told her. "Everything about
deck seems all right. I've looked overside, too. Everything seems all
right there. Her masts went clear of her. How did you manage to close
that bulkhead door all alone?"
"I don't know, Paul," she answered frankly. She winced. "I don't know
where I found the strength to do it. The whole sea was coming in, it
seemed. I remember I was very angry. But I have been thinking about the
stranger----" Her eyes filled with tears. "Could it be that I--I shut
him out in the night--in that----"
"No, no, dear, put that thought away from you forever. He was gone
beyond human aid or recall before you got below. I remember your going
away from the wheel to do something. You had hardly closed the lounge
door when----Let us not think of it."
"He was----" Emily interrupted.
"Let us shut out every thought of those two nights, dear, as long as we
can. Shut it out with the past. Soon enough black nights like that will
come between us. Won't you try?"
As Paul spoke he took one of her gloved hands and patted it. There was
an appeal in his gaze: a flash of the old pain which she had been
praying she might never see in those gray eyes again.
"We will not think of it, my 'prince,'" she answered.
With a quick smile he turned away and went forward. She watched him
until he disappeared through the door of the sail room in the port side
of the forward house.
In less than two hours there was a sudden cessation of the black streams
from below and a weird moaning of the pumps where their plungers pounded
emptily.
"Paul! Paul!"
The gold woman sent this cry forward, and as she did so she cut off the
steam as she had seen Paul do. She thrilled at the sight of the engine
stopping at the touch of her small hand. She was laughing as he came to
the engine room door and saw what she had done.
"The pumps----There is no more water!" she cried eagerly.
"Give her another turn and let me hear," he said, and he went to the
mainmast.
Now the engine turned over at a twist of her wrist.
"Avast!" called Paul at the sound of the dry plungers.
The engine stopped instantly at the word of command. "We're all right,
Emily. That water must have pounded through the fore hatch."
She met him with a laugh of sheer joy which made her even white teeth
gleam. It was joy at the lifting of the cloud which had fallen upon both
of them at the discovery that the _Daphne_ might have sprung a leak. It
was joy, too, that comprehended an ability to do things with her hands.
"I think I should rather be engineer than mate, Paul. It is a lot of fun
making this engine go and stop."
"You will have an opportunity to be mate, engineer, and midshipmite in
another couple of hours. We are going to have a bit of a moon to-night
and I am going to get as much sail bent as possible."
Under the stimulation of some strong coffee they began immediately
afterward to bend sail. With the donkey engine's aid it seemed
ridiculously easy to snake the heavy rolls of canvas out of the sail
room and hoist them aloft. Emily, with a woman's natural quickness, had
the trick of using the hoisting drums in perfect control five minutes
after Paul explained it to her. It did not surprise him nor was this so
because of any personal reason. She thought when he told her that she
was as good a working force as any two sailors and better than as many
men landlubbers, that it was but an impulse of his natural kindness
cheering her.
"Not a bit taffy, dear," said he, noting her doubt. "Every word true.
Only thing a woman lacks is bull strength and perhaps judgment in
personal matters."
The gold woman laughed.
"Are you arraigning my judgment?" she asked.
"No, but what I said is quite true," he continued seriously. "You can
take a woman or girl or boy and in one trick at a wheel teach them to
steer better than men who have spent a lifetime at sea."
Emily got that pleasure out of the tasks in which she helped which comes
to one working under the direction of another who knows what he is
about. Nothing seemed too hard; nothing seemed hard enough. The will of
the man was inspiring. As she watched him climbing aloft or dropping
below along a shroud or backstay it seemed impossible to believe that he
had been down and helpless but a few hours before.
The moon came to light their work. By about 10 o'clock they had bent a
new foresail, a new spanker, and new boom jib.
"That much will give us another little lease on this world," Paul said
as he called quits for the night. "To-morrow morning we'll get a couple
more rags on her, after some fashion."
But his work was not done. The while Emily prepared a snack of supper he
went aft and took two stellar observations. The reckoning that they gave
him was, indeed, startling. The _Daphne_ was five hundred and
eighty-five miles northeast of her last position! The navigator could
hardly believe his eyes. He took a third set of observations. The result
was the same. There had been times during the storm when he had realized
that the _Daphne_ was driving with terrific speed. But he had
anticipated nothing like this. Yet in this moment the sight of her clean
clipper underbody came to him as he had seen it the morning he and the
gold woman swam out from the Isle of Hope. Allowances for the distance
made from the first noon until the time the storm had struck the
_Daphne_ and of her drift all that day gave him the wonderful speed
average of more than sixteen knots an hour while the storm lasted. Still
doubt lingered until he drew out of his memory a day's work of the
famous clipper _Flying Cloud_--433¼ statute miles from noon to noon.
The _Daphne_, by this reckoning, was lying in the great circle sailing
track of vessels bound from the Japan coast toward San Francisco and
Puget Sound. All thought of trying to make the Hawaiian Islands left
him. The California coast lay less than three thousand miles to the
eastward. The prevailing winds in this track from then on would be from
the west and northwest. The _Daphne_, with fair weather, should be able
to make this distance in a month. If no vessel should rescue them they
could win home in that time.
"Oh, you _Daphne_ packet!" he cried in glee as he hurried forward to
tell Emily the good news. He went with a snatch of "The Dreadnaught"
bursting from him.
"'With everything drawing aloft and alow
She's a Liverpool packet! Lord God see her go!'"
Emily was on the point of going to the galley door to call him when she
caught that bit of heart-lifting song. A wild, compelling note of the
sea was in it.
"We're homeward bound in a clipper ship, lassie!" he called as he
discovered her. Nor would he eat or drink until he had told her where
the storm had carried the _Daphne_ and what it meant to them. He was
like a big, wholesome boy and she told him so. His enthusiasm stirred
her with a desire to be under way immediately. The _Daphne_ became
personal in the gold woman's thoughts as Paul described her
capabilities, and therewith she understood the love of a man for a ship
which women rarely do.
"Unless we're picked up by some other vessel we'll be up with the Golden
Gate in less than a month!"
Emily's face clouded at the suggestion of another vessel rescuing them.
Paul laughed.
"You may not understand, but I wish we might sail the _Daphne_ into our
own home port. Think what a prize it would mean to you."
A hope lived in his heart for an instant that this might come true. It
was gone when he answered her.
"The first vessel that comes along we go in her, lassie; and leave the
_Daphne_ to the sea."
Yet as Emily lay down in the lounge a little while later and saw Paul
hang a light of distress in the mizzen rigging, the strange wish that it
would go unseen was uppermost in her heart. She wanted the _Daphne_ to
remain his, but she would not admit to herself the reason upon which
that hope was predicated.