“I’LL TAK!”
Ten minutes later Satan and Ratcliffe boarded the _Juan_. Cleary was
already on board, down in the cabin with the others; Cark and a bottle
of gin were presiding at one end of the table. Satan, with a nod to the
company, came to the table and took his seat; motioning Ratcliffe to
take the seat opposite to him.
It was like a meeting of a board of directors, and the table just held
the six comfortably.
What followed struck the unaccustomed Ratcliffe with astonishment,—the
amiability of it,—it might have been a card party, with Satan the
loser—momentarily.
“Well, gentlemen,” said Satan, “what’s to pay?”
There were extra glasses on the table and a box of cigars. The cigars
were pushed along by Sellers as he spoke.
“There’s Cark’s loss of time,” said Sellers, “not to say mine and
Cleary’s. We tried for you round Rum Cay when you gave us the slip, and
then there was the run down here. A thousand dollars to us that means,
and five hundred to Cleary.”
“Makin’ it two thousand five hundred and forty,” said Satan. “I’m
agreeable—and the derelic’ is mine.”
“Which derelic’?” asked Sellers innocently.
Satan, absolutely disdaining to reply, lit a cigar.
“She’s worth all ten thousand dollars,” said he, “and what’s the
salvage on that?”
“Y’mean that old dismasted catboat stuck on the sand there?” said
Cleary. “Not worth five—b’sides she’s our meat.”
Satan dropped Sellers and turned to Carquinez. “You’ll maybe explain,”
said he. “You know the rights of the law. If you try to collar that
hooker, I’ll come in with first claim, and here’s a gentleman will back
me in law expenses. You know him,—Mr. Ratcliffe, Holt & Ratcliffe.”
“I’ll back you,” said Ratcliffe.
“And it seems to me law is not your lay, Cark,” went on Satan. “We came
in here yesterday and boarded and claimed that hooker, and I was fixing
the tackle for towing when you blew along. The thing’s as clear as
paint. She’s ours for salvage, and you’re not in it.”
“Look here!” began Sellers violently—then he closed up: Cark had given
him a kick under the table. Then there was silence for a moment, during
which these two scoundrels seemed to brood together telepathically.
Then Cark spoke, addressing Satan.
“Will you take the air on deck for wan moment with your friend?” said
Cark.
“Sure,” said Satan.
A few minutes later they were called down again.
“See here,” said Sellers, acting as spokesman for the others, “we
don’t want to bear hard on you, but we’ve been at a big loss over this
business.”
“And who let you in for it?” asked Satan. “Haven’t you been chasin’ me
since last fall over the _Nombre_? Was it my fault she weren’t there?”
“Well, anyhow we’re losers. But I’m coming to the derelic’. You’ll
never be able to do the tow with the _Sarah_—why, the _Sarah_ ain’t
bigger than her, and you’re underhanded anyhow.”
“That’s so,” said Satan.
“Well, what I propose is this,” said Sellers. “We’ll drop claims for
the run down here and only ask a thousand and forty of you, and you
drop claims on the derelic’.”
Satan laughed.
“Maybe you don’t know she’s got an auxiliary in her worth four thousand
dollars if it’s worth a cent. She’s broke her propeller, but she’s got
a spare one on board, and if I knew anythin’ of injins I’d drive her
back on her own power. No, I sticks to the derelic’ if that’s the best
you can offer and here’s your dollars—though I’ll have to give you my
check for the extra money.”
He produced a bundle; then, with his hand on it:
“If you choose to take the derelic’ for what she’s worth and call it
quits. I’ll trade, one or the other. I’m not set on that tow. But there
you are; you know the chances.”
“I’ll tak!” suddenly broke in Carquinez, and the business was ended.
PART III
CHAPTER XXXV
THE VANISHED LIGHT
A week later, toward sundown, the _Sarah_ came up the half-mile channel
and dropped her hook in Havana Harbor close to the old anchorage of the
_Maine_. A Royal Mail boat passing out gave her the kick of its wash
as she settled down to her moorings, a customs boat dropped alongside,
and the customs men, hailing Satan as a friend and brother, came aboard
and transacted business with him in the cabin. The wind blew warm,
bringing scents and sounds across the vast harbor, fluttering the flags
of the shipping, and Ratcliffe, standing at the rail, dazzled by the
brilliance of the scene before him, knew that his cruise was over.
It was like coming to the end of a book,—a volume suddenly handed to
him by Fate to read, and of which he was condemned to write the sequel.
He remembered the morning at Palm Island when he boarded the _Sarah_
first, and the picture was still fresh in his mind of the _Haliotis_
as they had left her in the lagoon at Cormorant, Sellers and Cleary
and their men swarming about her and tinkering her up. They intended
to ship the spare propeller and bring her along under her own motive
power to the nearest port, Nassau in the Bahamas.
They had been so busy with the engines and the hull that they had never
noticed how completely she had been stripped. They were unconscious of
the fact that she had been left with her anchor down—unfortunates! He
could still see them like ants laboring in the sun, at the task set to
them by the grimly humorous Satan.
Satan had won the game they had forced on him, holding, as he did, a
thousand and forty dollars, the “tripes” of the _Haliotis_, and the
secret of the mug trap, to be disposed of, perhaps, later on for a
consideration. Satan would, no doubt, set other unfortunates digging
for the _Nombre_ just as he had set Cleary and Sellers tinkering and
towing at the _Haliotis_, just as he had held up freighters for a bunch
of bananas, just as he had made Thelusson and his crew careen and
scrape the _Sarah_, just as he had made Ratcliffe an accomplice in his
plans and a handy man to help him in his works; yet the funny thing
about the scamp was the fact that he was absolutely dependable, when
not dealing with companies or governments or derelicts. Ratcliffe would
have trusted him with his last penny.
Dependable if you took hold of him by his handle and not by his cutting
edge! Trustable if you trusted him!
Then Jude came up in her harbor rig; that is to say, boots and a coat.
“Satan’s clacking away with the customs an’ the port doctor man,” said
Jude. “You can’t see across the cabin with the smoke, and I had to
change my rig in the galley.”
“You going ashore?” asked Ratcliffe.
“No,” said Jude, “Satan’s going. I’ve got to keep ship. You going with
him?”
“I suppose so.”
Appeared Satan, followed by the port men, who tumbled into the boat and
rowed off.
“Goin’ ashore?” asked Satan. “Well, I’ll row you to the wharf after
I’ve had a bite of supper. Jude’ll bring the boat back, and we can get
a shore boat off for half a dollar.”
Half an hour later, just as the electrics were springing alive and the
anchor lights of the shipping marking the dusk blue sky, they started.
They stood on the wharf steps for a moment watching Jude row off, then
they turned to the town.
Havana smells different from any other seaport. She smells of rum and
garlic and dirt and cigars and the earth of Cuba, which is different
from the earth anywhere else. The harbor and the town exchange
bouquets; the negroes help; Spanish cigarettes, Florida water and
decaying vegetables lend a hand. Satan led the way. He knew the place
as well as the inside of his pocket, and as he trudged along beside
Ratcliffe under the electrics across plazas, or through short-cut
cut-throat-looking byways, he pointed out the notable features of the
place,—Dutch Pete’s, the Alvarez factory, the great opera house, the
Calle Commacio, the cathedral.
They passed Florion’s with its marble tables, drinkers, and domino
players, and Satan suddenly hove to.
“Where d’you want to go now?” said Satan. “D’you want drinks?”
“No, I don’t want drinks,” said Ratcliffe. “Come over here.”
A blazing cinema palace shone across the way, and they entered,
Ratcliffe paying.
The place was in black darkness. A cowboy shooting up a bar was on the
screen, and a man with an electric torch led them to their seats.
Then they sat watching the pictures, Satan criticizing the actors
sometimes, and in a loud voice and not always favorably. The cowboy
shot himself off the screen, the lights flared up for half a minute,
went out, and the pictures resumed.
Ratcliffe felt a nudge, and in the darkness Satan’s voice, muted now,
came in his ear.
“Say,” whispered Satan, “did you see him?”
“Who?”
“The man that dropped you at Pa’m Island.”
“Skelton!”
“That’s him. He’s sittin’ right a front of you.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure as sure.”
Skelton here! But where, then, was the _Dryad_? Had he wrecked her, or
what?
The words of Satan seemed to alter everything, from the music to the
picture of John Bunny on the screen.
The darkness, filled with native Havana scents, became tinged with the
atmosphere of British Respectability. Skelton at the pictures! Why, he
ought to have been at the opera or one of the theaters or walking on
the _alameda_ digesting his dinner and thinking of Tariff Reform or
Anglicanism. It seemed impossible; yet when the light flared up again
there was Skelton, sure enough, sitting with another man, and now he
was rising, evidently tired of the show, and passing out, followed by
his friend, grave as though he had been attending his mother’s funeral
instead of the marriage of John Bunny to Flora Finch in a Pullman car
with negro accompaniments.
He wore evening clothes, covered by a light overcoat. Ratcliffe rose
and, followed by Satan, pursued him, touching him on the shoulder
outside and in the full blaze of the lamps.
“Good God!” said Skelton. “Ratcliffe!”
“Just got in,” said Ratcliffe. “Had a ripping time. Where’s the
_Dryad_?”
“Up at the wharf, coaling,” replied Skelton, absorbing Ratcliffe’s
rough and ready garb, the cloth cap he was wearing, and Satan. “I’m
staying at the Matanzas; but I go aboard tomorrow morning, and we’re
off in the evening. What have you been doing with yourself?”
“Oh, having no end of fun. We found an old treasure ship and blew her
up and found she was full of skulls and bones. You know Satan?”
Skelton, who had ignored Satan, acknowledged his existence by a little
nod.
“Who’s your friend?” asked Ratcliffe, glancing at Skelton’s companion,
who had removed himself a few paces.
“Ponsonby—diplomatic service. See here, come on board to lunch
tomorrow—one-fifteen.”
“Right.”
“I have some gear of yours.”
“Right. I’ll see about it.”
“’Night.”
“’Night.”
Off he went.
They had seen enough of the pictures, and having no inclination for
cafés or taverns or gambling shops they made back toward the wharves,
Satan walking in profound silence, Ratcliffe thinking.
The whole evening he had been followed by a miserable sort of
half-depression. It had attached itself to him first on the deck of
the _Sarah_, born of his return to civilization; it had managed to
decolorize the past few weeks and demagnetize Jude.
His conscious mind had never quite gauged the hold that Jude had
managed to get upon him, and this subconscious devil, rising at the
touch of civilization, like a gas bubble from his conventional past,
had burst, with spoiling effect, robbing the _Sarah_ of her romance and
sea-charm and the past few weeks of their brightness. Jude had dimmed
with everything else, become part and parcel of what seemed an illusion.
It was while sitting at the pictures, in black darkness, with knowledge
of Skelton’s presence, that the atmosphere began to clear, the waves to
beat again on Cormorant Cay, the gulls to fly and call—and Jude come
back to life.
He heard again that queer little laugh of hers as she removed his hand.
He felt again the warm body that had rested confidingly against him
away there on the sandspit.
And then she was out on the black harbor alone in the _Sarah_, while he
and Satan were watching the pictures! Suppose some lumbering sailing
craft being towed to her moorings or some incoming mailboat were to
smash into the _Sarah_—and they were to row off and find nothing—no
Jude?
The thought almost made him rise from his seat to leave the place. But
he could not explain to Satan; so he sat on till the lights flared out.
And all the time, mocking the pictures on the screen, came pictures of
Jude, all sunlit, real, fresh as herself!
Then, as they pursued their way to the wharf after leaving Skelton,
the impatience increased; the darkness of the night, the blaze of
the town, the gay life of the streets, and the revelry of the cafés
seemed sinister and banded in a conspiracy against him and the lonely
little figure of Jude. The indifference of Skelton, the way he had gone
hurriedly off, the way he had ignored Satan, were part of the business,
blended with the blazing cafés, the moving crowd of Chinks, colored
men, Spaniards, and Americans, the brilliance and gaiety without heart,
that seemed like a barrier between him and the humble little _Sarah_
and Jude away out there in the darkness alone—waiting for him! It came
to him that Jude was the one sole thing he wanted in the cruel, odd,
electric-lit world—and he had left her!
They passed through narrow streets like the streets in an evil dream
and blazing streets hideous with noise. Then at last they reached the
wharf with its amber lights spilling on the black waving water. Satan
hired a boat, and they put off, two dagoes rowing and Satan at the
yoke lines.
The _Sarah_ was anchored a mile out, and the vast three-mile harbor,
vague in the starlight and circled by the hills, seemed to Ratcliffe
more immense than when seen by daylight.
Lights, lights everywhere,—scattered lights of shipping, some near,
some far away, gem-crusted bulks that were great liners at anchor,
songs and voices, and the creak of the oars in the rowlocks! Then a
sudden green, red, and white light ahead and a fussy and furious little
tug that nearly ran them down and left them rocking in her wash.
“Scowbankers!” said Satan. Then: “I can’t make out the light of the
_Sarah_, nohow.”
A clutch came to Ratcliffe’s heart, the clutch of something cold and
malign which had seemed following him ever since Skelton’s presence had
made itself felt like an evil omen.
They were so far out now that the sounds of the town and wharves had
died to nothing; but still the creak of the oars in the rowlocks kept
on. Then came Satan’s voice:
“That’s her, over beyond them three lights on the starboard bow.”
Ratcliffe breathed again, and his heart leaped in him as he picked out
the light.
Satan altered their course.
“Are you sure?” asked Ratcliffe.
“Sure.”
“You gave me the devil of a fright.”
“Which way?”
“I thought she might have been run down by some ship coming in—or
something.”
“Oh, she’s well out of the track,” said Satan.
“All the same, I didn’t feel easy.”
Then they hung silent, Ratcliffe’s eyes on the light and his hand in
his pocket feeling for dollars to pay the boatmen.
“What’s there to pay?” asked he.
“A dollar, seeing there’s two of them,” replied Satan. “_Sarah_ ahoy!”
“Ahoy!” came Jude’s voice, and a lantern swung over the side.
Satan bundled on board, and Ratcliffe crammed five dollars into the
hand of the stern oar; then he followed, and the fellows pushed off.
“Took it without fightin’!” said Satan. “Lord’s sake, what’s come to
them?” Then he bundled below to make some coffee.
Jude snuffed the lantern out.
She was moving away from the side and away from Ratcliffe, when he
caught hold of her round the body. She did not resist him. He held her
close to his heart.
“Jude!”
“What is it?” asked Jude, with a sudden catch in her breath and
speaking in a whisper. “Whacha want?”
Then his lips met hers, full.
Five minutes later Satan, making his coffee over the Primus stove of
the _Haliotis_, heard a struggling sound, mixed with stifled laughter,
and Ratcliffe appeared at the cabin door. He was dragging Jude in; she
was half-resisting, and her face was hid in the crook of her arm.
“Satan,” said Ratcliffe, “I’m going to marry Jude.”
“God help you!” said Satan.
CHAPTER XXXVI
THE WEDDING PRESENT
“I’m going to marry Jude!”
The fantastic fact embodied in those words appeared to him folly only
next day at one o’clock, with the sky to northward breathing hot on
Havana Harbor like the mouth of a blue oven, flags fluttering to the
wind, the drum and fife band of an American training ship coming over
the water, and the _Dryad_ being towed to her moorings half a mile
shoreward.
The blushing bride-to-be of last night, hiding her nose on Ratcliffe’s
shoulder, as they sat together on the couch before Satan, while he
taunted her with the fact that now she’d have to get into skirts, had
turned back into Jude.
She was busy getting the dinghy ready to row her fiancé off to the
_Dryad_.
She was over the side in her, busy and humming a tune as she worked,
baling out water, fixing the cushions, and so on, while Satan watched
her in a brooding manner over the rail.
A ghastly fear was working in the heart of Satan, the fear that Skelton
might want the dinghy returned.
“Now, mind you,” said Satan, “and bring the boat back. I’d sooner lose
me head than that boat. If you come back without her, I’ll chuck you in
the harbor! I’m talking straight.”
Ratcliffe, who had just come on deck dressed for the occasion, came to
the rail. Jude looked up at him and laughed.
He had seen her laughing before, he had seen her surly, meditative,
brooding, weeping, flushed with anger, grumbling; but he had never seen
her with a look like this,—happy.
Since last night something had come into her eyes that made her, when
her eyes met his, beautiful. It was as though a lamp had been suddenly
lit inside her, and the magical thing was the knowledge that he himself
was the lamplighter.
He had created this new something that spoke to him right out, right to
his heart, right to his soul!
He got into the dinghy, nodded to Satan, and they started, Jude at the
sculls, her trousers rolled half-way up to the knees and her old panama
on the back of her head.
“Go slow,” said he, “there’s lots of time.” Then, when they were out of
hearing and he was alone with her at last:
“Jude!”
“What?”
“D’you remember yesterday you asked me if I was going away, now the
anchor was down?”
“Yes.”
“What would you have done if I had?”
“I’d a drowned myself in the harbor,” said Jude without a moment’s
hesitation. “What’s the good of asking?”
“When did you begin to care for me a bit?”
“D’you remember the sandspit?” asked Jude. “I dunno—maybe it was
beyond then—remember the cache?”
“When I chased you round the tree and—”
Jude screwed up her lips.
“You gave me an awful bang on the head.”
“You frightened the gizzard out of me,” said Jude, “and I wasn’t the
same after—that night.”
“I remember, I heard you telling Satan that hants were chasing you.”
“You were the hants.”
“But you didn’t care for me then. Remember you said derricks were only
good for hoisting fools off ships with.”
“I reckon it was a sort of caring turned inside out,” said Jude. She
turned her head to see if they were making for the _Dryad_.
“You’re letting her off her course,” said she, “unless you’re making
for that brig.”
“I’d just as soon make for her as anywhere else,” said he, altering the
course, “unless it was the sandspit—Jude!”
“Yep.”
“Imagine if we were alone on the sandspit, you and I, just as we were
that day, instead of in this rotten old harbor—let’s go there!”
“I’m willing.”
“When?”
“Soon’s you like.”
“We can get a tent and grub, and Satan can take us there and come back
for us. Damn! here’s the _Dryad_!”
The first officer of the _Dryad_ was leaning over the rail watching
them. The stage was down, and Jude brought the dinghy alongside.
Then on the stage he watched her rowing off. He waved his hand to her,
and she replied.
Then, when he reached the deck, he found Skelton also at the rail.
“’Morning,” said Ratcliffe. “That’s Satan’s sister.”
“Which?” asked Skelton. “That—er—person in the boat?”
“Yes. But you saw her on deck down at Palm Island, didn’t you?”
“I had forgotten,” said Skelton, dismissing the subject.
There were no guests. Ponsonby was to have come, but he was indisposed;
yet the luncheon was just as formal an affair as though a dozen had
been present instead of two.
Half-way through the meal, however, Ratcliffe’s spirits began to
brighten under the influence of Perrier Jouet and the harlequin thought
that began to dance in his head, “I am going for a honeymoon to the
sandspit with Jude!”
He laughed occasionally at nothing in particular, and Skelton thought
his manner strange, heady, queer, and began to thank his stars that
Ponsonby was indisposed. He noticed also that Ratcliffe’s hands,
despite scrubbing, bore the evidence of hard work not dissociated with
tar. There was also something queer about his hair.
There was! Satan had barbarized it down at Cormorant with the pair of
scissors he used on Jude.
Skelton, in asking Ratcliffe on board to luncheon, had considered
himself a most forgiving individual. Leaving aside their little quarrel
at Palm Island, remained the fact that Ratcliffe had left his ship,
deserted him for the company of those Yankee “scowbankers,” and, to
make matters worse, Ratcliffe seemed to have enjoyed the exchange.
Now, in closer company with the delinquent, he was beginning to regret
his forgiveness. “The man had deteriorated!”
As a result of this impression his manner had stiffened; he felt
irritated and bored.
The steward had withdrawn, having placed the dessert on the table,
and Skelton was in the act of carving a pineapple in the only way a
pineapple ought to be carved,—that is to say by tearing it into pieces
with two forks,—when Ratcliffe, who had been staring at the fruit as
though hypnotized, suddenly broke into a chuckle of laughter.
The pineapple, connecting itself, maybe, with canned pineapples robbed
from the store room of the _Haliotis_, had suddenly brought up the
vision of Satan.
Satan in a new guise—Satan as a matchmaker!
All sorts of things, some almost half-forgotten, rushed together to
clothe Satan in this new garment. He remembered Satan’s solicitude for
Jude’s future, Satan’s complacency when he and Jude had gone off to the
sandspit together, his conversations about Jude, the complete absence
of surprise with which he had taken the business of last night,—a
hundred things, and all pointing in the same direction and to the fact
that Satan had wished the business, just as he had wished the dinghy
away from Skelton, just as he had wished Ratcliffe on board of the
_Sarah Tyler_.
He, Ratcliffe, was part of the sea-pickings of this gipsy, part and
parcel with bunches of bananas, pots of paint, sailcloth, mainsheet
buffers, cringles, and so on! He was annexed to fit Jude just as the
mast winch of the _Haliotis_ was annexed to fit the _Sarah_!
Jude herself had declared that Satan had brought him on board because
he “wanted him.”
Skelton paused in his operation on the pineapple and stared at the
other.
“I beg your pardon,” said Ratcliffe, “but something has just struck me
so horribly funny I couldn’t help laughing—anyhow, the joke is against
myself. Look here, Skelton, I want to tell you something—I’m—m—going
to marry a girl.”
“Indeed—but what is there horribly funny about that?”
“Nothing—it’s not that, it’s something else; but let’s start with
that. I’m going to marry that girl who rowed me over here today,
Satan’s sister.”
Skelton laid down his fork. All his starch had vanished. Surprised
out of his life, he seemed suddenly to grow younger and more natural
looking.
“Good God!” said Skelton, staring at the other. “You don’t mean—”
“I do. I don’t know why I am telling you, but there it is. You can’t
understand in the least—couldn’t hope to make you.”
Now Skelton with his starch off and in an emergency was a sound man,
with a heart as good as any ordinary mortal’s.
He had an eye that no little detail ever escaped. He had seen Jude
at Palm Island, he had heard her speak, he had seen her half an hour
ago, and Ratcliffe’s manner left him in no doubt as to his absolute
earnestness.
The man was about to commit suicide, social suicide. He had seen men do
the same thing often in different ways.
He pushed the pineapple away and rose from the table.
“Come into the smoke room,” said he.
In the smoke room he rang for coffee. Not a word about Jude. Dead
silence.
Then, when the coffee was brought and the door closed, he turned to the
other.
“Ratcliffe, you can’t do this thing. I know. Let me speak for a moment.
You are your own master, free to do as you choose; but I must speak. I
like you. Our temperaments are dead different, and we don’t make good
companions; but you have many sterling qualities, and I don’t want to
see you come a mucker. You can do a thing like this in two minutes; but
two hundred years won’t get you out of it, once it’s done. (Take sugar
in your coffee? Yes, I remember.) See here! I had a young brother once
who was going to do just the same,—absolutely ruin himself. I managed
to stop it, saved his future and his name.”
He picked a cigar out of a box and, coming to a dead stop in his
remarks, cut the end off.
“My dear fellow,” said Ratcliffe, before he could continue, “I know
absolutely and exactly how you feel on the subject and what you would
say. I’ve felt it myself and said it to myself.
“I began to get fond of her almost from the first. If you’d been in my
shoes, you would have been just the same. No one could help getting
fond of her. Then after awhile I found how I was drifting, and I said
to myself, ‘It’s absurd!’ I pictured all my female relations and so
forth and my position in the wonderful thing you call Society.”
“Don’t sneer at Society,” said Skelton gravely. “That’s the easiest
sort of cant that ever folly put into a man’s mouth. Go on.”
“You’re right,” said Ratcliffe. “All the same Society galls one at
times when the thought of it comes up against something alive and fresh
and free from snobbery like Jude. Well, things went on and on. I hadn’t
much time for thinking, underhanded as we were; and that was the fatal
thing, for I absorbed her without thinking,—not her face or body, but
her character. You know that, underhanded and close together on a tub
like the _Sarah_, character is the thing that shows and counts, and
at every hand’s turn hers showed up and got a tighter grip on me. It
wasn’t a character all jam, either, but it was a thing to count on and
real as the sea—you can’t understand.”
“I can,” said Skelton, humoring the other, “a fine character.”
“Oh, Lord, no!” said Ratcliffe. “Don’t get away with things. _Real_,
that’s the word!”
“But, my dear man—”
“I know what you are going to say. She can’t speak King’s
English—well, I’m going to teach her. She’s dressed like that—well,
I’m going to dress her properly after awhile.”
Skelton suddenly showed a flash of irritation.
“Come up to the point,” said he. “Are you, after what I’ve said, still
fixed in your purpose? Are you going to marry her?”
“As soon as ever I can get a priest off to the old _Sarah_,” replied
Ratcliffe.
“That is your last word?”
“Yes.”
“Very well,” said Skelton. His manner changed. He had done what he
could: it was useless. Ratcliffe was no relation of his, and now,
contemplating the thing with as much detachment as though it were a
losing horse race or boxing encounter on which he had no bet, he lit
the cigar, which he had been holding unlighted in his fingers, and
became almost amiable.
“Very well,” said he, “go ahead. After all, it’s not my affair; but
I’ll be interested to know how you get on. By the way, I have some gear
of yours on board.”
“Take it back, will you, like a good chap,” said the other, “and leave
it with the yacht people at Southampton? I’ll pick it up there when I
return.”
“You are coming back?”
“Oh, rather; but not for a year or so, maybe. I’ve a lot to do, and
when you see us next maybe you’ll agree—” He stopped short and relit
his cigar, and they hung silent, each engaged in his own thoughts.
Now; on the warm sea-scented air entering through the open ports, came
a voice.
It was the voice of the second officer, addressing someone overside.
“Hi, there! Bring her round to the quarter-boat davits; she’s to come
aboard.”
“That’s the dinghy,” said Skelton. “I told them to bring her aboard.
I’ll send you back in the pinnace.”
Again came the voice.
“Hi, there! Are you deaf? Bring her round to the quarter-boat davits;
she’s to come aboard.”
Then Jude’s fresh young voice:
“Gar’n! She’s ours; old Popplecock gave her to Satan. Whacha talking
about?”
“Very well,” came the other’s. “You wait till Sir William comes on
deck.”
Skelton with a grim smile turned to the door. He pointed to the clock
on the bulkhead.
“I’m going on deck,” said he. “See that clock—promise me to stick here
for two minutes by it and think right over the matter for the last
time. Don’t let anything I have said weigh with you.”
He went on deck and, keeping clear of the rail, entered into
conversation with the first officer.
Three minutes passed, and Ratcliffe’s head appeared at the saloon hatch.
“Going?” said Skelton.
“Yes,” said Ratcliffe.
“Right! You can keep the dinghy—it’s a wedding present. Luck!”
“Same to you!” said Ratcliffe.
He gripped the other’s hand, and the grip was returned. The two men had
never been so close to each other before, never would be again.
* * * * *
Two hours later the _Dryad_, queening it over the satin smooth harbor,
dipped her flag to the humble little _Sarah_, and the _Sarah_ dipped
her flag to the _Dryad_, and someone in the Wedding Present lying
alongside the _Sarah_ waved a hat.
Skelton, at the after rail, fixed his binoculars on the hat-waver. It
was Satan.
THE END
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant
preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced
quotation marks retained.
Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained; occurrences of
inconsistent hyphenation have not been changed.