THE GO-ASHORE HAT
He had time to think over the matter as he lay in his bunk that night.
He fell to wondering, among other things, what the spell was that drew
him toward Jude and held him.
Was it the indefinable attractive quality that had made her mother a
“nacheral calamity” where men were concerned, or just the power of
youth? Scarcely the latter. He had met lots of youth in his time, and
it had not attracted him much; besides, when you have only to look into
the looking-glass to see youth, it is at a discount.
Puzzling over the matter, he came to the bedrock fact that Jude, in
some extraordinary way, had the power to make him feel more alive than
he had ever felt before.
Leaving other things aside, there were an honesty, faithfulness, and
simplicity about Jude that removed her from the category of bifurcated
beings and raised her to the level of a dog.
Instinct told him that this compound quality was worth more than all
the gold lying under the hatches of the _Nombre de Dios_, more than
all the diamonds in the Rand, when combined with that other quality
speaking in her level gaze,—steadfastness, the something that would
make her keep the wheel in all weathers.
But these excellencies would have been nothing without the
impossibilities with which they were allied,—social and conventual
impossibilities. The one reacted on the other, making an irresistible
whole combined with the something else that was Jude.
He remembered the queer little laugh with which she had freed herself
from his hand round her waist—then he fell asleep and dreamt that he
and Jude and a lot of larrikins were lying in wait by a harbor blue as
the sea off Jamaica, to clod bathing nigger girls; then he was chasing
Jude round and round a tree, only to catch her and find that she was
Carquinez.
When he got on deck next morning he found the ship deserted. The others
were away on the sandbank, and he amused himself by fishing till they
returned.
Jude showed no traces of the tears of the last night, and Satan was
elated. He had been examining the wreck-wood, and his experienced eye
backed the declaration of Jude. It was the foretop of a ship, right
enough, and, a hundred to one, so he declared, the foretop of the
_Nombre_.
Ratcliffe, wondering vaguely why he seemed so pleased over the find,
considering the sand conditions, asked him the chances of raising her.
Then said Satan, seeming to turn his gaze inward upon his awful and
profound knowledge of the sea and its ways:
“If you was to get all the dridgers from H’vana to Pensacola and
dridged till your eyes bugged out o’ your head an’ your tongue hanged
down to your heels, you wouldn’t clear her—siltin’—but she’s a sure
enough mug trap.”
“How do you mean?”
“Why, with that story and that chart an’ that old foretop, I could set
half Havana diggin’ like dogs for a bone, to say nothin’ of private
parties an’ syndikits an’ such things—maybe I will, too, some day.”
They put out after breakfast for the _Haliotis_ and another load of
“old junk.” Satan rowed back with it, leaving Jude and Ratcliffe on
board,—Ratcliffe collecting things forward, and Jude grubbing about in
the saloon.
Having collected the odds and ends in a heap, he turned his eyes to the
_Sarah_. Satan, having tied up the dinghy, was busy transhipping his
plunder. Then the beauty of the morning sea flooding into the lagoon,
held him for a moment. He followed the gulls in their flight, noted
the sudden break from emerald to ultramarine deepening to purple,
and beyond the reefs the sudden glitter of a leaping fish. Then he
remembered Jude down below.
He came to the companionway and down the stairs.
The cabin was brilliant with sunlight, with water reflections through
the open portholes playing on the ceiling and polished maple and
venesta of the walls. Across a pile of truck and bunk bedding heaped on
the table he caught a glimpse of the upper part of Jude.
Jude, fancying herself entirely alone, and yielding to some prompting
or other, had picked up the despised go-ashore hat and put it on;
she was looking at herself in the mirror fixed to the after bulkhead.
She was looking at herself with her head now straight and now tilted
slightly to one side; then the head turned, but she did not see
Ratcliffe: her eyes were still fixed on the hat, she was looking at it
sidewise.
All her unconscious movements might have been those of a lady in a
milliner’s shop trying on a hat in a critical spirit.
She had not heard him coming down the companionway, owing to the fact
that he was in his bare feet, and she did not hear him go up again.
On deck he took his seat on an old box upended close to the
mainmast stump, and considered the thing he had just witnessed in a
philosophical spirit.
It was like seeing a chrysalis crack and a butterfly’s wing protruding.
If Jude had not been admiring herself in that hat, then sight was a
liar and its evidence worthless. But Jude was as honest as the day.
She had greeted the thing with derision, brought it on deck to show
as an object of mirth, and flung it down the skylight opening with
contempt—yesterday morning.
What had happened since then to make her consider the thing at all, let
alone wear it before a looking-glass?
Had she put it on in derision and to see what a guy she looked? Not a
bit! She had made friends with that hat! Those few movements of the
head spoke of consideration not derision, in a language old as the
earliest feather headdress and more universal than Esperanto.
Then he remembered last evening on the sandspit and her sudden passage
from despondency to high spirits; he remembered her queer little laugh
as she removed his hand from round her waist,—had that been the sound
of the rift coming in the chrysalis casing?
For a moment he almost yielded to the desire to go below and see if the
butterfly had really arrived. Then he checked himself. There was time,
plenty of time; besides, Satan was putting off again in the dinghy for
another load.
Satan, over this business, like a man in drink or a lunatic, had his
hot fits and cold fits. A hot fit had suddenly come on him.
The petrol-paraffin engine had begun suddenly to shout to him that
it must be taken. A glorious idea, too, had evolved itself in his
brain,—why not fit it to the _Sarah_; not there in the lagoon,
of course, but in some port? All that was required would be some
structural alterations and a shaft-hole in the quarter; he reckoned the
fitting would cost under three hundred dollars.
He didn’t want the thing, really,—masts and sails were good enough for
his pottering-about work,—it was the passion of a woman for jewelry.
The _Sarah_ would be a nobbier boat with an auxiliary,—sea swank,
purely, exhibiting the only apparent weak spot in his character.
That spare Bergius propeller had begun revolving in his mind days
ago,—“thrud—thrud—thrud! See me drive the _Sarah_, see me drive the
_Sarah_!” He had examined the propeller already attached and found the
blades all broken. The shaft was intact, and, beaching the _Haliotis_
stern on in that quiet lagoon, it would have been possible to fit on
the spare one and take her off unmasted, as she was under her own
motive power.
He had a vague notion of the structure of engines and Yankee ingenuity
enough to have driven her, but the fact of her anchor being down, as
before stated, and the fact that he had already “torn the tripes” out
of her plundered the sail room and the store room, removed brasswork
that would have taken weeks to replace, and generally left her like a
scooped cheese, prevented an idea of salvage.
Taking the _Haliotis_ into port he would have to declare her like a
box of cigars,—a box of cigars belonging to another man and half the
cigars gone.
Coming over the rail, Ratcliffe saw the new light in his eye and
wondered what it portended.
“I’ve been thinkin’,” said Satan, taking his stand by the mast stump
and surveying the heap of stuff collected by the other, “I’ve been
thinkin’ it’s tomfoolery to leave that engine.”
Jude, brought up by the sound of the dinghy coming alongside, appeared
at the saloon companionway. She wore no hat.
“Good Lord!” said Ratcliffe, aghast. “You don’t mean to say—but it’s
impossible. We haven’t the means to take it.”
“There’s enough of the mast left to rig a tackle to,” said Satan, “and
that hatch leads right down to the engine place. The heavy fittin’s are
easy raised from the bed-plates, and they’re not too heavy to go in
the dinghy. We can tow her with the c’lapsible.”
“But what can you do with the thing?”
“Fit her to the _Sarah_, of course.”
“Here, in the lagoon?” asked the horrified Ratcliffe.
“Well, I wouldn’t mind if I had the hands and the tools for the job,”
replied Satan. “Naw, it’s beyont me. I’ll have to take her to a port to
have it done,—not Havana, neither: there’s too many eyes in Havana and
people that know my business. Vera Cruz is the place. I know a Spanish
yard there’ll do the job.”
“The year after next,” put in Jude, “supposing you do manage to get
it aboard, you know what the dagoes are, and you’ll knock the inside
of the _Sarah_ to flinders. She won’t be the same boat with that old
traction injin in her—I wish we’d never struck this cay!”
She sat down on the combing of the skylight and folded her hands.
Ratcliffe had never seen her do that before. He stood torn between two
things,—the desire to please Satan and the desire to please Jude.
Pulling on the side of Jude there was also the sure foreknowledge of
the heavy work that would be required. That did not frighten him; but
it did seem to him that they had done enough and ought to be satisfied.
It was like burglars going for the kitchen boiler after having removed
the plate, furniture, and very bed-linen of a house.
All the same he could not but admire Satan. Time was pressing, it was
quite possible that a salvage boat might poke her nose into the lagoon
at any moment. Satan knew this as well as he, yet it did not move him.
“It’s not a dago yard,” said Satan, evading the traction engine dig,
“it’s French, and I’ve been wanting an auxiliary for years. Pap was
with me, only he was awful slow over business, and here’s one for nix.
I’m goin’ down to have a look at her.”
He dived below.
Jude sat brooding.
“Never mind,” said Ratcliffe. “It’s not a big engine, and he and I will
be able to do it with a tackle. I’m not going to let him put you to
work on it.”
“I’m not bothering about that,” said Jude fatefully. “It’s when it’s
fixed up I’m thinking of.”
“How?”
“He’ll make me drive the durned thing.”
“No, he won’t.”
“What’s to stop him?”
“Oh, lots of things—leave it to me.”
He was cut short by Satan’s voice calling him to come below. Down below
he had to follow all sorts of details pointed out, details proving the
desirability of the prize and the miraculous ease of its removal.
Then they came on deck and put off for dinner. But Satan was never
destined to lift that engine. Fate had fixed it to its bed-plates more
securely than screws and nuts could hold it.