ENLIGHTENMENT
The captain was enthusiastic when he heard of Elsie’s idea for the
protection of the main deck—“an excellent notion,” he termed it, but he
scouted the suggestion that she should undertake the work herself.
“You little know what hauling taut heavy canvas means,” he said when
they met at lunch. “It would tear the skin off your hands. No, Miss
Maxwell, we can put our Chileans on to that job. I have something
better for you to do. Can you map?”
“I have copied heaps of plans for my father,” she told him.
“Excellent! At noon to-day I took an observation, so I intend to devote
an hour to revising the chart. Will you help? Joey is in the scheme
already. Then the Admiralty will gracefully acknowledge the survey
supplied by Miss Elsie Maxwell, Captain Arthur Courtenay, and Joey,
otherwise known as ‘the pup.’”
His allusion to the dog by name recalled “José the Wine-bag,” but Elsie
thought she would retain that tiny scrap of detective information for
the present. So she simply said:
“You will explain to me my part of the undertaking, of course?”
“Certainly. You must first correct the Index Error. Then you subtract
the Dip and the Refraction in Altitude, take the sun’s semi-diameter
from the Nautical Almanac, and add the Parallax. Do you follow me?”
“Perfectly; it sounds the easiest thing. But I don’t wish to hear the
remarks of the Admiralty when they see the result.”
“I am interested in navigation, to the slight extent possible to a mere
yachtsman: may I join you?” interposed Christobal.
“Oh, yes,” said the captain off-handedly.
Elsie repressed the smile on her lips. Did the worthy doctor fear
developments if this harmless map-making progressed in his absence? She
imagined, too, that Courtenay’s acquiesence in Christobal’s desire to
be present was not wholly in accordance with his innermost wish. She
promptly crushed that dangerous fancy. The captain was only seeking for
some excuse to take her away from the rough work of rigging the extra
awnings. How odd that the other thought should have cropped up first!
“You still think the _Kansas_ will win clear of her difficulties?” she
said rather hurriedly. “I am sorry to bring King Charles’s head into
the conversation, but, after all, the ship’s safety is essential to
your survey.”
“Every hour strengthens my opinion,” was the confident reply. “Suarez
says that there is a reasonable chance of occasional brief spells of
fine weather at this period of the year. At any rate, the gale may not
be absolutely continuous, and Walker is assured that he can patch up
the engines for half speed. Given a calm day, a day like this, for
instance, we can reach the Straits in a few hours.”
“And the Indians?”
“I leave them out of my reckoning. What else can I do?”
“Kill ’em,” said Tollemache.
Courtenay glanced sharply at his fellow-countryman. He disliked these
references to the Alaculof bogy in Elsie’s presence. It was enough that
it should exist without being constantly paraded. Though the girl
herself was the culprit, Tollemache should have left the topic alone.
But Tollemache was a man of fixed ideas. The device of canvas shields
to repel boarders had set him thinking how much more effective it would
be if the savages were kept at a distance. He well knew that they would
not be deterred by a shotgun and a few revolvers, once they had made up
their minds to carry the ship by assault. To explain himself, he was
compelled to speak at some length, and his swarthy face flushed under
the unusual strain.
“We have dynamite aboard,” he said. “Why not construct a couple of
infernal machines which could be fired by pulling a string, and let
them drift towards the canoes when the Indians are near enough?”
“It is worth trying,” was Courtenay’s brief comment, though he saw
later that Tollemache’s suggestion was a very useful one.
Elsie’s first task was to prepare a large-scale drawing of the southern
part of Hanover Island, as set forth in Admiralty Chart No. 1837 (Sheet
2, Patagonia), which is the only trustworthy record available for
shipmasters using the outer passage between the Gulf of Penas and the
Straits of Magellan. It was a simple matter to fill in the few contours
given. The neighboring small islands were shown in reasonable detail,
but the whole western coast of Hanover Island itself consisted of a
dotted line and a solitary peak, Stokes Mountain, the height of which
could be estimated and its position triangulated from the sea. Even
Concepcion Straits on the north and the San Blas Channel on the south
were marked in those significant dotted lines. The coast was
practically unknown to civilized man. One of the last fortresses of the
world, grim, inhospitable, it guarded its secret recesses with crag and
glacier and reef-strewn sea.
It was borne in on the girl, while she worked, that the chiefest marvel
in her present condition was the triumph of science over nature in its
most hostile mood. The _Kansas_ boasted all the comforts and luxuries
of a well-equipped hotel. Seated at the same table as herself was a
skilful sailor, using logarithms, secants and cosecants, polar
distances and hour angles, as if he were in some university class-room.
Near the door, enjoying the warm sun, Boyle was stretched on a
deck-chair, while Christobal was offering a half-hearted protest
against his patient’s manifest enjoyment of the first cigar he had been
able to smoke since a Chilean knife disturbed certain sensory nerves
between his shoulder-blades. The every sociableness of the gathering
was a paradox: the truth lay with the ice-capped hills and the ape-like
nomads who infested the humid forests of the lower slopes.
She stole a glance at Courtenay. He was so keenly engaged on the
business in hand, so bent on achieving accuracy in his figures, that
she chided herself for her morbid reverie. Then she wondered if he ever
gave a thought to that promised wife of his, who must soon suffer the
agony of knowing that the _Kansas_ was overdue.
Elsie was sufficiently well acquainted with shipping to realize the
sensation that would be created by the first cablegram from Coronel
anouncing the non-appearance of the steamer in the Straits. The
Valparaiso newspapers would be full of surmises as to the vessel’s
fate. They would publish full details of the valuable cargo—and give a
list of the passengers and officers. Ah! Ventana would learn then, if
he had not heard of it earlier, that she was on board. And he alone
would understand the true reason of her flight from Chile. Her cheeks
flushed, and she applied herself more closely to the chart she was
copying. She had left a good deal unsaid in her brief statement that
morning. How strange, how utterly unexpected it was, that Ventana’s
name should fall from Courtenay’s lips—Courtenay, of all men living!
And what did Isobel mean, during that last dreadful scene ere she was
carried away to the boat, by screaming in her frenzy that Ventana had
taken “an ample vengeance.” Vengeance for what? Had the half-breed
dared to make the same proposal to the rich and highly placed Isobel
Baring that he did not scruple to put before the needy governess?
Surely that was impossible. There were limits even to his audacity—
“Well, how is my chief hydrographer progressing?”
Courtenay’s cheery voice banished the unwelcome specter of Ventana.
Elsie started.
“I do believe you were day-dreaming,” said the captain with a surprised
smile. “A penny for your thoughts?”
“I don’t think you can pay me,” she retorted, hoping to cover her
confusion.
“Won’t you accept Chilean currency?”
“Not on the high seas.”
“But you are on dry land. Please make a dot on your map at 51° 14′ 9″
South, and 74° 59′ 3″ West. That is the present position of the ship.
Are you listening, Boyle? According to the chart, the ship is high and
dry, four miles inland.”
“Huh!” grunted Boyle. “Reminds me of a skipper I once sailed with,
bound from Rotterdam to Hull in ballast. There was a Scotch mist best
part of the trip, an’ the old man loaded with schnapps to keep out the
damp. First time he got a squint of the sun he went as yaller as a
Swede turnip. ‘It’s all up with us, boys,’ he said. ‘My missus is forty
fathoms below. We’ve just sailed over York.’ You see, he’d made a
mistake of a few degrees.”
“Boyle,” said Courtenay, severely, “what has come to you? Are you
actually making a joke?”
“I think I must have bin tongue-tied before, captain.”
“Before what?”
“Before that lame duck in the fo’c’sle stuck his tobacco-cutter into my
jaw. I can talk like a prize parrot now—can’t I, Miss Maxwell?”
Elsie was laughing, but she remembered the subject on which Boyle had
displayed his new-found power of speech; and human parrots are apt to
say too much.
“Please don’t tell any more funny little stories,” she cried, “or I
shall be putting dots in the wrong places.”
“And causing us to waste time scandalously. Are you ready, Miss
Maxwell? Let me pin this compass card on the table. Use the parallel
ruler; regard each inch as a mile, and I’ll do the rest by guesswork.”
Courtenay took his binoculars, and went on to the bridge. He called out
the apparent distance of each landmark he could distinguish, described
it, and gave its true bearing. In the result, Elsie found she had
prepared a clear and fairly accurate chart of the bay and its
headlands, while the position of the distant range of mountains was
marked with tolerable precision. But Courtenay was far from being
satisfied.
“If I had a base line, or even a fresh set of points taken higher up
the inlet, I could improve on my part of the survey,” he said. “Yours
is admirable, Miss Maxwell. Of course, I know you are an artist; but
mapping is a thing apart. That is first-rate.”
“Perhaps you may be able to secure fresh data when the _Kansas_ puts to
sea again,” said Christobal.
“If I am conning the wheel, I must leave the chart-making entirely to
my assistant,” replied the captain, lightly. “But I do mean to peep a
little further into our estuary. Before the ship sails I may have
another spare hour to devote to it.”
“In what way?” asked Elsie.
“By utilizing the canoe. A mile or so higher up the channel I should be
clear of the bluff which hides Otter Creek. I imagine it will be
possible then to see the full extent of the bay. I must get you to
sound Suarez as to the lie of the land.”
“I hope you will do nothing of the sort,” protested Elsie, earnestly.
“Why? Do you think the canoe unsafe?”
“No, no; not that. But those waiting Indians. They might see you.”
“Oh, the Indians again! I shall run no risk of that sort. It would
indeed be the irony of fate if the _Kansas_ slipped her cable and left
the skipper behind.”
“Huh! No fear! She’d follow you like Joey. I was tellin’ Miss Maxwell
what a lucky fellow you were. Besides, if you went, I’d be in command,
and you know what would happen then. By gad, if all else failed, the
bloomin’ tub would turn turtle in the Pool.”
To emphasize his remarks, Boyle blew a big smoke ring, and shot several
smaller rings through it.
Elsie felt Christobal’s critical eye on her; she was shading the
outlines of the map, and trusted that her head was bent sufficiently to
hide the tell-tale color which leapt to her face. But Courtenay wished
to hear more of this.
“I hope you do not credit everything my chief officer says about me,”
he said, glancing over her shoulder at the drawing. “Nor about
himself,” he added, as she was too busy to look up. “To my knowledge,
he has refused the command of two ships since we both joined the
_Kansas_.”
“Home orders!” cried Boyle, who was certainly beyond himself. Probably
he missed his regular vocal exercise owing to lack of a crew. “My
missus says to me, ‘You just stick to Captain Courtenay, young
feller-me-lad. He’s one of the get-rich-quick sort. P’raps you’ll learn
from him how to dodge Board of Trade inquiries.’ You stand on what I
told you, Miss Maxwell. You remember? Commodore! Huh!”
Something must be done to stem the long-pent flood of Mr. Boyle’s
gossip. Elsie turned on him desperately.
“How do you expect me to listen to you, and work at the same time?” she
said.
“Sorry,” he answered, composing himself to sleep.
Courtenay glanced at the chronometer.
“I must be off,” he announced. “Tollemache may need some help with his
bombs, and those Chileans require looking after.”
Christobal, too, quitted the chart-room to visit his patients. He had
said very little while he sat there, and Elsie did not know whether to
laugh or cry at the tragic-comedy of her environment. She was only
certain of one thing—she would like to box Boyle’s ears. She was
completely at a loss to account for his persistent efforts to drag in
references to their prior conversation. She dared not catechize him.
That would be piling up more difficulties for the future. But what
possessed him to blurt out such embarrassing details in the presence of
the two men whom she most wished to remain in ignorance of them?
She peeped at Boyle sideways. His eyes were closed, the cigar was
between his teeth, and he had a broad grin on his face. She could not
guess that the once taciturn chief officer of the _Kansas_ was saying
to himself:
“My godfather, how Pills glared! There will be trouble on this ship
about a woman before long, or I’m a Dutchman. An’ didn’t the skipper
rise at the fly, too! Huh!”
He uttered the concluding monosyllable aloud.
“Did you speak?” inquired Elsie, severely.
“Eh? No, Miss Maxwell.”
“Oh, I thought you wanted to say something.”
“Not a word. Too much talking makes my back stiff.”
“Your physical peculiarities are amazing, Mr. Boyle.”
“Huh, it’s odd how things take some people. I once knew a chap, skipper
of the _Flower of the Ocean_, who could drink a hogshead of beer an’ be
as sober as a judge except in one leg, an’ that was a wooden one.”
She laughed. It was impossible to be vexed with him.
“You have met some very remarkable shipmasters, if all you say be
true,” she cried.
“Sailors are queer folk, believe me. That same brig, _Flower of the
Ocean_, an’ a pretty flower she was, too—all tar an’ coal-dust, with a
perfume that would poison a rat—put into Grimsby one day, an’ the crowd
went ashore. They kicked up a shindy with some bar-loungers, an’ the
fur flew. When the police came, old Peg-leg, the skipper, you know, was
the only man left in the place, havin’ unshipped his crutch for the
fight. ‘What have you bin a-doin’ of here—throwin’ grapes about?’ asked
the peeler, gazin’ at the floor, suspicious-like. ‘Grapes,’ said
Dot-an’-carry-one, ‘them ain’t grapes. Them’s eyeballs!’ Another time—”
“Mr. Boyle!” shrieked Elsie, and fled.
“Huh!” he grunted. “Off before the wind when she hears a Sunday-school
yarn like that. Wonder what she’d say if I told her about the plum-duff
with beetles for Sultanas. Girls are brought up nowadays like orchids.
They shouldn’t be let loose in this wicked world.”
As Elsie passed along the promenade deck she saw Courtenay, Tollemache,
and Walker deep in consultation. They were arranging a percussion fuse
of fulminating mercury. While she was watching them, Walker dropped a
broken furnace bar on top of a small package placed on an iron block.
Instantly there was a sharp report, and Joey, who was an interested
observer, jumped several feet. The men laughed, and she heard Courtenay
say:
“That is the right proportion of fulminate. Now, Tollemache, I’ll help
you to fix them. We do not know the moment those reptiles may choose to
attack.”
So the captain did not leave the Alaculof menace altogether out of
count. Something rose in her throat, some wave of emotion which
threatened her splendid serenity. She ran rather than walked to her
cabin, flung herself on the bed, and sobbed piteously. It had to come,
this tempest of tears. When desperate odds demanded unflinching
courage, she faced them dry-eyed, with steadfast heart. But to-day, in
the bright sunshine and apparent security of the ship, sinister
death-shadows tortured her into rebellion. She did not stop to ask
herself why she wept; being a woman, she yielded to the gust, and when
it had ended, with the suddenness of a summer shower, she smiled
through the vanishing tears. Her first concern was that none should be
aware of her weakness.
“How stupid of me,” she murmured. “What would the men think if they
knew I broke down in this fashion.”
She looked in a mirror. In the clear light without, any one could see
she had been crying, and there was so much work to be done that she did
not wish to remain in her stateroom until all tokens of the storm had
passed. She searched for a powder-puff, and was at a loss to discover
its whereabouts until she recollected that the doctor had borrowed it
for the use of a man slightly scalded when his own supply of antiseptic
powder was exhausted. So she went into Isobel’s room, entering it for
the first time since the _Kansas_ struck on the shoal. The two cabins
communicated, as Mr. Baring had gone to the expense of having a door
broken through the partition for the girls’ use during the voyage. If
Elsie had not already given way to tears she must have faltered now at
the sight of her friend’s belongings strewed in confusion over the
floor, chairs, dressing-table, and bed. Isobel possessed a gold-mounted
dressing-case the size of an ordinary portmanteau. It held an
assortment of pretty, and mostly useless, knick-knacks, and they had
all been tumbled out in a frantic hurry. At first Elsie flinched from
further scrutiny, but common sense told her that this despondent mood
must be fought. She dropped to her knees, found a mother-o’-pearl
_poudrier_, and picked up other scattered articles and replaced them in
the dressing-case. To accomplish this it was necessary to rearrange
various trays and drawers. Portraits of girl friends, including her
own, and of men unknown to her, letters, memoranda, and other
documents, were thrown about in disorder. All these she put back in
their receptacles, wondering the while what motive had led Isobel to
make such a frenzied search for some special object that she cared not
a jot what became of the remaining articles.
Yet, who could account for the frenzy of that terrible hour when the
captain announced the ship’s danger? Even Courtenay himself, she
remembered, had emptied a locker in a rapid hunt for the dog’s coat;
but he had laughingly explained his haste later when some chance
reference was made to his soaked garments.
Anything was explicable in the light of panic. She gathered up a skirt
and some blouses, locked the dressing-case, put the key in her purse,
and quitted the room with a heavy heart, for the handling of her
friend’s treasures had brought sad memories.
Passing into the deck corridor, she heard the captain’s voice,
apparently at a considerable distance. Two hundred yards away from the
ship, Courtenay and Tollemache were anchoring a flat framework, built
of spare hatches and secured by wooden cross-pieces. On it stood the
first of the infernal machines. The raft floated level with the water,
so its only conspicuous fitting was a small spar and a block, to which
a line and an iron bar were attached. The men looked strange in her
eyes at that distance. In the marvellously clear light she could see
their features distinctly, and, when Courtenay shouted to a sailor to
haul in the slack of the line, she caught a trumpet-like ring that
recalled the scene in the saloon when he held back the mob of stewards.
His athletic figure, silhouetted against the shimmering green of the
water, was instinct with graceful strength. He looked a born leader of
men, and, as though to mark his quickness of observation, no sooner had
Elsie glanced over the side of the ship than he waved a hand to her.
She sighed. A bitter thought peeped up in her that he was perhaps a
trifle careless in showing her these little attentions. She wished he
would speak to her of that other girl who awaited him in England. A
pleasant state of confidence would be established then; these secret
twitches of sentiment were irritating.
Some women, in her place, would pay no heed to that aspect of their
enforced relations; not so Elsie, whose virginal breast was unduly
fluttered by the discovery that a young man is the most natural thing
in the world for a young woman to think about.
She walked aft to obtain a nearer view of the operations. The sailors
had already shut in a large portion of the promenade deck with canvas,
and she noticed that loopholes were provided, every ten feet or so, to
permit the effective use of the defenders’ firearms. Thus, at each
step, she was reminded of the precarious hold she had on life, and she
was positively frightened when some mad impulse surged through her
whole being, bidding her imperiously to abandon her ultra-conscientious
loyalty to a woman she had never seen. Why struggle against
circumstance? If death were so near, what did she gain by prudery?
For an instant she stood aghast at the revelation which had come to
her. She was in love with Courtenay. She was ready to die by his side,
fearless and joyous, if only he would put his arms around her and tell
her that she was dear to him. Ah, the fierce delight of that first
silent surrender! Her heart beat as it had never pulsed before, even
under the stress of the storm or the sudden terror of the night attack.
Her eyes shone, and her breath came laboriously between parted lips.
Golden dreams coursed through her brain. She was thrilled with an
unutterable longing.
Then her swimming eyes rested on a group of men standing on the poop.
Among them was Christobal, interested, like the rest, in the floating
of the mine. And forthwith Elsie fell from the clouds, and was brought
back, shuddering, to cold reason again. She was sick at heart; she
hated herself for her self-abasement. She must gird her with sackcloth
and mourn; and the fight must be fought now, without parley or
hesitation, unless the sweetness were to go forth from life for ever,
and all things should turn to ashes in her mouth.
So, marshaling the best qualities of her womanhood, she quelled the
turmoil in her breast, forced herself to join the men on the after
deck, and said, when the smiling Spaniard turned to receive her:
“Why am I denied the mild excitement of mine-laying, Dr. Christobal? Is
it that you dread the effect on my nerves of these murderous
preparations?”
“No,” he answered, making room for her at the railing by his side. “I
had missed you, of course, but I thought you were resting.”
“Resting, indeed! I have been quite busy. Where do they mean to put the
second contrivance?”
“About there,” he said, indicating a point on the surface of the bay
eastward of the canoe. His right arm was extended, and he placed his
left hand on her shoulder. Courtenay, hailing Walker, saw the two
leaning over the rails in that attitude. Perhaps one of the two hoped
that Courtenay would see them. Elsie, as part of her punishment, did
not shrink away, though the touch of Christobal’s hand made her flesh
creep. But Joey, whose mind was singularly free from complexities,
leaped up at her. He wanted Elsie to tell him what Courtenay was doing
out there, so far away from the ship. She stooped and picked him up.
Christobal had no excuse for a second caress.
“Bark, Joey,” she whispered, “bark and call your master. If anything
happens to him, you and I shall never see England again. And I am
longing for home to-day.”