Part 4

“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.

* * * * *

“H’llo, cappy,” said Chanler indolently. “I hear we had an accident last night.”

“Yes sir.”

“Well—” Chanler’s face was working angrily—“Well, after this if anything unpleasant happens you give orders to keep it from me until after breakfast, d’you hear? I don’t like to hear of unpleasant things; I don’t like it. This—thing has spoiled my appetite for the whole morning!”

“Why not,” I said, staring hard at Brack, “why not ask Captain Brack to prevent such accidents from happening?”

“Hah?” Chanler started at the sound of my voice; I was startled at it myself. Even Brack’s smile vanished. “What’s this, Gardy—some more of your unpleasant rot? I won’t have it: I——”

“For I am sure if Captain Brack utilized his great ability in an effort to prevent accidents such as happened to young Larson, they would not occur.”

Not a shade did Brack’s florid face lose in color, not a flicker of change showed in his eyes. But he drew himself up a little, and in that moment I knew that my worst fears concerning the loss of Larson were true.

“Mr. Pitt flatters me, I fear,” said Brack, smiling again. “I——”

“You ‘fear’?” I said. “What do you fear? Have you any reason for using the phrase, ‘I fear,’ Captain Brack? It sounds so strange on your lips.”

He looked at Chanler and back at me.

“Mr. Pitt flatters me, I think,” he said, his old smile back in place. “Does that sound better?”

Guilty! As guilty as the devil, he was, and I knew it; yet he stood and smiled as if nothing was wrong in the world; not a thing troubling his conscience.

“Gardy, you’re—unpleasant company this morning, I must say that,” interrupted Chanler. “Why, hang it! Captain, what d’you suppose he’s been putting up to me? That I ought to feel responsible about this hand, Carson, Larson, whatever his name was. Now he’s jumping on you. You ought to be responsible too, I suppose. Gardy, you’re impossible.”

The captain smiled upon me tolerantly. Chanler’s explanation of my words and wafted away the whispers of suspicion.