She did not turn to look at him. "I have something else on my mind, Arthur, besides lolling below listening to Wally Dalton fiddle love-tunes. And this pa.s.sage, here, Captain Mayo! What is it?" Her finger strayed idly across a few hundred miles of mapped Atlantic Ocean.
"It"s Honeymoon Channel," replied the navigator, demurely. His new ecstasy made him bold enough to jest.
"Oh, so we are learning to be a captain, Miss Alma?" inquired Beveridge with a wry smile.
"It would be better if more yacht-owners knew how to manage their own craft," she informed him, with spirit.
"Yes, it might keep the understrappers in line," agreed the man at the door.. "I apply for the position of first mate after you qualify, Captain Alma."
"And this, you say, is, Captain Mayo?" she queried, without troubling herself to reply. Her tone was crisply matter of fact.
Beveridge blinked at her and showed the disconcerted uneasiness of a man who has intruded in business hours.
Captain Mayo, watching the white finger rapturously, noted that it was sweeping from the Arctic Circle to the Tropic Zone. "That"s Love Harbor, reached through the thoroughfare of Hope," he answered, respectfully.
"Oh, I say!" exclaimed Beveridge; "the sailors who laid out that course must have been romantic."
"Sailors have souls to correspond with their horizon, Arthur. Would you prefer such names as Cash Cove and Money-grub Channel?"
Mr. Beveridge c.o.c.ked an eyebrow and stared at her eloquent back; also, he cast a glance of no great favor on the stalwart young captain of the _Olenia_. It certainly did not occur to Mr. Beveridge that two young folks in love were making sport of him. That Julius Marston"s daughter would descend to a yacht captain would have appeared as incredible an enormity as an affair with the butler. But there was something about this intimate companionship of the chart-room which Mr. Beveridge did not relish. Instinct rather than any sane reason told him that he was not wanted.
"I"m sorry to break in on your studies, Miss Marston," he said, a bit stiffly. "But I have been sent by your father to call you to the cabin."
Mr. Beveridge"s air, his tone of protest, conveyed rather pointed hint that her responsibilities as a hostess were fully as important as her studies as a navigator.
"I must go," she whispered.
Relief was mingled with Captain Mayo"s regret. He had feared that this impetuous young woman might rebel against the summons, even though the word came from her father. And her persistent stay in his chart-room, even on the pretext of a fervid interest in the mysteries of navigation, might produce complications. This wonderful new joy in his life was too precious to be marred by complications.
She trailed her fingers along his hand when she turned from the chart-table, and then pinched him in farewell salute.
"Good night, Captain Mayo. I"ll take another lesson to-morrow."
"I am at your service," he told her.
Their voices betrayed nothing, but Beveridge"s keen eyes--the eyes which had studied faces in the greatest game of all when fortunes were at stake--noted the look they exchanged. It was long-drawn, as expressive as a lingering kiss.
Mr. Beveridge, sanctioned in his courtship by Julius Marston, was not especially worried by any inferences from that soft glance. He could not blame even a coal-heaver who might stare tenderly at Miss Alma Marston, for she was especially pleasing to the eye, and he enjoyed looking at her himself. He was enough of a philosopher to be willing to have other folks enjoy themselves and thereby give their approbation to his choice.
He excused Captain Mayo. As to Miss Marston, he viewed her frivolity as he did that of the other girls whom he knew; they all had too much time on their hands.
"Give the poor devils a chance, Alma. Don"t tip "em upside down," he advised, testily, when she followed him down the ladder. He stood at the foot and offered his hand, but she leaped down the last two steps and did not accept his a.s.sistance. "Now, you have twisted that skipper of ours until he doesn"t know north from south."
"I do not care much for your emphasis on the "now,"" she declared, indignantly. "You seem to intimate that I am going about the world trying to beguile every man I see."
"That seems to be the popular indoor and outdoor sport for girls in these days," he returned with good humor. "Just a moment ago you were raising the very devil with that fellow up there with your eyes. Of course, practice makes perfect. But you"re a good, kind girl in your heart. Don"t make "em miserable."
Mr. Beveridge"s commiseration would have been wasted on Captain Boyd Mayo that evening. The captain snapped off the light in the chart-room as soon as they had departed, and there in the gloom he took his happiness to his heart, even as he had taken her delicious self to his breast. He put up his hands and pressed his face into the palms.
He inhaled the delicate, subtle fragrance--a mere suggestion of perfume--the sweet ghost of her personality, which she had left behind.
Her touch still thrilled him, and the warmth of her last kiss was on his lips.
Then he went out and climbed the ladder to the bridge. A peep over the shoulder of the man at the wheel into the mellow glow under the hood of the binnacle, showed him that the _Olenia_ was on her course.
"It"s a beautiful night, Mr. McGaw," he said to the mate, a stumpy little man with bowed legs, who was pacing to and fro, measuring strides with the regularity of a pendulum.
"It is that, sir!"
Mr. McGaw, before he answered, plainly had difficulty with something which bulged in his cheek. He appeared, also, to be considerably surprised by the captain"s air of vivacious gaiety. His superior had been moping around the ship for many days with melancholy spelled in every line of his face.
"Yes, it"s the most beautiful and perfect night I ever saw, Mr. McGaw."
There was triumph in the captain"s buoyant tones.
"Must be allowed to be what they call a starry night for a ramble,"
admitted the mate, trying to find speech to fit the occasion.
"I will take the rest of this watch and the middle watch, Mr. McGaw,"
offered the captain. "I want to stay up to-night. I can"t go to sleep."
The offer meant that Captain Mayo proposed to stay on duty until four o"clock in the morning.
Mate McGaw fiddled a gnarled finger under his nose and tried to find some words of protest. But Captain Mayo added a crisp command.
"Go below, Mr. McGaw, and take it easy. You can make it up to me some time when there is no moon!" He laughed.
When all the cabin lights were out and he realized that she must be asleep, he walked the bridge, exulting because her safety was in his hands, but supremely exultant because she loved him and had told him so.
Obedience had been in the line of his training.
She had commanded him to live and love in the present, allowing the future to take care of itself, and it afforded him a sense of sweet companionship to obey her slightest wish when he was apart from her. Therefore, he put aside all thoughts of Julius Marston and his millions--Julius Marston, his master, owner of the yacht which swept on under the moon--that frigid, silent man with the narrow strip of frosty beard pointing his chin.
Mayo walked the bridge and lived and loved.
II - THEN CAPTAIN MAYO SEES SHOALS
There"s naught upon the stern, there"s naught upon the lee, Blow high, blow low, and so sailed we.
But there"s a lofty ship to windward, And she"s sailing fast and free, Sailing down along the coast of the high Barbaree.
--Ancient Shanty.
The skipper of the _Olenia_ found himself dabbling in guesses and wonderment more than is good for a man who is expected to obey without asking the reason why.
That cruise seemed to be a series of spasmodic alternations between leisurely loafing and hustling haste.
There were days when he was ordered to amble along at half speed offsh.o.r.e. Then for hours together Julius Marston and his two especial and close companions, men of affairs, plainly, men of his kind, bunched themselves close together in their hammock chairs under the p.o.o.p awning and talked interminably. Alma Marston and her young friends, chaperoned by an amiable aunt--so Captain Mayo understood her status in the party--remained considerately away from the earnest group of three.
Arthur Beveridge attached himself to the young folks.
From the bridge the captain caught glimpses of all this shipboard routine. The yacht"s saunterings offsh.o.r.e seemed a part of the summer vacation.
But the occasional hurryings into harbors, the conferences below with men who came and went with more or less attempt at secrecy, did not fit with the vacation side of the cruise.