Thrice Armed Part 6

Valentine grinned sardonically. "Did you discuss it like a German philosopher, or as a forecastle hand? I suppose it never struck you that it's rather an unusual subject for a yachting roustabout to go into with a young lady pa.s.senger?"

"It is," agreed Jimmy, making a little deprecatory gesture. "I'm afraid I didn't remember that before; but it probably doesn't matter, since it's hardly likely that she did either."

His comrade looked at him, and shook his head. "You can believe that--at your age?" he said. "My dear man, a young woman of Miss Merril's intelligence would notice anything that wasn't quite in character the moment you said it. Still, that is your affair. It's the other one I'm worrying about."

"The other one?"

"Miss Austerly. The girl's very sick--probably worse than her father realizes--and it's rather on my conscience that I told them that Louis could cook. Anyway, if this breeze holds we'll bring up off Victoria early to-morrow, and though we're not going in, I'll slip ash.o.r.e before breakfast and see what one can pick up at the stores."

Jimmy asked him no more questions, but crept into his bunk. About nine o'clock on the morrow, when the _Sorata_ was lying in a bight on the south coast of Vancouver Island, he was aroused by the dory b.u.mping alongside, and he went out on deck. It was then raining hard, and all he could see was a stretch of gray sea and a strip of dripping boulder beach on which a little white surf was breaking. There was a good deal of water in the dory, and Valentine's oilskins were dripping when he climbed out of her with several packages under his arm. Stores open early in that country.

"Now," he said, "you can bail her out, and come down in half an hour when I've fixed up a breakfast that any one could eat."

Jimmy did so, but it was with some little diffidence that he carried the tray into the saloon. It occurred to him that Miss Merril might regret that she had unbent so far the previous night, and he wondered uneasily whether he had ventured further than was advisable. He was also conscious for the first time that the repairs Valentine had made in his garments were less artistic than evident. The girl, however, looked up with a smile, which might have meant anything, and afterward confined her attention to the articles he was laying on the table. There were Chinese preserved dainties and fruit from California, as well as the ordinary fare.

"An unusually good breakfast," said Austerly. "Does your skipper always treat his charterers so well?"

"Yes, sir," said Jimmy. "That is, when he can. You see, he couldn't get these things in Vancouver; there isn't the same demand for them as there is in the capital."

Austerly did not appear altogether satisfied with the ingenious explanation, but he said nothing further. Indeed, he was not a man who said very much on any occasion; and while he commenced his breakfast Miss Merril looked at Jimmy with her little disconcerting smile. Still, there was no malice in it.

She was as fresh that morning as when she came off the previous evening, though both Austerly and his daughter appeared a trifle the worse for the night's run. Miss Merril was wholly unostentatious in speech or bearing, and there was a certain gracious tranquillity about her which suggested latent vigor instead of languidness. She was then, he decided tolerably correctly, in her twenty-fifth year, brown-haired and brown-eyed, with broad, low forehead, unusually straight brows, and, in spite of her smile, a curiously steady gaze. Her face was a full oval, her mouth by no means small, and, while he had seen women of a somewhat similar type whose vigor was tinged with coa.r.s.eness or a hint of sensuality, there was about this girl a certain daintiness of thought and speech, and a quiet dignity. What she said was, however, sufficiently prosaic.

"I presume that means he went to Victoria for the extra stores this morning; but how did he get there? It must be some distance, from what I know of the coast, and he would have a head-wind all the way back."

"He walked," said Jimmy. "It's necessary for him. One doesn't get very much exercise of that kind at sea. In fact, he walks miles whenever he can."

Miss Austerly appeared a trifle astonished, and her father looked up from his coffee.

"It's a trifle difficult to understand how he manages it," he said.

"One would consider the _Sorata_ forty feet long."

Jimmy felt Miss Merril's gaze upon him, and, as had happened before, his ingenuity failed him. Her smile vaguely suggested comprehension, and, for no ostensible reason, that disturbed him. He also saw Louis grinning down at him through the skylights.

"Sugar, sir?" he said; and this was so evidently an inspiration that Miss Austerly laughed, and when her father said that he had been offered it twice already, Jimmy went out with all the haste available. He closed the forecastle slide somewhat noisily, and then sat down and frowned at Valentine.

"Well?" said the latter dryly. "Been making an exhibition of yourself again?"

"I'm afraid I have," said Jimmy. "If it happens another time you can carry the things in yourself and see how nice it is. Still, I don't quite know why I lost my head. I have naturally met quite a few young ladies in my time. I suppose it's wearing that confounded cap and these more confounded clothes."

He kicked one foot out, and disgustedly contemplated a burst white shoe, while the duck trousers cracked. Valentine leaned back against the bulkhead and laughed.

"Don't be rash, or they'll split; and the jacket's opening at a seam,"

he said. "It's rather a pity a man can't rise above his clothes. Anyway, you may as well give Louis a hand to get the mainsail on to her. As soon as they've finished breakfast we'll break out the anchor."

CHAPTER VI

A VISION OF THE SEA

There was rain and thick weather for several days, during which the _Sorata_ crept northward slowly along the wild West Vancouver coast.

Austerly, it appeared, had business with an Indian agent who lived up an inlet near which the restless white prospectors were encroaching on a Siwash reserve. The boat was wet and clammy everywhere, though a bark fire burned in the little saloon stove. Miss Austerly lay for the most part silent on the leeward settee with a certain wistful patience in her hollow face which roused Jimmy's compa.s.sion. He noticed that Valentine's voice was gentler than usual when he mentioned her, and wondered why it was so, though his comrade did not favor him with an adequate explanation then or afterward.

At last one afternoon the drizzle ceased, and, during most of it, Miss Merril sat at the tiller with Jimmy's oilskin jacket round her shoulders to s.h.i.+eld her from the spray, while the _Sorata_ drove northward, close-hauled, across the long gray roll of the Pacific which was tipped with livid foam. Sometimes she swung over it, with dripping jib hove high, but at least as often she dipped her bows in the creaming froth and flung the brine aft in showers, while all the time the half-seen sh.o.r.e unrolled itself to starboard in a majestic panorama.

Great surf-lapped rocks rose out of the grayness, and were lost in it again; forests athwart which the vapors streamed in smoky wisps rolled by; and at times there were brief entrancing visions of a towering range, phantoms of mountains that vanished and appeared again. There was water on the lee-deck; showers of it drove into the drenched mainsail's luff; but still Miss Merril sat at the tiller with her damp hair blown about her forehead, a patch of carmine in her cheeks, and a gleam in her eyes. She seemed, as she swung with the plunging fabric when the counter rose streaming high above the froth that swept astern, wholly in harmony with the motive of the scene; and at this Jimmy wondered a little now and then, though he discovered afterward that Anthea Merril almost invariably fitted herself to her surroundings. There are men and women with that capacity, which is, perhaps, born of comprehension and sympathy.

Her grasp was firm and steady on the straining helm, her gaze quick to notice each gray comber that broke as it came down on them; but, when he looked at her, Jimmy saw in her eyes something deeper than the thrill of the encounter with the winds of heaven and the restless sea. He could find no fitting name for it. It eluded definition, but it had its effect; and he felt that a man might go far and do more than thrash a yacht to windward with such a companion, though he also realized that this was, after all, no concern of his. Apart from that, her quiet courage and readiness were noticeable, though it was, perhaps, her understanding that appealed most to him. Anthea Merril never asked an unnecessary question. She seemed able to grasp one's thoughts and motives in a fas.h.i.+on that set those with whom she conversed at their ease, and when in her company Jimmy usually forgot his yacht-hand's garments and the man-o'-war cap.

It was toward sunset that evening, and Miss Austerly was sitting well wrapped up on a locker in the c.o.c.kpit, when the vapor melted and was blown away, as not infrequently happens about that time at sea. The dingy clouds that veiled the sky were rent, and a blaze of weird, coppery radiance smote the tumbling seas, which changed under it to smears of incandescent whiteness with ruddy gleams in them, and ridges of flas.h.i.+ng green. It was sudden and bewildering, impelling one to hold one's breath. But a more glorious pageant leaped out of the dimness over the starboard hand. Walls of rock that burned with many colors sprang into being, with somber pines streaming upward behind them, and far aloft there were lifted gleaming heights of never-trodden snow whose stainless purity was intensified by their gray and turquoise shadows.

The vision was vouchsafed them, steeped in an immaterial splendor, for perhaps five minutes, and then it faded as though it had never been.

Miss Austerly, who had gazed at it rapt and eager-eyed, drew in her breath.

"Ah!" she said; "if it was only to see that, I am glad I came--it may be the last time."

Jimmy, who was sitting on the skylights, saw the apprehension in Anthea Merril's eyes as she glanced down for a moment into the fragile face of her companion, and he fancied that Valentine did so too; but the girl smiled wistfully.

"Still," she said, "it is a good deal to have seen the glory of this world, and one would almost fancy that other one--where the sea is gla.s.sy--could not be much more beautiful."

There was a hint of reproach in Anthea Merril's quiet voice, which reached Jimmy.

"Nellie," she said, "you have morbid fancies now and then. We brought you on this trip to make you cheerful and strong."

The sick girl smiled again, and the pallor of her fragile face intensified the faint s.h.i.+ning of her eyes. "I think you know that I shall never get strong again, and, after all, why should I wish to stay here when I may leave my pains and weaknesses behind me? You can't understand that. You have the vigor of the sea in you--and the world before you."

It apparently occurred to Valentine that he was hearing too much, for he stood up, swaying while the _Sorata_ plunged, and called to Austerly through one of the open skylights of the saloon.

"We'll have the breeze down on us twice as hard in a few minutes, sir, and there's an inlet we could lie snug in not far astern," he said.

"It's quite likely we might come across a Siwash or two who would pole you up the river at the head of the inlet to within easy reach of the agent's place, to-morrow."

"Very well!" said Austerly; "you can run her away."

It appeared advisable, for the _Sorata_ buried her bows in a smother of frothing brine and dipped her lee-deck deep, as a blast swept down.

Valentine glanced at Miss Merril somewhat dubiously.

"Do you think you could jibe her all standing?" he asked.

Jimmy almost expected Anthea Merril to say that she could not, for, unless the helmsman is skilful, when a cutter-rigged craft is brought round, stern to a fresh breeze, her great mainsail with the ponderous boom along the foot of it is apt to swing over with disastrous violence.

There was, however, no hesitation in the girl's face, and Valentine made a little gesture that implied rather more than resignation.

"When you're ready!" he said. "Stand by, Jimmy!"

They laid hands on the hard, wet sheet, and, while the girl swayed with the helm, and the _Sorata_ came round, stern to sea, dragged the big mainboom in foot by foot until it hung over them, lifting, with the great bellying sail ready to swing. Then, though n.o.body knew quite how it happened, Jimmy got a loose turn of the rope about his arm as a sea washed in across the counter. In another second or two the boom would swing over, and it seemed very probable that his arm would at least be broken. While the tightening hemp ground into his flesh, he saw the color ebb in Valentine's face, and then the girl's voice reached him sharp and insistent.

"Now!" was all she said.