It was a dark night, and a rising wind was blowing in from the sea. Along the water-front lights twinkled and gleamed, mere red-hot dots in the all-encompassing darkness.
At a dock near by the outline of a long steamer showed beneath the flare of a myriad gasoline torches, and across the water there came from her decks the clang of hammers and the hollow rumble of trucks pouring freight into her hold.
“The City of Nome, sir,” said a voice behind me, and turning I beheld the sturdy figure of Mr. Wilson, the second officer. “They’re rushing the job of preparing her for her first trip of the season. She follows the Wanderer up. She’ll be about forty-eight hours behind us.”
“Will she overtake us?”
“Hardly, sir. We’re as fast as she is, if not faster. No, we’ll show her the way into Bering Sea if nothing happens to check our speed.”
A sudden gust of wind shook us and a splattering of great rain-drops struck the deck. The mate turned toward the sea and sniffed the air.
“Hello!” he exclaimed, as if the wind had told him something. “I hope you’re a good sailor, Mr. Pitt; it may be a little rough outside tomorrow and for a couple of days to come.”
VII
I was awakened next morning by a sensation as of mighty blows being struck against the yacht’s hull, shaking it from stem to stem. My nostrils caught the tang of cold sea air, while gusts of fog-laden wind swept whistling past the open port-hole.
I dressed, went on deck, and swiftly retreated to shelter. The Wanderer was out at sea and boring her twelve-knot way through the smoke and welter of a raw Spring gale from the north.
The entire aspect of the yacht, of its personnel, and of the expedition seemed to have changed overnight. Captain Brack was upon the bridge. His neat, gold-braided uniform had vanished and he wore a rough sheepskin jacket and oilskin trousers. A shaggy cap was pulled down to his eyes and he chewed and spat tobacco.
In the gray light of a raw day, shuddering and washed by spray, the Wanderer had become a grim, serviceable sea-conqueror rather than the magnificent pleasure-boat she had seemed yesterday, and two seamen, roughly clad and dripping, were putting extra lashings on a life-boat forward.
I went down to breakfast with new impressions of the grim potentialities of this expedition.
I had breakfast alone. Chanler was still in his stateroom and the officers all had breakfasted long before. While I was eating, Freddy Pierce popped his head in.
“Oh, hello; it’s you, is it,” he greeted. “I was looking for the boss; another message.”
“Mr. Chanler is in his stateroom,” I said.
“He sent another message to this Jane—to Miss Baldwin, last night,” said Pierce.
I continued to eat.
“This is a reply to it that I’ve got here.”
“Pierce,” said I, looking up, “you will find Mr. Chanler in his stateroom.”
“Right!” said he. Saying which the messenger boy turned and ran. “Oh, Simmons! Come here. Message for the boss.”
Simmons, who was passing, paused and bestowed on Freddy his most freezing look of disapproval.
“Mr. Chanler is not to be disturbed,” said he, and made to pass on.
“Not so, old Frozen Face,” said Freddy, catching him by the arm. “You don’t pass me by with a haughty look this time. This is the reply to the message the boss sent last night. He wants it while it’s hot off the griddle. Get busy.”
Simmons seemed about to choke.
“Mr. Chanler is not to be disturbed,” he repeated with emphasis.
Freddy turned toward Chanler’s door.
“Will you take it in—or shall I?” he asked.
“But you can’t—it is forbidden!” cried Simmons.
Freddy knocked loudly on the owner’s door.
“The reply to your message from last night, Mr. Chanler,” he called. “It just came.”
An instant later he opened the door, to Simmons’s horror, and entered. When he came out he bore another message and went straight up to the wireless house to send it.
Soon after this Captain Brack came to Chanler’s stateroom, knocked and entered. He remained within for some time. When he emerged his look was dark and scowling, and he hurried straight to the bridge. A moment later the Wanderer’s twelve-knot rush began to diminish, and presently we were moving along at a speed that seemed barely sufficient to keep our headway against the sea.
Not long after this came the clash between Brack and Garvin.
I was starting on my morning constitutional when I came upon the pair facing one another on the fore-deck. Chanler was looking on from the bridge. Garvin was an unpleasant-looking brute to behold. His face was swollen and he had evidently slept in his clothes. He was standing lowering ferociously at Brack, who stood leaning against the chart-house, his arms folded.
“Sa-a-ay, sa-a-ay guy; what kind uv a game d’yah think yah’re running? Eh?” the fighter was snarling. “What d’yah think yah’re putting over on me? Hah? D’yah know who yah got hold of? I’m Bill Garvin.”
“That is how I have put you down—as one of the crew,” said Brack. He placed himself more firmly against the wall of the wheel-house.
“Put—put me down?” cried Garvin incredulously. “Me—one of your crew? Guess again, bo, guess again.”
“I never guess,” retorted Brack and there was just a warning hint of coldness in his tones.
“Wa-ll, git next tuh yerself den, bo, an’ quit dat crew talk wid me. When do we git back tuh Seattle?”
“Perhaps never—for you—unless you soon say ‘sir’ when you speak to me.”
“Hah?”
“‘Sir!’” bellowed Brack, and even the sodden plug-ugly blinked in alarm at the menace in his tones. But only for a moment. He was a true fighting brute, Garvin; his courage only swelled at a challenge.
“Step out here an’ put up yer mitts, Bo,” he snapped. “I’m Bill Garvin; who the —— are you?”
From the bridge came Chanler’s cynical cackle.
“He wants an introduction, cappy,” he chuckled. “Come, come; let’s have your come-back.”
Brack smiled in his old suave manner as he looked up at Chanler, but as he turned away the smile changed to a black scowl. He looked steadily at Garvin for several seconds, and it grew very quiet.
Garvin started a little in surprise and fright, as if suddenly he had seen something in Brack’s face which he had not expected to find there. He was a stubborn fighting brute, however, and instinct told him to charge when in fear. He leaped at Brack, his fists held taut; and an instant later he was on his back on the deck, screaming in agony, his hands covering his scalded face.
Then for the first time I saw the hose-nozzle that the captain had concealed beneath his folded arms. He had been standing so that his broad back entirely concealed the hose, running from a fire-plug in the wall. So the fighter had rushed, open-eyed, open-mouthed, against a two-inch stream of hot water which swept him off his feet and left him groveling and screaming on the deck.
“Ha!” said George Chanler. “Sharp repartee that, cappy—though a bit rough.”
Brack found Garvin’s hands, neck, head with the water, and suddenly turned it off.
“Don’t!” cried Garvin. “For Gawd’s sake, don’t.”
“Sir,” said Brack.
“You go to ——!”
The water found him again.
“Sir.”
“Sir,” whimpered Garvin. “Oh, Gawd! You’ve killed me!”
“Sir.”
“Sir.”
Brack tossed the hose aside and wiped his hands.
“Take him below,” he directed a couple of seamen. “Tell Dr. Olson to care for him. I have too much need for Garvin to have him lose his sight.”
He turned abruptly toward Chanler on the bridge.
“The wind is rising, sir,” he said. “At five knots we will barely crawl.”
“Yes?” said Chanler, yawning. “Well, crawling is exactly my mood today.”
“We’ll lose precious days up north if we continue at this speed.”
Chanler smiled the shrewd smile of a man who has a joke all to himself.
“No, cappy; that’s once you’re wrong. It’s just the other way round: I’d lose precious days if we didn’t continue at this speed, as you’ll see when the time comes.”
The captain glared after him as Chanler leisurely went aft to his stateroom. The glare turned for an instant to a smile, of a sort that Chanler would have been troubled to understand had it been seen. Then Brack stamped forward and stood with folded arms, looking ahead over the gray, tossing sea, his face raging with impatience over the slowness of the yacht’s progress.
VIII
I climbed to the wireless house and found Freddy Pierce eagerly looking for my appearance.
“Did you see it?” he demanded. “Did you see it?”
“Brack and Garvin? Yes, I saw it. It was horrible. Is that the way Brack handles the men of the crew?”
“Na-ah! I should say not. That isn’t his regular system. He don’t need to touch ’em; he laughs at ’em and scares ’em stiff. He’s got a fighting grouch on this morning, and Garvin was just something to take it out on. Poor Garvin! He had to come staggering up and make his play just after the captain come out of the boss’s cabin boiling mad. Any other time the cap’ would ’a’ laughed at him so he’d snuck back to his bunk like a bad little boy.”
“Then what was wrong with the captain this morning?”
Freddy shrugged his shoulders.
“You notice we cut our speed down to a crawl, didn’t you? Well, it must have been that that gave Brack his grouch. I haven’t quite got it doped out yet. All I know is, I grab a bunch of words off the air for the boss, I take him the message, he reads it, smiles, slips me a double saw-buck for good luck and says: ‘Kindly tell Captain Brack to step down here at once.’ I do. Captain Brack goes in smiling and comes out with his eyes showing he’d been made to do something he didn’t want to do. Bing! He gets Riordan on the engine-room phone. Zowie! He shouts an order. And then the screw begins easing off little by little, and pretty soon we’ve stopped running and are walking the way we are now. Dope: the boss made cappy cut her down, and it made cappy so sore he burnt Garvin’s face half off to blow off his grouch.”
“But why in the world should Captain Brack grow so angry over that!” I exclaimed. “Chanler is owner. Certainly it is to be expected that he can sail where, when and how he pleases.”
“Sure. It got cap’s goat, though.”
“By Captain Brack’s own statement we may have to wait for the Spring drift-ice to clear when we get up north. Surely there can be no sensible objection to slow running under the circumstances, especially as that is the owner’s wish.”
Pierce doubled up, grasping his thin ankles and staring at the floor, as was his custom when thinking seriously.
“Brack has been hurrying ever since we lay in ’Frisco. Hurried about the crew; took Wilson because he couldn’t find another officer in a hurry; and, we ran at maximum all last night after we cleared the Sound.”
“What of that?”
“That would take us to Petroff Sound just a week before we scheduled.”
“Well?”
“On our schedule time we’d probably have to lay offshore a week before the ice breaks up so we could go in. Then what would be the sense of getting there a week ahead of schedule? I saw the log this morning, too, just after Brack’d written it. He had the night’s run down at nine knots an hour; we were going better’n twelve. Put your noodle to working, Mr. Brains. What’s the answer?”
“Apparently Captain Brack wishes to reach Petroff Sound ahead of our schedule.”
“Without letting the boss know we were going to do it. Yep. Go on.”
“It is impossible for me to guess at what his object may be.”
“Same here, Brains. Brack isn’t doing it just for the fast ride though, that’s a cinch. Go on.”
“Chanler’s orders to slow down may be ascribed to one of his whims——”
“Huh!” interrupted Freddy. “I wish you were right there.”
“Why?”
“The boss didn’t play up a whim when he cut down our speed. He’d done some close figuring before he did that.”
“How do you know?”
“I ought to know. I’m operator, ain’t I? I handle his messages, don’t I? Well, that’s how I know.”
“Then the order to slow down was not due to a whim, but to a message?”
“To the one he got this morning in reply to the one he sent last night. Yep.”
“There seems, then,” said I, “to be a conflict of interests on board; Captain Brack wishes to go fast and Mr. Chanler wishes to go slow.”
“Yes,” said Freddy Pierce, scratching his red head, “and if the captain’s reasons are anything like the boss’s I’ve got a feeling that you’ll have some —— funny things to write about before we get back home. What’s more, if one of ’em’s got to have his way about the speed you can put your money on the captain and cash.”
“Nonsense! Mr. Chanler is the owner.”
“Yes, and Captain Brack is—Brack.”
I recalled what I had heard Brack called back in Billy Taylor’s in Seattle.
“Pierce,” I said, “how much do you know about Brack?”
He cast a look of disapproval at me.
“You don’t need to ask me that, Brains,” he said. “I got eyes—I can see you got him sized up, too.”
“You joined the Wanderer in San Francisco two weeks before I did,” I reminded him. “Surely you know more about the man than I do.”
“Well,” he said, “I know that he’s a devil with men.”
“A masterful personality,” I agreed. “Any one can see that.”
“Yep. But that ain’t what’s worrying me.”
“Worrying? Are you worrying about Brack?”
“Oh, sort of.”
“Why?”
“Why,” he said, as his instrument began to crackle. He turned to take a message. “Brack’s a devil toward men, but that ain’t a marker to what he is with women.”
IX
While I stood watching Pierce busied at his instruments Simmons came climbing up with word that Mr. Chanler wished me to come to his stateroom. The sky had begun to clear to the eastward by now; a rift of clean blue Spring heaven was showing through the great pall of Winter-like gray clouds; and as I entered Chanler’s stateroom the sun broke through and relieved the ugly monotony of the raw day.
Chanler was trailing his mandarin-like dressing-gown behind him as he paced the room, and his face was not the face of a man at ease.
“Gardy,” he said, “I want to talk with you. Got to talk with you. Brack’s all right to drink with; Doc Olson doesn’t talk at all; you’re the only one fit to talk to on board. ’Member I started to tell you yesterday how I discovered I had to do something useful, and then I changed my mind and didn’t tell you after all? Well, I’m going to tell you the whole story now. Gardy, how much do you know about women—girls?”
By this time I was prepared for any turn of thought on Chanler’s part and replied—“Not as much as you do, that’s sure.”
The careless reply seemed exactly what he wished to hear. He nodded gravely.
“That’s right. You don’t know how right that is. You may know a lot about ’em, Gardy, but I know more. I’ve learned a lot about ’em lately, a whole lot. You think that Brack, and those Petroff Sound mammoths, and old Doc Harper are responsible for this little trip we’re on. Well, they’re not.”
He paused, then concluded slowly—
“Gardy, it’s a girl.”
I recalled Chanler’s bachelor fear that some day a shrewd mama would snare him for her young daughter, and the determination with which he had fled whenever he found himself growing interested in a girl in a way that threatened his bachelor’s liberty.
“Arctic Alaska is a long way to run away,” I laughed.
“Hang it, Gardy!” he snapped. “Don’t talk that way. I’m not running away.”
“No?”
“No. I—I’m doing this because I want to—want to—I know it will shock you—but, hang it, Gardy! I want to marry her.”
I had an uncomfortable series of visions: Chanler entangled by some woman, a light actress, probably; family objections, and George being sent away to the Arctic Circle while the family money convinced the woman that she had made a mistake.
“You mean that you’re being sent up here?” I asked.
“Yes,” he replied, his chin sunk on his chest. “Yes, that’s it; I’m being sent up here.”
“By——”
“By—her.” He looked straight out of the window, gnawing his underlip nervously. “By a little girl, almost a kid, by Jove!”
He paused again, then went on didactically:
“The trouble with girls, Gardy—young girls; pretty, clever, charming girls, you know—the trouble is they’re too popular. Too many pursuers. Men are too eager to marry ’em. Fact. Girls have too many chances. Get an exaggerated idea of their own importance, and pick and pick before they decide on a chap, and then they demand that the one they’ve picked is—is a little, white god. Fact. Even the common ones. Ordinary man try to marry one—hah! Got to show ’em. Money? Oh, yes; big percentage, show ’em money and they don’t ask anything else. Limousine and poodle-dog type.
“But, hang it, Gardy, there’s a new kind of girl growing up in this country at present, and she’s the one who makes a man trouble. New American breed. She doesn’t look back over her shoulder to make you follow her. Hang it, no! She stands right up to you and looks you square in both eyes. She won’t notice when you show her money; what she’s looking at is you. Fact. Not what you got; but what you are. New type.
“Rotten world for men it’s getting to be. Our own fault, though. We chase ’em; make ’em think themselves worth too much. Men ought to quit—lose interest. That’d bring ’em to their senses, and they wouldn’t ask a man uncomfy questions. But hang it, it’d be too late now to do me any good,” he concluded gloomily. “I’m shot.”
I said nothing, and he soon went on.
“Shot, by Jove! Shot by a little girl. Just like a kid fresh from school. Hit so hard I’ve got to have her, and, hang it! She’s one of that—that new kind.”
Still I remained silent, and for many seconds Chanler struggled with his next words.
“Gardy!” he broke out in mingled anger and awe. “She wouldn’t have me!”
Once more we sat in silence, an uncomfortable silence for me. I had no desire to discuss affairs of the heart with any one. Up to that time I had never felt the need of any woman in my life.
Presently Chanler opened his writing-desk and drew out a small photograph which he passed to me.
“There she is, there’s the cause of this expedition, Gardy.”
I looked with interest at the picture in my hand.
It was as poor a specimen of the outdoor picture as any amateur ever made on a sunny Sunday. It represented a bareheaded girl in tennis costume, her hair considerably tousled as if she had just finished a set; but as the picture had been taken against the sun the face was so dark as to be scarcely discernible. Just an ordinary outdoor girl, apparently, as ordinary as the photograph.
“That’s the reason for this trip,” said George, carefully returning the picture to its place. “She isn’t anybody you know or have heard of. She’s nobody. She’s just a common doctor’s daughter from a little town in the Middle West, and I want to marry her, Gardy, and by Jove—she wouldn’t have me!”
He was started now, and there was no opportunity to stop him had I so wished. I listened in humble resignation. I was Chanler’s hired man. I was engaged as his literary secretary, but probably he counted me paid for listening to him while he poured out his amazement and despair at having been refused.
“She wouldn’t have me, Gardy,” he repeated over and over again; and, considering how many girls had fished for Chanler’s name and money, I wondered what sort of a girl this could be.
“I met her down at Aiken last Winter. She was visiting some folks—but that didn’t count. I met her at the tennis court. By Jove!” A new light came into his cynical eyes, a clean light, and for the time being his face was almost fine. “Can’t stand athletic girls as a usual thing, you know that, Gardy; but she—she was different.”
They had danced together that night at the club ball. If she had been stunning on the courts, she was overwhelming in evening dress. He scarcely had dared to touch her.
They had spent a great part of the next day rolling slowly about country roads in one of his roadsters. Sometimes they had stopped at convenient points along the road and had sat silent and looked at each other. Again they had halted and picked flowers along the roadside. And between times they had rolled along at six miles an hour and—talked.
“Oh, hang it, Gardy. For the first time in my life I wished I was clever like you and had done something. It ain’t fair. Nobody ever made me do a thing; what chance have I had to amount to anything? And then a fellow meets a girl like this, who likes you from the start and when she asks you what you’re doing, or have done, or are going to do, and you say nothin’, she looks at you in a certain way as if to say: ‘Why, what excuse do you make to yourself for cumbering the earth?’ No, by George, it ain’t fair; is it, Gardy?
“I told her I had money, and she laughed and said she didn’t understand how a man could be satisfied to have money and nothing else, and money that his father had earned at that. Then I asked her to marry me, so I would have something besides money. Hang it, old man, she cried. Yes, she did, just for a little while. Then she looked up and laughed at me, and said: ‘George, I’ve known you less than two days, and I’ve learned to like you so much that I wish I dared like you more. But if I liked you any more,’ she says, ‘I’m afraid I’d want to marry you, and have to depend upon you for my future happiness, and to be the father of my children,’ and says she, ‘you haven’t the right to ask that, George, so long as you play around like a thoughtless boy, and do nothing that a man should do.’
“Jove! That was enough to make a fellow pull up and think, wasn’t it? I said to myself right there: ‘I’m going to do something.’ And I am. I ain’t clever like you, Gardy, and I haven’t got business experience like some fellows, but—” he smiled with self-satisfaction—“I have got money.”
It all ended there. He had money; he need have nothing else. The new look vanished from his eyes and they became cynical and supercilious again. His underlip protruded cunningly.
“Science is a great help if you know how to use it, Gardy,” he chuckled. “What’s your opinion of our little expedition now?”
“I don’t see any reason why what you have told me should alter my opinion of the expedition.”
“Ha! I thought maybe that old conscientious streak in you would get troublesome. You don’t quibble about motives then, Gardy?”
“Why should I? I am your hired writing man——”
“Oh, hang it, Gardy! Don’t put it that way. Don’t be so precise. As one chap to another, you know—what do you think?”
“I see nothing wrong with your motive, Chanler. In fact, I think it rather fine. As I understand it you are undertaking this expedition because you wish to prove to this girl that you can and will do something useful.”
“Right-o. That’s why I undertook it—in the first place.”
“That surely established an excellent motive, for a man in your sentimental frame of mind, at least.”
“Yes,” he said with a hollow laugh, “there’s nothing wrong with that, is there?”
“And if the expedition is successful the results will be a credit to you—a genuine success—irrespective of what your motives might be.”
“Now you’re shouting, Gardy!” he cried vehemently, striking the desk. “The results, that’s what counts. Not the motive or the means. Who asks a winner why or how? Win out! Get what you want! That’s the idea. And, by Jove! What I want I get; and I want Betty Baldwin to be my wife!”
X
The Wanderer wallowed her faltering way northward, a new atmosphere of sinister suggestion about her spray-damped decks. Yet even now, with Chanler’s sudden confession ringing in my ears, I thought, not of him and his plans, not of the owner’s empty stateroom furnished for a woman, not of the Miss Baldwin mentioned, but of Brack. Brack was the great force on board. Chanler might plan well or evil; but it would be Brack’s will that would determine the fate of these plans, and of any one who came aboard. And I had not gaged Brack. Though by this time I was ready to credit him with Machiavellian cunning and power, my estimate of the man failed to do him full justice.
It was on the fourth day out that this conclusion was forced upon me. As Wilson had predicted, the weather remained rough and raw, and the Wanderer lifted and rolled leisurely through a smother of fog and spray from the long, slow North Pacific rollers.
In the middle of the afternoon the sun broke through for a period, the fog disappeared, and I climbed to the wireless deck to enjoy the cheeriness of unwonted sunshine and Pierce’s company combined. I found Pierce squatted on the starboard edge of the cabin roof, absorbed in watching the deck below. At the sound of my footsteps he looked up, grinned and crooked his finger for me to come to his side.
“Garvin’s out again,” he whispered. “He’s just come up from the aft on the starboard side. Brack’s forward just now, but he’s been hiking the starboard promenade for the last five minutes. He’s in a sweat again about our running half speed, and if Garvin doesn’t see him and duck they’re going to meet.”
I looked aft and saw Garvin, the pugilist, standing bareheaded in the sunlight, steadying himself easily to the pitch and rise of the Wanderer’s deck.
Surprise and relief came to me as I saw him look around, blinking against the sun. I had feared to hear that he had been blinded, or that he had been scalded so fearfully that he might succumb, or lie helpless for weeks. Yet here he was, save for the bandages that covered most of his face, apparently in better physical condition than when he had come aboard. In reality this was true. Two days of medical treatment and rest had given his splendid vitality that opportunity to throw off the load of alcoholic poison with which it had been surcharged. His bony face, hardened by training and blows, had withstood without serious damage the stream of boiling water that would have blinded, probably killed, a normal man.
As he moved slowly forward along the port rail in the bright sunlight there was none of the weakened, defeated look of a badly injured man about him. With his head and shoulders thrust forward, the short neck completely hidden, the long arms hanging easily, and moving with the sure step of the man whose muscular feet grip the ground, he was formidable to look at, a fighting animal, unafraid and undefeated.
“One bad, tough guy!” whispered Pierce in admiration. “Say, Brains, even money that he takes a swing at Brack before the cruise is over.”
Brack had made a swift, impatient turn near the bow and was coming aft along the starboard rail. He was wearing his rough sea-clothes and he walked with his eyes on the deck, chewing tobacco viciously.
From the aft Garvin advanced slowly, and from the bow came Brack. And as I looked from one to the other now I was shocked with the impression that they were much alike. The same thickness about the neck and shoulders, the same sense of force about them both. But in Garvin it was a blind force, stupid and unenlightened as the force of a thick-necked bull, while in Brack the force was directed by one of the most efficient minds it had been my fortune to come in contact with.
“Pipe ’em off, pipe ’em off!” whispered Pierce excitedly. “They’re going to meet face to face in the companionway. Brains, a dollar says there’ll be something doing when Garvin looks up and sees himself alone with the guy who cooked him.”
“Hush!” I warned.
A sudden stillness and tension seemed to have settled down on the yacht. Above a hatchway aft I saw the heads of a pair of the crew eagerly watching Garvin as his steps carried him toward Brack. In the bow the cook and Simmons followed the captain with their eyes; and from the bridge, Wilson, the mate, erect and stanch, looked down with his calm, serious expression unchanged.
And then they met. It was almost directly beneath where Pierce and I sat. They stopped and looked at one another. I had the sensation of a calm before a storm. And then——
“Hello, cap,” said Garvin in a low voice, and I could see in spite of his bandages that he winked. “How’s tricks?”
Brack smiled.
“All right, Garvin. How are you coming on?”
“Oh, I’m all right.” Garvin stepped to one side. “Little thing like that don’t bother me.”
“Good!” Brack actually patted him on the shoulder. “You’re the kind of man I want. I suppose you’ve taken worse beatings than that when it’s paid you to throw a fight?”
“——! That wasn’t even a knock-out. Just a little hot water. I’d take more’n that to be let in on a job like this.”
“That’s the way to talk,” said the captain heartily. “And this will bring you more than any fight you ever won or lost.”
That was all. They passed on, Brack toward the aft, Garvin toward the bow.
I looked at Pierce. He shivered slightly.
“I feel cold,” he whispered.
I looked up at Wilson. His eyes had widened a little. He swung around and began to pace the bridge. He knew what his duty was; he would do it no matter what went on between captain and crew.
“It’s getting chilly,” said Pierce.
We retired to the wireless house. Pierce shut the door and stared at me.
“Now what—now what do you make of that, Brains?”
I shook my head. I, too, felt inclined to shiver.
“Something’s wrong, Brains, something’s wronger than a fixed fight. The captain’s framing something. He’s let Garvin in on it. What is it—what is it? Can you dope it out?”
“No. Perhaps you’re mistaken.”
“Don’t talk that way; you know better’n that. Come to bat. Didn’t you hear him say this’d get him more’n he ever got in a fight? Garvin’s got thousands. The cap’s framed something, and he’s taken Garvin in. Now, what is it? I’ve had a hunch something was going on. I’m all ice below the ankles. What d’you s’pose they’re going to do? By God! I wouldn’t put it past ’em to steal the yacht!”
“Easy, Pierce,” I laughed. “People don’t do such things nowadays.”
“‘People don’t’? D’you call Brack and Garvin ‘people’? Garvin’s a gorilla and the captain’s—Brack. Come on. Brains, can’t you dope out what they’re framing?”
“Roll yourself a cigaret,” I advised laughingly. “If you’re so eager to find out what Brack is planning, suppose we ask him?”
“Don’t,” he sputtered, horrified. “Don’t do anything like that.”
“Why not?”
“‘Why not?’” he repeated, growing calm. “Oh, just because I kind o’ like your company and I don’t want you to go overboard into the briny.”
I laughed. Pierce, I felt, was given to extravagant expressions.
At dinner that evening I sat down resolved to lead the conversation around to Garvin’s new-born docility, but, face to face with Brack, I admit that I feared to attempt it. I was no match for him. His terrible eyes, I felt, would have read the thoughts in my mind try as I might to hide them, and I smiled and replied as best I could to his sallies, and wondered in vain over what was going on behind that gross, smiling mask.
The weather grew suddenly rougher toward the end of the meal.
“That’s the tail of it,” said Wilson in reply to my question. “Now we’re getting the blow that has been chasing the rough weather down from the north, where it’s been a lot worse than we’ve been having. It’ll kick up hard for a few hours. Ought to die down and clear off by tomorrow morning.”
The smashing storm drove Brack and Wilson to their duties on deck. Riordan went, too, presently, and while Chanler and Dr. Olson, agreeing that the dining salon was the best place on a night like this, ordered another bottle, I found an oilskin and sou’wester and followed.
As I stepped out on deck I wished for a moment to be back in the warm, lighted cabin. The wind had increased to what seemed to me a tornado, and the night was so dark that only in the beam of the Wanderer’s search-light could one see the tossing water.
The sea had changed with the rising of the wind, and in place of the long, slow rollers, sharp, spiteful waves shot their crests high over the yacht’s bridge, and with the driving rain which was falling made the decks uncomfortable, even dangerous. I recoiled from the dark, the wind and the rain.
A gust of wind and a slanting deck swept me off my feet and sent me slithering on my knees, gasping for breath, into the scuppers. I grew angry. My anger was with myself. I was timid, and I was weak; and, so, moved probably by some inherited streak of stubbornness, I forced myself to my feet, forced my face to meet the wind and rain without flinching, and so forced myself, much against a portion of my will, to remain outside, with the warmth and comfort of the cabin only a step away.
The storm grew worse. A life-boat on the port side was torn loose from a davit and swung noisily along the side. Through the brawl of the storm Wilson’s voice rang out sternly, there was a rush of feet on the deck and suddenly men were swinging the boat back to its place, making it fast, while the wind and waves snatched at them hungrily. Then the decks were empty again.
The wind strove to force me back to the cabin, and with a new stubbornness I refused to go. It was boyish, it was silly, but the harder the wind blew, the more the spray drenched me, the more determined I was to remain. I began to glow with the struggle.
New and strange sensations came and went. I felt an inexplicable desire to shout back at the storm. For the first time in years I was thrilled by the impulse of a physical contest, and I fought my way to the bow and stood spread-legged, leaning forward against the wave-crests which drenched me. Then I went leisurely aft, hanging onto the rail, denying the wind the right to hurry me. And in the noise and darkness I all but walked squarely into Captain Brack and Riordan.
They were standing in the lee of the engineer’s cabin. I did not see them, for I was moving by hand-holds along the cabin wall when, in a lull of the storm, I heard their voices and stopped.
“You got a bad one, sir, when you picked Larson,” Riordan was saying.
“Larson?” repeated Brack, as if trying to place the name. “Oh, the young hand from the Sound boat? What’s wrong with him?”
“He knows Madigan.”
“——!” said Brack. “Is he the only one?”
“Yes. I’ve sounded the others a second time to make sure. But Larson knew Madigan in some little town up the Sound. What’s more he’s no good to us. He’s ambitious and he’s working for a mate’s certificate, got a good family, and he won’t keep his mouth shut. I know he won’t.”
Brack made a sound in his throat like a bear growling.
“Oh, yes he will,” he said. “I’ll have a talk with him. He’ll keep his mouth shut when he understands there’s something in it for him. He’s one of the lookouts tonight, isn’t he? All right. Tell Garvin I want to see him in your cabin in half an hour.”
“Yes sir.”
A door slid open and shut as Riordan slipped back into his cabin, and I heard Brack’s heavy breathing as he came around the corner toward where I was hiding.
I retreated, swiftly and noiselessly, and slipped back into my stateroom. All hope that Pierce’s interpretation of Brack’s conversation with Garvin was wrong now had vanished. Brack was plotting something, and Riordan was partner to it, whatever it was. I did not sleep much that night.
In the morning I went in to breakfast early and found Wilson sitting staring at a cup of black coffee which he had ordered. One glance at the gravity of his lean, brown face and I knew that something was wrong.
“What has happened, Mr. Wilson?” I asked nervously.
Without lifting his eyes he said—
“Lookout Larson was swept overboard and lost from his watch last night.”
XI
I sat staring across the table at Wilson for many minutes before my wits returned to me. The mate’s words seemed too awful to be true; they seemed words heard in a hideous nightmare. Throughout the night I had fought and denied the still whisperings of potential horrors aboard which had striven for room in my thoughts; and here the blackest depths of these horrors were realized by Wilson’s simple words. For in my mind’s eye I did not see the picture that his words should have conjured up: of a seaman swept from his post, falling into the sea by mischance, drowning in the dark, without a chance to be saved—I saw Brack talking to young Larson, I saw the brutal gleam of Garvin’s bandaged eyes, I saw—Good God! I was afraid to admit to myself what I did see.
“Lost?” I repeated stupidly. “You mean drowned?”
“Yes sir.”
“Good God!” I chattered. “How can you sit there and talk about it so calmly.”
“I have followed the sea since I was fourteen, Mr. Pitt,” he replied respectfully. “I have seen many men lost, good men, better men than myself. The sea is hard.”
“But how—how could it happen?”
“I don’t know, sir; it wasn’t in my watch.”
As he rose to go he added, with a puzzled shake of his head—
“He was a good seaman, too, Larson was, and a clean, sober young fellow.”
I was still too much of the coward, still too much the indoor man, to face brutal facts honestly.
“But it must have been an accident!” I said. “An accident might overtake even a good and sober seaman.”
“Yes sir,” said Wilson.
“You don’t think it was anything but an accident, do you?”
He thought for a while before replying.
“Well, sir, Larson and the rest of the crew didn’t get on together. He was from the Sound, you see, sir, and the rest of the hands, except Garvin and the negro, were shipped at ’Frisco. Larson was different from them, sir; he was young, and sober, and ambitious. He came from a good family in Portland, and he had his whole life in front of him, and he was living it so he was bound to rise, sir. He was a credit to the Wanderer, Larson was, sir.”
“Then you mean that the rest of the crew is not?”
“I didn’t say that, sir.”
“It was what you meant, though.”
“I don’t say so. I said that Larson and the rest of the crew didn’t get on together. He kept himself apart, and they saw he was too good for them, and they had trouble.”
“What do you mean by trouble?”
“Well, for one thing he wouldn’t join their crap-game, and they had words and Larson smashed a couple of their faces.”
“Good Heavens, Wilson! You don’t mean to say that you think the crew was responsible——”
“No, sir. I don’t say anything of the sort.”
He opened the door to step out.
“Wilson!” I said. “Do you think everything is right on board?”
“I don’t, sir,” he said promptly. “I would be blind if I did. But I know that I am right, sir, and I know my duty to my ship.”
Chanler came in for breakfast at that moment. He was apparently pleased at something, but at the sight of our faces his expression changed. He stood for a few seconds, looking first at Wilson, then at myself, greatly displeased.
“You’re a fine looking pair of grouches for a man to look at first thing he gets up,” he said irritably. “Hang it! Here I’ve had my first decent night’s sleep in months: get up feeling like a boy, by Jove! And here you chaps greet me with faces that look like before the morning drink. I won’t have it, you hear! You’re too sober both of you, anyhow. Hang you water-wagon riders! Smile—you! Can’t you look cheerful when you see I want it?”
A slight flush showed beneath Wilson’s tan.
“Not this morning, sir,” he said.
“Hah?” Chanler looked at him, looked at me, with alarm in his eyes. “What’s the matter? Eh? Whatd’ you know—what’re you so serious about? Out with it, Wilson? What is it?”
“Lookout Larson was swept overboard and lost in the dog-watch last night, sir.”
Chanler sank into his chair, actually relieved.
“Hang it! Is that all——”
“Good God, Chanler!” I cried springing up. “‘Is that all?’ Isn’t that enough?”
He looked at me, surprised and a little amused.
“Hello! Getting excited, Gardy? I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“I didn’t think you had this in you, Chanler!” I retorted indignantly. “Didn’t you hear Wilson say that one of the men—Larson, a fine young man—was drowned last night, while we slept?”
He looked at me steadily.
“Yes, I heard,” he said carelessly.
“And you said, ‘is that all?’ And it was a relief to you. Did you expect to hear something worse than that—that one of your seamen had lost his life?”
“Gardy,” he said softly, “who do you think you are talking to?
“I don’t know,” I said hotly. “I thought I knew you, Chanler. I find I am mistaken.”
“By Jove, Gardy!” he repeated. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“Oh, drop that! That’s a pose, Chanler, and this is no time for posing. A man has lost his life from your yacht, and you are relieved because that is all. What sort of a condition of affairs is this?”
“I didn’t think you had it in you, Gardy,” he repeated. “No, I didn’t think you’d dare to talk to me this way face to face.”
“Dare!” I cried, and he sat up and looked at me strangely.
“By Jove! Gardy, you’re growing. The sea air is doing wonders for you. As for this chap—this hand—what’s his name, Wilson——”
“Larson, sir.”
“Larson. He was paid and paid well, and came on board of his own free will.”
“And your feeling of responsibility ends there?” I asked.
“Feeling of responsibility? My dear, excited Gardy! What are we going to have—a lecture on the responsibility of employer to employed, and that sort of rot?”
“No,” I said, “it would be wasted here.”
“Sensible man. Wilson, you may tell Captain Brack to step in, please.”
Brack came promptly, bustling in with a smile on his face.