The magnet

CHAPTER XIII

Applebo looked at her and nodded.

"My father!" he said.

His hand was lying on the yawl's low rail. Hermione reached up and touched it with her own. It was a quick, impulsive little gesture, friendly and sympathetic.

"Would you like to have me tell him?" she asked. "Because if so, I will."

Applebo's strong hand turned, caught hers in his firm grip, and carried it to his lips.

"That would be the act of a real friend!" he cried. "Will you?"

"Of course I will. In fact, I think that Uncle Chris would rather learn it from me than from anybody in the world."

"I'm sure he would! Tell him then, Hermione."

"When?"

"Choose the time as seems best to you. I will go away as soon as the weather clears. Write me to the New York Yacht Club. And you are sure that it's not asking too much?"

"No. You see, it is for Uncle Chris as much as for you. More, perhaps, for he is getting on in years and must feel his lack of the ties of blood. Now I must go. Hear that patient bell! It reminds me of Uncle Chris ... steady and constant and so dependable!"

She glanced up at him with her vivid smile. Applebo's face was transfigured ... as Hermione thought, at the prospect of finding a father. It is more probable that his radiant expression was at finding something else. At any rate, all of the sleepy, baffling expression was absent; might never have been there. The amber eyes were wide and alert; clear, steady, looking into hers with a rich golden light in their depths which set Hermione's pulse a-tingle. In fact, Hermione was unconsciously aware of some peculiar rich, warm glow all about the poet, and, like a brilliant green moth, she found great difficulty in leaving it for the chill, surrounding gloom. But the patient bell was calling steadily, so she said, with regret:

"I should like to talk with you some more about all of this, but I don't want to worry ... your father." She smiled; then, a sudden idea striking her, she added:

"Why not get in my skiff and I will row past the schooner and sing out to say that I am all right, but not quite ready to go aboard. Then we can have a few minutes more ... to discuss the matter."

"Very well," said Applebo, and stepped down into the skiff, placing the dory-compass under the sternsheets.

"We don't need that," said he.

"How about finding the yawl again?"

"We can find her. That is one of my few natural gifts."

Hermione picked up her oars and began to pull in the direction of the bell. Applebo, lounging in the stern, watched her long, vigorous strokes. Her green tam was frosted with the mist; the thick black hair had also a silver rime, but cheeks and lips and sapphire eyes defied the sad grey of the humid world through which they drifted like alien spirits, seeking their own place.

Hermione, looking at Applebo as she pulled along, found him very pleasing to her eyes. He, too, wore the badge of the warm, comforting earth which claimed them both, however much they might adapt themselves to the sea. The colourless gloom, filtering out above all of the reds and yellows from the generous sun-rays, those in which the poet was so rich, glowed like autumn leaves of a November day. His hair shone like a marigold and his skin was of the luscious tint of a russet orange. Also, there was a radiance of expression which Hermione ascribed to filial devotion, long suppressed. No doubt some of it was.

The steady ringing of the Shark's bell grew louder. Suddenly Applebo raised his hand. His trained eye had caught the straight, slim column of a mast rising into the thinner atmosphere aloft. Hermione caught the water with her oars and shoved vigorously astern. The way of the skiff fully checked, she rested on her oars.

"Shark ahoy...!" she hailed.

"Hello!" came the voice of Heldstrom. "So dere you are!" There was a note of great relief in the heavy bass.

"I am not coming aboard just yet," called Hermione.

"Yes, you must!" called Heldstrom. "Your fadder has yoost sent vord ... 'Stop ringin' that bell!'"

"Stop it then," retorted Hermione. "I don't need it. The weather is clearing. I can see your spars."

"You can see nodding!" growled Heldstrom, "but I can see fere you go out no more ven der vedder iss t'ick! Next time you get no boat, yoong lady!"

"I will be back in a few minutes," said Hermione. "Au revoir..."

She dipped her oars and pulled off into the fog, leaving Heldstrom growling impotently on the schooner's deck.

"My parent," Applebo observed, "appears to be a bit of a despot."

"He is a dear," said Hermione.

"You will catch it when you go back."

"No. He will say nothing, but wait until next time. Before then I will have told him why I prolonged my leave. Now tell me just what you would like to have me say. Do you wish me to tell him all that you have told me?"

For it had occurred to Hermione's practical mind that Applebo was doing, from his standpoint, a very loyal thing in claiming as a parent a man who, no matter how fine his personal qualities, was after all merely the sailing-master of a schooner-yacht. Viewed from a purely worldly aspect, Applebo was the social superior of Christian Heldstrom. Applebo was a blood-relation to royalty, independently well off, well educated, and a person to whom any society would be glad to open its doors. His father, on the other hand, was an ex-enlisted man of the United States Navy, at present holding a position which, if not exactly menial, was not far from it. It were not as though Applebo were drawn to his father by a tie of affection or early obligation. Heldstrom had never laid eyes upon his son, nor did Applebo owe his father anything but the mere fact of his physical existence, which can scarcely be recognised as a debt of gratitude. On the other hand, so far as Applebo knew, his father was merely a poor sailorman, dependent on his meagre pay, already advanced in years, and a possible care and burden for years to come. Impressed as she was by the romantic aspects of the case, all of these things occurred, nevertheless, to Hermione's practical reason and served greatly to elevate her opinion of Harold Applebo.

To test him more thoroughly, she put forward, in a tentative way, a little of what was in her mind.

"You are quite sure that you want to establish this relationship?" she asked. "Of course, while Captain Heldstrom is a very splendid man, and all of that, you really owe him nothing. And, socially, there is some difference between you."

"Hermione!" Applebo's voice was actually pained.

"But what is the particular advantage of it to you?" persisted Hermione.

"Advantage! Don't you think it's an advantage to have a father? Especially, when he's as good a sort as you tell me that mine is? You surprise me, Hermione!"

"But you are a young man of fortune and education and high connections, while he..."

"Is my father," said Applebo, quietly.

The blood rushed to Hermione's face. Her blue eyes filled.

"Forgive me!" she cried. "I was just trying to ... to ... I wanted to see if you had any snobbery about you...."

"But, my dear girl, how can one be snobbish about one's own father? That would be so inconsistent!"

"Some people are," said Hermione.

"Then I am not that particular sort of fool ... which is lucky for me, since I am so many others! No. I want my father. You don't know what it means to me to find that there is somebody so close to me. Hermione, I have been the most solitary person you can imagine...."

In rapid, graphic words he told her of his lonely, friendless boyhood; the long vacations, when other boys went to their homes and he remained at the boarding-school; the envy with which he was wont to listen to the recital of holiday sprees by his schoolmates. Later, at college, his peculiar personality had marked him as one apart, and, sensitive as he was, this aloofness he had accepted as a quality of his destiny. Always of a romantic, imaginative, and sentimental nature, expansiveness where his emotions were touched had brought only ridicule, hence the gradual adoption of the mocking, inscrutable pose.

"There were so many times," he told her, "when I couldn't help expressing what I felt. People laughed at me. At first I fought; then I learned that it saved a lot of wear and tear to laugh back ... a little harder. So I took a pose that kept them guessing. People like to laugh at you, and they don't particularly object when you laugh at them, as long as they know what you are laughing at, and that you really are laughing. But when they are puzzled to tell whether you are really making fun of them, and if so at what, they get shy of you and leave you alone. So I was left alone. How much alone, nobody will ever know...."

The mist was in Hermione's eyes before he had finished. Applebo interrupted his own narrative to look up and say:

"Where are you going?"

Hermione came back to earth with a sudden shock.

"I'm sure I don't know," said she. "To tell the truth, I don't even know where we are. Do you?"

Applebo dropped his head and peered into the fog, and raised his hand. Hermione stopped pulling and rested on her oars. Applebo slightly turned his head to listen.

"I hear the swash of water ahead," he said. "That must be the far side of the inlet."

"But I have been pulling more toward the mainland!" cried Hermione.

"I think that you have swerved a bit. There is scarcely any air stirring, but what there is strikes me on the other cheek. Pull ahead a little."

Hermione did so. Presently the swash of water on the rocks grew plainly distinct, and, a few minutes later, a dark, irregular outline reared itself through the fog.

"Rocks," said Applebo. "We are on the east side of the inlet."

"But I am sure that we are on the other side," said Hermione. She raised her hand. "Listen...!"

From somewhere in the murk came the sound of eight bells.

"I must be getting back," said Hermione. "Which way?"

"Let me take the oars..."

Hermione nodded, and they shifted places. She was not tired, but she wanted to see the strong, lithe body in action. Applebo picked up the light oars and, without so much as a glance over his shoulder, pulled off apparently at random into the fog. As he rowed, he told her about his voyaging in pursuit of the Shark. Hermione was amazed to learn how arduous this had sometimes been. Secure and comfortable aboard the big, staunch Shark, it was not easy to realise the conditions to be sometimes confronted by a little boat like the Daffodil.

"You are like a gull..." she said. "Hello ... there's a boat ahead!"

"The yawl," said Applebo, indifferently.

Hermione opened her violet eyes very wide.

"I must have been pulling in a circle!" she exclaimed.

"You described quite an arc."

"But how did you know?"

"I felt it. Some of us have that instinct of the hound and the sea-turtle and the gull. It's not subject to analysis. At sea, I never take a sight ... but I use the lead a good deal." He laid the skiff alongside.

"Before I go," said Hermione, "I want to peep into the cabin. May I?"

"If you like. I'd be more hospitable, but something tells me that it is not convenable, and, since you are Hermione, you are still a mere child ... how old...?"

"Twenty."

"An infant in arms! However ... so long as they are the proper arms ... and I'm so much older that it doesn't matter. Come aboard."

He stepped out and extended one hand to Hermione, making fast the skiff with the other.

"How old are you?" asked Hermione.

"Getting senile. I have been out of college four years; that makes me twenty-five. At such an age there are no longer rules of propriety; one thinks only of the grave. How do you like my cabin?"

Hermione, with a delicious sense of wrongdoing, examined with rapture the cabin of the Daffodil. This inspection was brief to the point of being cursory, and, as she came up through the companionway, she heard the bell of the Shark again tolling its insistent summons.

"And to think," she cried, "that you should have followed us all of those weary knots on this little thing! And just because you knew that your father was aboard!"

"Hermione, filial affection was not the lure of the last two thousand miles."

"What was...?"

"Get in your skiff and I will tell you."

Hermione's heart stampeded furiously. It was frightened less at these discreet words than at a sudden flash in the clear eyes of her companion. Every sentient impulse warned her to get immediately into her skiff and row away, just as fast as she could. But other and stronger impulses made this craven course exceedingly difficult. She did not want to row off into the cold, grey mist and leave new problems to be solved by the lonely, romantic figure beside her. She felt that he needed her, and this need, to a person of Hermione's rich nature, was a far more impelling force than any need of her own.

She looked a little fearfully at Applebo. He was smiling at her with the air of one about to say a conventional farewell ... or about to try to do so. Hermione thought of his loneliness ... the Finn was still ashore ... and the tears rose to her eyes. She lingered, and from afar the Shark's bell chided her.

"Good-bye..." said Hermione, tremulously, and held out her hand.

Applebo took it, raised it in his, and brushed it with his lips.

"Good-bye," he answered, almost brusquely.

Still Hermione did not go. Perhaps it may have occurred to her that inasmuch as she had been trying to go, without success, for the last half-hour, an additional half-minute would not particularly matter. This is feminine reasoning, and as sound as any such, and Hermione was exceedingly feminine. Perhaps, also, there flashed across her memory the recollection of another farewell, and of something which had happened, partly under water. At any rate, she lingered. This was very wrong of Hermione, and if she had had a mother, poor girl, instead of an elderly Norwegian sailorman impotently banging a bell, it never could have happened. But she lingered. Some instinct advised her that there was still something to be told; that she had not heard the entire tale, and that there would be a singular incompletion to the whole affair until she was told it. In which she was quite correct. Long-lost parents have an undoubted value, but it dwindles shockingly before that of new-found loves.

"Good-bye..." said Hermione, invitingly, and held out her hand.

Applebo had honestly meant to put her back in her boat and give her a shove in the direction of the patient bell. But there are limits to all human self-control, and Hermione at that moment stood outside them. There was a sad little droop to her shoulders, and to the corners of her pretty mouth, and the roses in her cheeks and violets in her eyes were blazing through the fog like flowers in a neglected garden. In that moment Hermione's sweetness was certainly not intended to expend itself on several cubic fathoms of fog, and, if Applebo permitted this, he would have been a fool and not worth the trouble of telling about. He had been thinking not of himself, but of Hermione, and, when he saw that Hermione was not quite content, he forgot that she was a very young girl, and he a wise and world-worn man of twenty-five, of whom the motto should have been—memento mori. Wherefore, he said:

"Hermione, I have told you the truth, and nothing but the truth, but not the whole truth. I followed the Shark because I wanted a father. But, since we met on the beach at Shoal Harbour and swam off together to the schooner, this splendid filial devotion has been quite eclipsed by something else. I have been able to think of nothing but a girl in a green bathing suit, and, when your father gave me that 'dare' to follow him all up and down the coast, I took it up because I did not want to lose her out of my daily life. The verses that I have been sending from time to time during this chase have been the only really sincere ones I ever wrote...."

"Then the 'Hermione' ones that you sent to me were not sincere?"

"They are not insincere, but their sentiment was directed towards the Ideal. After I met you on the beach, they were offered to the Real."

"And went to Cécile..."

Applebo bent his bushy brows upon her in a way curiously suggestive of Heldstrom. Hermione wondered that she had never noticed the resemblance.

"Hermione," said he, "I have been a silly, careless fool and you do well to remind me of it. But do you remember having told me on the beach at Shoal Harbour that you had never seen any of my verses?"

The blood rushed into the girl's face and she dropped her eyes. Hermione had thought of that lie many times, but she was in the hope that Applebo had forgotten it.

"Since you didn't know me when you saw me," she answered, with a schoolgirl pout, "I did not intend to put you right. What made you send the verses in the first place?"

"The idea appealed to my romantic nature. I had seen you on Fifth Avenue and admired your walk. I saw you many times, but never face to face. I like to write verses, and one writes better when one has a definite object. They were harmless things, and I knew that you would not take too seriously such an act of unasked devotion on the part of one whom you had never seen. Nor did you."

Hermione was silent for an instant. Then she said, almost shyly:

"And afterwards..."

Her violet eyes wandered fearsomely from side to side, aloft, into the fog, at her skiff, to rest finally on those of Applebo. The clear, amber ones, which seemed to have grown suddenly dark, were waiting for them. They telegraphed a message which so shook Hermione that she gave a little gasp and reached for the wire stay. The dense fog wrapped them about in its protecting folds.

"Hermione," said Applebo, in his deepest voice. "I think that you had better get into your skiff and go back to the Shark and tell them to stop ringing that bell. The 'afterwards' will wait until another day."

"I want it now!" murmured Hermione, scarcely knowing what she said.

Her long lashes dropped on the rose-red cheeks. Her heart was fluttering wildly and she gripped the wet wire with all of her strength. She scarcely saw Applebo as he stepped quickly to her side and took her hand in his big one, crushing it even more tightly to the iron shroud. Then she looked up in frightened questioning, surprised to find him so close and marvelling at the breadth of the big chest. Her head came a little above its upper level, and Hermione was a big girl. Close as he stood to her, Hermione was obliged to give her face an upward tilt to look into his eyes, which she did, questioningly, yet with a swift, wild exultation.

One downward step and Hermione would be in her skiff, prepared for flight and the security of the chiding bell. But she could not take it. Her feet were glued to the deck; her body as though lashed to the wire stay. Applebo began to speak, and she scarcely knew what he said, even while she thrilled at the deep, organ-noted voice.

"Hermione ... Hermione ... you are still a little girl and perhaps I am doing wrong in telling you these things. I have loved you, sweetheart, from the moment I saw you that morning on the beach. I struggled against it, but it has been too strong. You are my Ideal quickened into life, and, though we scarcely know each other, all the nature that is in me cries out for you. When I say that I love you, I say it all. Now you must get into your skiff, dear, and go back. From this time on our attitude shall be the conventional one. I shall try to win you, but first there are other things to do. Go, Hermione."

Just as when he had kissed her in the water, Hermione felt all of her personal volition leave her. She could only cling to the stay and stare at him dumbly with vague, dark violet eyes. So she looked up into his face, her own colourless, except for a crimson splash in the centre of either cheek, and her coral lips trembling. Her black hair was veiled in the grey, clinging mist. She suffered from no lack of strength, but her mind and body were filled with the pleasant lethargy which might come of a rare old wine, and which would quickly pass. Hermione felt no hurry for it to pass.

So she clung to the stay and stared at the poet, and muffled in the fog came the notes of the bell, querulous and complaining, with a hint of impatience in its quickened beat. Applebo looked at her questioningly ... and Hermione's eyes shouted the exultant answer to this query. A golden flame leaped from the amber depths so close to her face, and, for some strange reason, Hermione felt the hot tears obscure her vision and the fog became a swirling chaos of grey. Her body swayed as she stood. She tried to say "Good-bye," but the quivering lips brought no sound.

And then she felt a strong, encircling arm about her, while her yielding body was drawn close and her pale, tear-stained, upturned face fell forward against the man's broad chest. Her hand loosed its hold on the stay, of which she no longer had any need, and with its mate stole up to rest on the strong shoulders. Hermione gave a little gasp; her arms went about his neck. There was a torrent of words in her ears, crashing like deep, glorious chords, and she heard her own voice saying: "Yes ... yes ... I love you, I love you...."

All was swift and wonderfully rapturous. Kisses smothered the words pouring from her lips, and these lips quickly found a far more potent manner of expression. Scarcely any time this lasted, if one is to figure time in moments such as these by stupid seconds, which might be each an eternity.

Hermione's scattered senses were rallied by the chunk-a-chunk of oars close at hand. She felt Applebo turn to glance over his shoulder, and looked up to see him peering into the fog. Hermione drew herself away and stood for a moment, dazed and panting, for she had need of breath, poor girl.

"Here comes the Finn," said Applebo. "Now you must go, darling...."

Scarcely knowing how she got there, Hermione found herself back in the skiff staring blindly at the compass which Applebo placed on the thwart again. "Good-bye..." she murmured, and thrust at the yawl's side with her oar. She held up her hand, and Applebo leaned far down to kiss it. Hermione dipped her oars, and was wafted into the swimming mist.

Applebo stood looking after her, his face like ivory, but his eyes like yellow diamonds. The fog swam and eddied in a faint puff of air, striking down over the high bank on the shoreward side of the harbour.

The sound of Hermione's oars grew fainter and fainter, until his ear could no longer follow it. Then, as he listened, the Shark's bell stopped ringing.

CHAPTER XIV

As Hermione came over the side of the Shark, Heldstrom stepped forward to give her a bit of a "dressing-down" for the anxiety which she had caused him. But, at sight of her face, he stopped short in his tracks and stared. The next instant he glanced quickly about, as though fearful that some other person might see what he beheld. Olesen, the quartermaster of the watch, was busy with the skiff, however, and none of the cabin party had as yet appeared.

For Hermione, an uncommonly pretty girl at all times, was transfigured. Her face was still pale, with the crimson patch on either cheek, but the treatment which they had just received appeared to have given a new and wonderful expression to her lips. The flagrant tell-tales were, however, her eyes, still shot with a flame which the damp fog was utterly unable to quench. They held, also, a warm tenderness and a sort of knowledge which is the distinguishing feature between the eyes of a girl and those of a woman.

"Heffens...!" rumbled Heldstrom, in a voice so like that to which she had just been listening that Hermione's pulse raced off afresh. "Fere you been? You look like a yoong br'ride!"

Hermione dropped the long lashes over her tell-tale eyes.

"I ... I have been rowing around in the fog...." She tried to slip past him and gain the companionway, but his big bulk was planted directly in her course.

"R'rowing ar'round in der fog ... r'rowing ar'round in der fog..." he repeated, slowly. He shook his massive head and the deep-lined face was flooded with anxiety. The clear blue eyes bored like gimlets into hers.

"Hermione ... Hermione ... my little ger'rl..." the big voice was very tender. "You did not get dose eyes nor dose cheeks from der kiss of der fog! Do you tell me that you haf been r'rowing ar'round in der fog ... alone?"

Hermione hung her pretty head. The colour on her cheeks deepened.

"No, Uncle Chris ... I was not alone. I will tell you all about it ... but not now. Let me pass, please."

There was an imperious note in the last words which brooked no denial. Heldstrom moved aside without a word. Hermione walked to the companionway and went below, while Heldstrom stared after her. His eyes were lit with the blue flame of the sun on an iceberg and his forehead was ominous as a storm-cloud. He glanced quickly about to see that no one was lurking near, then turned with a fierce Norse oath, and shook his head in the direction of the Daffodil.

"Ah, I t'ink I understand! It's that Pilot-vish! Ven I saw his yellow eyes blinking at me from der sea I knew dere vas no goot behind dem! It vas like ... like ... anodder face ... I vonce knew ... to my gr'rief!"

For a moment he stood stiff and silent, staring in the direction of the Daffodil. He cursed again.

Suddenly he raised his voice and hailed the quartermaster.

"Der gig at der gan'vay...!" said he.

The order was quickly executed. Heldstrom got into the boat and gave the order to "give way." The fog was thick as ever, and, at the end of a few moments, he commanded—"Oars."

The boat glided silently through the still water. Heldstrom turned his massive head slightly to one side and listened intently. On the starboard bow there came the sound of voices. All at once he heard the somewhat peculiar remark, in Danish, which is to say, Norwegian, although a Dane would put it the other way about.

"Yes. Two days in every month you may get drunk. Between these periods, not a drop...."

"Gif way, poort...!" growled Heldstrom.

As he drew near the yawl, the answering voice became suddenly muffled, and Heldstrom knew that the speaker had gone below, while still talking. There was an excited note to this voice which suggested the babble of a fever patient. Heldstrom saw his bow oar furtively cross himself. This man had one day encountered the Finn when both were the worse for drink, and the warlock had opened his lips and delivered himself of informations which had sobered the Irishman as a sluicing with ice-water might have done.

Close aboard the yawl, Heldstrom gave the order—"Way enough!" As the gig shot alongside, Heldstrom saw Applebo standing in the cockpit, staring down at him. The face of the old man grew stiff and cold as ice.

Applebo's features were like a clay death-mask and the only live quality was in the eyes, these barely visible between the double fringe of dark lashes.

"Good-morning," said he, in a voice as expressionless as his face. "Captain Heldstrom of the Shark, I believe?"

"Der same," answered Heldstrom, and added: "I haf come to pay a visit. I am curious to see der little yawl vich haf followed me for so many miles of sea."

"Pray come aboard," said Applebo. "There is really not much to see. I am about to breakfast. Perhaps you will do me the honour to join me."

"T'anks..." said Heldstrom. He stepped aboard the yawi, then turned to the stroke-oar, who was shifting aft to take the yoke lines.

"Go back alongside," said Heldstrom. "I vill ask you..." he turned to Applebo, "to set me back on my ship."

"Certainly."

The gig glided off into the fog. Heldstrom, standing by the main rigging, stared under lowered brows at Applebo.

"We have t'ings to say to each odder," he remarked, in a heavy voice. "Dis fella of yours ... does he oonderstand English?"

"Yes," answered Applebo. He motioned to the Finn, who was eyeing the two with his shaggy head at its curious slant.

"Get in the dinghy and hang off and on," said Applebo, in Danish. "When I want you, I will whistle. Keep away. I do not wish to be interrupted."

The Finn appeared to hesitate.

"Go..." said Applebo, "... at once!"

The Finn tugged at his cap. Without a word, he stepped into the dinghy and pulled off into the fog. As soon as he was lost to sight, Applebo turned to Heldstrom.

"Come below," said he, and led the way.

In the cabin of the yawl, Applebo motioned his guest to a transome opposite. The old man was too great of bulk for one of the camp-chairs. For a minute the two men eyed each other in silence. Heldstrom was breathing heavily; Applebo was as pale as it was possible for his peculiar ivory tint to become, but, aside from the singular glow of his eyes, his manner was free of all emotion.

Heldstrom spoke first.

"I know you," he said, in English. "You are my son."

Applebo slightly inclined his head.

Heldstrom gave him another piercing look. "You haf all of your mudder ... und more!" he said. "You haf also somet'ing of me. Der vorst of me."

Applebo's brows came lower. He did not reply.

"I haf never said it to anybody," continued Heldstrom, "und I vould knock der man down vat said it to me. But I vill say it to you. Your mudder vas royalty, but she vas no goot. Und you are like her."

Applebo raised his eyebrows.

"If you were not my father," he said, "I would knock your brains out. But after all, when one stops to think, you are throwing mud principally at yourself."

Heldstrom's expression became terrible.

"I t'row mud at nobody!" he cried, and leaned forward, gripping the gravity table until his great finger joints creaked. "I tell you only vat you ar're!"

Applebo hunched up his shoulders, leaned back, crossed his strong hands in front of one upraised knee, and eyed his father through half-opened eyelids.

"When did you discover my identity?" he asked.

"That iss my affair! I knew alvays dere was a son. All my life, since your mudder left me...."

"I beg your pardon ... since you left my mother...."

"Since your mudder left me ... for..."

"Since you left my mother..." interrupted Applebo, in a voice which, for all of its silky tone, sheared its way through that of Heldstrom.

Heldstrom struck the gravity-table a blow with his great fist.

"Since your mudder left me...."

"Please don't break my furniture! I need it. I don't need a father, particularly...." Applebo's voice was smooth and yet appeared to overtone and undertone that of Heldstrom. "But I do need my table. I need certain ideals, also, that you are trying your best to break down ... like any other coarse brute of a Scandinavian sailorman! You ... you lived a whole lifetime in a few weeks, didn't you ... didn't you? ... Don't begin to glare! And now ... you come over here aboard of my little boat ... to kick about the bill!"

Few men would have cared to face Christian Heldstrom at that moment, but the one facing him was of the same fierce, viking breed. Applebo guessed at the motive for the visit, which was very far from being one of parental interest. There was no doubt in his mind that it had to do with Hermione, but of that, later. At present it had to do with himself and this father, whom for weeks he had followed through a deep-seated filial instinct of affection. He was very glad that he had waited before declaring himself. Applebo felt shame and a hot resentment in his heart that this father, about whom he had built so many splendid ideals, should thus prove himself merely a harsh and violent Norwegian sailor.

Heldstrom was glowering at him across the table. His eyes were like the blue tips of icicles.

"Pay der bill...?" he rasped. "Vat do you mean?"

"Just that," answered Applebo. "You might have known what to expect, if you were not altogether a fool. My mother was a young and beautiful woman, the only daughter of rich and noble parents, a favourite of the King. You were the son of a poor but respectable farmer, at the time engaged in the trade of boat-building. Is that not true...?"

Heldstrom's lips moved, but no sound came from them. A terrible rage was gathering on his heavily bearded face. Applebo saw it, but continued in the same dispassionate tone:

"You were years older than she, and you should have known better. You sold her uncle a yacht and sailed her one season for your client. My mother was aboard the boat a good deal, and so you met and became infatuated with one another. Then you eloped and were married, and brought her to America as a poor emigrant. Do you consider that to have been an act of affection...?"

"Stop!" Heldstrom's voice was choked and strangling. "Not anudder vord! Dis iss not your affair...."

"Pardon me, it is very much my affair ... seeing that I was the result of the folly! Of your blind selfishness! Do you think that I have had a happy life? It has been one long record of loneliness ... for I am not of the sort to make friends, readily! And there has been a good deal of terrible monotony about it, too! Not until Harold Applebo died and left me a small income, four years ago, did I commence really to live."

Heldstrom's face was livid, but the devastating rage had left it. He swallowed once or twice.

"Und you say I kick about der bill!" he growled. "Vat you vant, den? Somet'ing froom me?"

A fierce gleam shot from the pale eyes of Applebo. Leaning forward, he shook his finger in Heldstrom's face:

"No. I want nothing from you ... now that I know the sort of man you are! I did want a little paternal sympathy and interest and to feel that I was not entirely a stray spar washed from the wreck of two lives and left to drift where the current carried me! Now that I know you, I want nothing! Formerly, I thought that you might possibly contain a spark of paternal instinct. I thought, also, that you might welcome the thought of one of your own blood to be the companion of your declining years. It was for this that I have been following your schooner all summer long...."

Heldstrom raised his massive head, which had been slightly drooping, and stared intently at his son.

"You tell me it vas for me that you haf followed der Shark?" he demanded, harshly.

"Yes. I wanted to learn precisely what I have learned this morning ... but not exactly in this way!" Applebo smiled ironically. "That was my whole object in trailing you about!"

Heldstrom thrust himself suddenly forward.

"You are a liar!" he almost shouted.

Applebo slightly recoiled. For an instant it seemed as though the older man were about to hurl himself upon him.

"That iss vat you are ... yoost like all your mudder's kinfolk! Dey vas liars all! Und you inherit froom dem; not froom me, t'ank God! You haf learned but a little part of dis history, und that wr'rong! I took your mudder avay because her fadder vas going to marry her mit a man dot vas known to be der vor'rst blackguard in Europe, und she hated him, too. But I make me no excuses...."

"Then," Applebo interrupted, "suppose you make me one for having so far forgotten yourself as to call me a liar. Otherwise, this interview must come to an end."

Cried Heldstrom, in his great bull-whale voice: "Dis interview vill coom to an end ven I haf said my say! Do not enr'rage me, yoong man, or, son or no son, you may haf cause to be sorry. I call you a liar, und you are that! If you follow de Shark because of me, vy do you not coom forward like a man long ago, and say, 'You are my fadder; I am your son!' I do not say that I vould be glad ... but, at least, I vould do my duty und you vould do yours! Vy do you follow und v'vatch und look und peer und pr'ry like a yellow cat v-vatching der cage of a bird? Vy do you anchor off und neffer coom aboard, der more so ven you vas invited by Captain Bell und Mr. Wood? Vy do you send dose sickening werses to my yoong ladies ... for I learn yesterday you do? Answer me, you fella ... vy do you do all dis if it iss for me dot you follow der Shark?"

All of the colour faded from Applebo's face. He began to understand. But, while he caught the ugly reflection of what was in the mind of Heldstrom, he did not see how he was to answer him. How was he to make this rough sailor understand his silly sentimentality? And how could he explain his own sensitiveness in approaching him on the subject of their relationship? He hesitated, and Heldstrom, of course, took this hesitation as a sign of guilt, and the endeavour to search for some explanatory lie. His face grew black, and in contrast the piercing blue eyes appeared to pale. Perhaps they did actually pale as a consuming wrath contracted the pupils. He leaned forward and shook his heavy forefinger so close to Applebo's face that it almost struck him.

"I tell you vy! Now I understand! It vas because of my little ger'rl ... Miss Hermione! Dot mor'rning at Shoal Harbour! Dis morning in der fog! Und how many mornings besides, I do not know...!"

"Silence!" Applebo sprang to his feet. For all of his height, there was head room in the yawl's cabin to permit him to stand erect. The face which he turned to his father was bloodless, tense, with white teeth bared to the molars, while the heavy cords and muscle-bands of his neck stood out under the ivory skin.

Heldstrom, too, hove himself upon his feet, and, for an instant, the two big men faced each other across the little table. Then Applebo sank back to his seat.

"You are my father," he said, "and you are aboard my boat. Also, you are in the wrong, as you will discover when you talk with the lady in question. I have seen her but twice: once by accident at Shoal Harbour; once this morning, when she came to ask me to follow you no longer. She will tell you the rest. As soon as the weather clears, I shall sail for New York, to lay up the yawl. This is all the explanation that you will get from me. In fact, there is nothing more to be said." He arose and, stepping up into the cock-pit, blew a wailing note on a siren boat-call. Almost immediately there came the sound of oars, and the Finn appeared propelling the dinghy over the flat grey surface of the water. It was apparent that the man had not been far from the yawl.

Applebo turned to Heldstrom.

"Here is the boat," he said.

Heldstrom gave him a fierce, questioning look, which Applebo did not appear to see. The face of the older man was haggard as he came up through the hatch. For an instant he seemed to hesitate, as if on the point of speech. Applebo gave him no opportunity.

"Set Captain Heldstrom aboard the Shark," he said to the Finn, who vigorously nodded his wild, dishevelled head.

Heldstrom glanced down at the boat, then at his son. The old sailor had the expression of a very aged man who has overtaxed his waning strength and is about to bend beneath the weight of years and trouble. Again he hesitated, as if trying to speak.

"Good-morning...!" said Applebo, curtly.

The words acted like a bucket of cold water on Heldstrom. His great frame appeared to stiffen. He stepped down into the dinghy and seated himself heavily in the stern. Applebo raised his hand in salute. Heldstrom ignored it.

"Gif vay...!" he growled to the Finn.

The warlock dipped his oars. The boat glided off into the fog, which appeared to have suddenly darkened. A damp air was fanning in from the sea.

CHAPTER XV

For several minutes Applebo stood erect, arms folded across his chest, staring into the fog. Presently he shrugged, smiled cynically to himself, and, turning on his heel, went below, where he seated himself on the edge of his bunk.

"An interesting morning," he observed, aloud. "I am richer by one Ideal, and poorer by the loss of another. On the whole, however, I am 'way ahead on the break! If my father is a rough old brute of a pig-headed Scandihoovian sailor, then my sweetheart is the darlingest and loveliest of women, although she is scarcely more than a child. Nothing shall keep me from marrying her! I am mad about her! I would like to write her fathoms on fathoms of verse, but I will not!"

He opened the locker at the head of his bunk, took therefrom a large pile of manuscript, which he proceeded to tear into small fragments.

"I have sung my swan-song as a bard," Applebo observed. "Poetry can make a d—— fool of a man. 'Sickening verse,' quoth my paternal. I shall write no more sickening verse." He stared absently at the yellow bulkhead, then as absently set about to steep some tea. "Perhaps, when I get something in my tummy, I will look with a less saddened retrospect upon my 'family quarrel.' What an old brute! I wonder why Hermione is so fond of him? There is a jolt coming to him when he learns that his accusations were all creatures of his prejudiced and unreasonable imagination. The old beast actually thought that I had been putting her up to secret rendezvous ... when, as a matter of fact, upon the only two occasions when we have met, I have been the one to bring the interview to a close and send her home! Shucks!"

A quart or two of tea, with some dozen and odd macaroons, had a decidedly cheering influence upon the spirits of Mr. Applebo. This breakfast achieved, he wrote a letter to Hermione, telling her of his unfortunate interview with his father. After this, he took the Finn and went ashore, in quest of certain things needed for the run to New York. Most important of these was a fresh supply of macaroons.

At noon the fog had slightly thinned and there was a little air from the northeast. Nobody but Applebo would have thought of putting to sea in such weather, but he had an idea that his father, after interviewing Hermione, might return to express his regret at certain things which he had said, and Applebo had, for the time being, completely changed his views in regard to the desirability of a paternal parent in the scheme of his careless life. Not only had the romantic anticipations of the poet been dealt a severe blow by this brutal introduction to his father, but, what was worse, his hypersensitive mind had almost immediately parodied it, so that, even while smarting from the interview, he was cynically laughing at it. Like many poetic natures, Applebo's had its keen appreciation of the ridiculous, and it was because he was conscious that his sentimentality often enticed him out upon the thin ice of the absurd that he had, as a sort of self-protection, acquired the veiled, mocking pose which left the unsympathetic world in doubt as to whether he was making a fool of himself or of it!

In his interview with Heldstrom, Applebo had been quick to appreciate the futility of a pose of any sort. The sturdy Norwegian would have torn through it like a shark through a gill-net. Applebo had found himself always quite well-equipped to meet force with force, and so, when his father had brought to the onslaught sheer weight of personality, his son had met him with the same backing. The issue had been a draw, and Applebo felt that, if he had frankly won, he would be far less content.

Half an hour later he was feeling a secret admiration for his sturdy, one-ideal old father, and wishing that they had parted friends.

"After all..." said Applebo to his barometer, "the old coot was only carried into breaking water by his devotion to Hermione. What he thought, I'm sure I don't know ... nothing very bad, or he would not have left me alive. It was apparently that I had been enticing her from the path of conventional behaviour. Dammit! I wish I knew what he really did think! I'll go to sea and dope it out under way. The narrow environs of this puddle constrict my intellectual flight." He raised his voice, and the Finn came squattering aft.

"Get the anchor," said Applebo. "We are going to sea."

Twenty minutes later the Daffodil stole wraith-like through the entrance and laid a course across Massachusetts Bay for Cape Cod. The wind was steady, if light, and its direction enabled Applebo to make a broad reach for the Cape. In the middle of the afternoon the fog blew off, while the breeze freshened, hauling steadily to east, then east by south. At dark Applebo sighted the Highlands Light and, soon afterwards, Race Point, and, as the wind was beginning to haul ahead and the general aspect of the weather was unpromising, he decided to run into Provincetown. This he did, dropping anchor in the midst of a fleet of fishermen who were trailing in, one after the other, as the night advanced.

At two o'clock in the morning Applebo was awakened by the hum of his main rigging, the hiss of driving rain, and the short, angry slapping of little waves against the bow of the yawl.

"Good thing we ran in..." he thought, contentedly, and went to sleep again. Two hours later he was again awakened, this time by a clanking and clattering up forward.

"The Finn is giving her the other anchor," he thought. "Must be blowing up...."

At seven in the morning, when he awoke, Applebo shoved his tawny head up through the hatch, to find that it was blowing a southeasterly gale. Crowded close on all sides was the fishing fleet, many other vessels having run in for shelter during the night. Fine, staunch schooners they were, with the big spars and sleek lines of yachts.

Applebo slipped on his bathing-suit and took a dive overboard, to the unconcealed amusement of the crew of an adjacent smack. Finding himself the target for many witticisms, Applebo decided to shorten the range and swam alongside, when, finding a sea-ladder down, he climbed sleepily aboard and blinked at the jovial crew.

"How's fishing?" asked Applebo, hauling his long, wet body over the rail.

The men regarded him with that swift yet searching scrutiny peculiar to their kind. Finding him a "college feller" and locating him at once aboard the Daffodil, there seemed to be nothing strange in his wandering half-naked through the wind and rain.

"Fishin's all right," replied an elderly man, who appeared to be the captain of the vessel, "but the weathure ain't. You off'n the ketch yander?"

"Yes. She may not look it, but she is my yacht."

The captain gave her a keen, assaying glance.

"Say," he observed, "that thing looks like the critter we see last week at Hampton Roads. We was in there ketchin' crabs...."

"I was there, too," said Applebo. "I sneaked back up here inside in that easter."

The men looked at him with interest. The captain—a lean, lanky citizen of the State of Maine—shifted his tobacco. He was politely dressed in a nautical costume befitting his rank and consisting of a derby hat with a dint in the left side, a rather tired-looking "biled shirt," a black vest ... for he wore no coat despite the drizzle ... a heavy gold-plated watch-chain, black trousers, and patent-leather shoes, whereof the "patent" was putting up a losing fight against the salt water. This costume would have identified him anywhere along the coast as the captain of something; at first guess, a coasting schooner. The men called him "Dave," despite the fact that he was captain and old enough to have fathered any of them.

"That boat o' yourn looks like a sword-fisher," said he.

"She was built for that," said Applebo.

"She won't never drowned ye. Might starve ye, though."

"She won't do that either," said Applebo. "You will find a lot of yachts that are duller than that yawl of mine."

"I know one that's duller," said the skipper, "'n that's the old Shark. We come in abaout daylight this mornin'. It was blowin' toll'ble fresh. M'yeah ... not so peart as what it is now, but there was wind a-plenty. Jibin' raound the Stellwagen Bank we nigh pitched onto that 'ere old wagon...."

"The Shark?" cried Applebo.

"It was her. They wa'ant much light, but I seen that behind o' hern wallowin' off into the muck. There ain't no mistakin' that critter! She's been bangin' 'round this coast most as long as what I hev ... 'n' that's consid'able time."

One of the crew, an Irishman, spoke up.

"'Twas the Shark," said he. "She was waddlin' out around the Cape like an ould duck. Phwat she was doin' in shwill like this I dunno!"

"We wa'ant lookin' fer nothin' goin' that way," said the captain. "Mercy o' hell we didn't spile her paint! Tearin' chunks off'n the sea, we was!"

"Funny that the Shark should have been out there," said Applebo. "I left her in Marblehead yesterday noon."

"'Twas her," said the Irishman. "There's no mistakin' the nose-pole av her. 'Tis like a pug-nosed girl wid a slate-pencil in her mout'. She was flounderin' to sea like a cow in a bog ... just as graceful, sor. There was a big man wid whuskers a-shtandin' be the wheel. I knaw him. 'Tis ould Heldstrom."

"Who's the owner o' the Shark?" asked one of the men.

"'Tis a navy man ... wan Bell...."

"Wa'al..." said the captain, "likely he knowed what he was a-doin' on. Chances air he put into Chatham when he see what was goin' on. Ye kain't tell nothin' 'baout the weathure this time o' year. The day starts in ca'am 'n' peaceful, 'n' the glass nailed tha'ar, 'n' afore sundaown it's blowin' the paint off'n her. Got a heap o' respec' fer saou'easters this time o' year, I hev."

Applebo chatted for awhile with the old man, the crew regarding with much curiosity the nearly nude, beautifully muscled figure standing by the rail apparently indifferent to the gusty wind and the drizzle driving against his gleaming limbs. It was about the end of August and not cold, but a gale off Cape Cod is never really tropical in temperature, and the fishermen were in heavy oilskins over their working-clothes.

Applebo finally wished them good-day, then made a clean dive off the rail, and swam back to the yawl. He found the Finn squatting on the forward deck, staring straight into the wind's eye. A gale always excited this peculiar individual. The dangers of fog, tide, and reef had no apparent effect on the Finn, but as soon as it began to blow he underwent a notable change. It made no difference whether the yawl was hove to in a squall, riding to a sea-anchor, or safely moored in a snug, land-locked harbour; the result upon the Finn was the same. During a storm he had always the intent, expectant air of one awaiting some momentous event. Often he would pause in what he was doing, as though to peer and listen, always watching the direction from which the wind came, sometimes talking to himself, nodding his head, and at times bursting into strange, wild little snatches of song, chanted in a beautiful tenor voice. Applebo once asked him what he heard in the wind, and he answered—"The voices of the newly dead." This, and the peculiar and uncanny way the man had of cocking his head and peering suddenly with one of his divergent eyes at some object either in the sea or sky, might have affected some people most disagreeably. Applebo was merely amused and found his behaviour rather entertaining.

As he swam alongside and hove himself aboard, the Finn did not appear to see him. The man was squatting like a frog against the windlass. He had on an old oilskin overcoat, but his head was bare, the long black hair tossing in the wind and the fine drizzle beating into a face which was of the pale drab of the belly of a fish. The lips were muttering a steady patter.

"What are you doing there?" Applebo demanded.

The beautiful, lustrous eyes turned to him slowly.

"Praying, master," came the soft-voiced answer.

"For whom are you praying?"

"For those about to die."

Applebo dressed, and was refreshing himself with tea and macaroons when he heard a roaring sound close aboard, and poked his head up through the hatch to see a fisherman foaming in, her foresail in rags. Behind her came another, and a little later still another.

He wrote a letter to Hermione, and went ashore to mail it. The gale was harder than ever, and he wondered how the Shark was getting along. But he felt no anxiety, and decided that she had undoubtedly put into Chatham.

He went to bed early that night, in a mood of deep depression. About midnight he was awakened by a pressure on his chest and, as his eyes flashed open, for he was a light sleeper, he saw a dark figure leaning over him and felt the sudden disagreeable trickle of water on his face and neck. Springing up, he thrust at the dark shape, and that so violently as to send the Finn, for it was he, staggering back against the table.

"What do you mean by dripping water over me like that, you fool!" cried Applebo, thinking that the Finn had roused him to say that they were dragging, or something of the sort. A little standing-light was burning, and Applebo saw by its feeble flame that the face of his Finn was working spasmodically and his manner was wild.

"Master," he cried, "I have had a vision!"

"What sort of vision?"

"I saw a white vessel, dismasted and sinking. Her people were clinging about the decks and the sea was washing over them."

Applebo leaned forward, gripping the edge of his bunk.

"What was this vessel?" he cried.

The Finn shook his wet, shaggy head, and again the drops sprinkled Applebo's face and neck.

"I cannot say, master. She was buried in the smother and the vision was not a clear one. It was not like when I saw my father clinging to the bottom of his fishing boat in the Finskii Zalif."

"What happened then?"

"He was never heard of again."

Applebo moved uneasily. He had his full belief in much of the phenomena not to be explained by known physical laws and, therefore, dubbed "superstition." That night he had gone to sleep in a most unusual state of depression, and once or twice he had awakened to listen to the gale humming through the rigging. His first thought had been of the Shark, and he had been inquiet, even while his reason told him that to be so was absurd. Wherefore, awakened by the Finn with this lugubrious tale of a vision of shipwreck, his first thought was naturally of the Shark.

"What do you think this vessel was, and where?" he demanded, impatiently.

"I could not say, master."

"Then why do you come here and waken me and spatter me with cold water to tell me about it?" Applebo demanded, angrily.

"I thought that I ought to do so."

"But why?"

"God does not give us these visions for nothing, master."

"Then what do you want me to do? Go to sea and wait for an angel to take the wheel?"

The Finn did not answer. He knew quite well that, were the Daffodil at sea, she would be hove to under a storm trysail or riding to a sea-anchor.

"Well...?" snapped Applebo. "What do you advise?"

The man pushed back his dank hair and shook his head. Applebo lost his patience.

"Any fool might dream of shipwreck on a night like this," he said. "Now clear out and let me sleep."

The Finn muttered some excuse and hove himself up through the companionway. Applebo turned over and tried to sleep, but it was a vain effort. The Finn had quite banished all drowsiness for the time, and his little ship's clock had struck two bells, then three, then four and five before he lost consciousness again.

At eight bells ... four of the morning, he awoke with a start. Turning up his lamp, he reached for his barometer and found that it had risen two-tenths. He slid out of his bunk and shoved his head up through the hatch, to discover that the wind had hauled southerly.

"Wind's going around..." he said to himself. "It'll be westerly in the morning and clear, with a hard nor'wester. If it's any way possible, we'll go out about eight."

For several minutes he hung through the hatch, staring into the murk. Some hard puffs struck the yawl, swinging her a trifle on her hawsers.

"Wind's getting westerly now..." said Applebo. "It's not such an awful blow, anyway. We've been out in worse...."

The rain had stopped and the air was comparatively clear. Applebo breathed it deeply. He cocked his head and stood for a moment listening to the roar of the surf on the beach across the neck.

"Some sea out there ... this wind is hauling right around...."

All at once he sprang up through the hatch and started forward along the deck. The fore-hatch was open and he saw the shoulders of the Finn, halfway through it. Then, the man's pallid face was turned up to him in the vague light.

"Heave in your chain," said Applebo. "We are going out."

CHAPTER XVI

Christian Heldstrom returned from the interview with his new-found son, shaken to the core of his strong but simple being.

On boarding the Shark, he went at once to his room, where he seated himself on a big, iron-bound sea-chest and remained for some minutes staring absently straight in front of him. The lines of his face were haggard; under its tan the weather-beaten skin looked drawn and faded as old leather, and there was a droop to mouth and eyes which told not only of fatigue, but a sense of defeat.

He was still sitting in the same position when there came a familiar little tap on the door. Heldstrom pulled himself together.

"Coom in, Hermione..." he said.

Hermione entered and closed the door behind her. For a moment she stood by Heldstrom's shoulder, regarding him in a half-shy, half-anxious way.

"You have been to see Applebo, Uncle Chris?"

"Yes," answered Heldstrom, heavily. "He is my son. He told you?"

Hermione clasped her hands and leaned toward him.

"Yes ... this morning. Oh, Uncle Chris! Aren't you delighted?"

"Not altogedder. Vat else did he tell you?"

"He told me that his greatest dread was just this; that you might not wish him for a son ... as he wanted you for a father. That was why he has followed the Shark all summer. He wanted to be near his father, but shrank from revealing himself before he could feel more sure that you would be pleased."

Heldstrom gave her a piercing look.

"Und you say it vas for that he has followed us? For that alone?"

The crimson came into Hermione's cheeks, but her eyes never wavered from his.

"Until we met, he and I, on the beach, that morning at Shoal Harbour. Since then it has been partly ... for me..."

"Ho!" growled Heldstrom. "Because of you! Den vy has he been sending sickening werses to Cécile?"

"He got our names mixed and thought I was Cécile. Did he tell you that he had been sending verses to Cécile?"

"No. It vas your fadder."

"And Applebo told you this morning that he was your son?" asked Hermione, a little breathlessly.

"I haf suspected. Since I saw him in der vater I haf been t'inking a great deal. His face vas always before my eyes; den last night I had a dr'ream of der voman who spoiled my life, und her face was der face of dis yoong man. I vill show you her photograph; I haf not looked at it myself since more dan twenty years."

He rose massively from the chest, unlocked it, and rummaged in the many little drawers and lockers within. Presently he handed a small package to Hermione. She unfastened the ribbon which secured the faded yellow paper, and, as the portrait came to light, Hermione's blue eyes opened very wide. The face was that of a very beautiful and unusual-looking woman, but what startled the girl was the extraordinary resemblance to Applebo. There were the same wide forehead, flat cheeks, and straight nose, the mouth slightly pushed out, full-lipped but strong, while the expression was that of Applebo when he assumed his impassive, blinking pose.

"Were her eyes the same amber colour?" Hermione asked, studying the photograph intently.

"Like der eyes of a cat. Dey called her 'der tigress,' und she vas von, too...." His tone changed, brusquely. "How many times haf you spoken to dis yoong man?" he demanded.

"Only twice. At Shoal Harbour and this morning." Hermione handed back the portrait. "That is unmistakable, isn't it? Oh, Uncle Chris! Why are you not happy? Isn't it comforting...?"

"Vat did he say to you dis morning?" Heldstrom interrupted, curtly.

"First I asked him to stop following us, which he promised to do. Then he told me about his being your son, and I offered to tell you myself ... because I thought that it might be easier for you..."

"What did he tell you about yourself, Hermione?" Heldstrom's eyes were watching her steadily.

Hermione raised her head, proudly.

"He told me that he loved me."

Heldstrom, who was standing, thrust his hands into his side pockets and looked at her keenly.

"I t'ought so! Und how many times you haf met? Twice! Und he tells you that he loves you! Der scoundrel!"

"You are not very flattering to me..."

"No! I am not! Und dis fella is! Und you like it!"

"Yes," said Hermione, hotly, "I do like it! Harold Applebo is a splendid, big, strong, true-hearted gentleman, and, if I can love him after seeing him but twice, I don't see why he shouldn't be able to love me!"

"It is not der loving," said Heldstrom, slightly softening, "it is telling it out dere in der fog."

"He wouldn't have told it if I hadn't dragged it out of him. As it was he tried to put me back in my boat...."

"Vat!" Heldstrom wheeled upon her so suddenly that Hermione shrank back, startled. "He put you in your boat! Hermione, do you dare to tell me that you haf been aboard dis fella's yawl?"