Part 7

“Oh, leave me alone, Gardy,” he growled. “Don’t you think I know what I’m doing? It doesn’t make any difference what I do now. I’ve lost her. She wouldn’t have me no matter what I did now. I know it. Knew it five minutes after she came on board. Saw it in her eyes. Felt it. My hold on her’s slipped—just like that. Gone—forever. No use trying. King’s peg,” he repeated, “and hurry.”

I sat silent, rage and disgust choking me, while the man brought in that terrible mixture of champagne and brandy in equal parts. Chanler drank it in gulps.

“Have some, Gardy? No? That’s right. Some men shouldn’t touch rum; you’re one of them. ’Cause why? ’Cause you’ve got a conscience. Rot, rot, rot! Got to straighten up, have I, Gardy? ‘Got to’ are words that weren’t made for me, my boy.”

“For God’s sake! Chanler, drop that sort of talk!” I cried, springing to my feet. “If you knew what a sickening parody you are on the gentleman you were at home, you wouldn’t put on airs.”

“Not to me, Gardy, not to me can you utter such contemptuous words,” he said harshly.

“You be ——, you and your big talk!” I exploded. “Do you think you’re entitled to any respect? Do you think I or any one else on board cares who you are at present? Do you think your money is still a power? Well, it’s not. It ceased to be this morning. Brack and the crew—Brack especially—there’s the power aboard this yacht. And you’re disgracing yourself and your class before them all.

“First you lie by wireless to get Miss Baldwin on board, and now you’re taking the easiest way, keeping drunk, because you’re not man enough to face the situation sober—not man enough to make things right for the girl who came here trustfully depending on you. Think of it, Chanler; think who you are—of your family. Have one more try at decency, at least. Chuck away that poison in your hand and let me call Dr. Olson and get you straightened up.”

He raised the large glass to his lips and drank the peg down without a falter.

“Gardy,” he said, setting the glass down, “you’re fired.”

I laughed.

“I like you, Gardy; you’re a dear old fellow,” he continued, “but you mustn’t presume on our friendship and talk to me like that. I’ve got to let you out.”

“And I suppose I’m to pack my things and go?” said I. “Oh, come, Chanler; wake up. Try to see things with sane eyes. I don’t care whether I’m fired or whether we remain friends. We’re all on the same plane for the present; you, Miss Baldwin, myself, we’re in the hands of Captain Brack and the crew.”

He shuddered nervously.

“Don’t say such things, Gardy; I forbid them in my hearing.”

“You’re afraid to hear them, you mean.”

“Afraid or not, it makes no difference. They annoy me and I won’t be annoyed. I won’t, you hear. Been annoyed enough on this trip. Here I was waiting for Betty’s coming. Felt sure she’d have me if I got her away alone, just herself and me. She comes, looks around. I look in her eyes and bang! I see she won’t have me. Plain as print. Whole trip useless. It’s a rotten world!”

“You’re giving up without a struggle, Chanler?”

“No use, my boy. I don’t like struggling, anyhow.”

“But, Miss Baldwin is, at least your guest, on board your yacht. The yacht is in the hands of Brack and the crew. Haven’t you thought that this situation might develop into one that may be unpleasant and even unsafe for Miss Baldwin?”

“I have,” he said, signaling for another peg. “And I wish I was back home in the big leather chair at the club, looking out on Fifth Avenue.” He waved his hand drunkenly toward me. “I entrust—entrust Miss Beatrice Baldwin—safety, pleasure, honor, rep’tation to you, Gardy. Ha! There’s a bright little idea. I hire you again, Gardy. New job. You—you see Betty safe and sound back to her folks.”

That hour marked the beginning of Chanler’s eclipse. At dinner-time Simmons reported him indisposed. During the next three days he left his room but seldom. He had but one desire now: to eliminate himself as a responsible factor in the storm of events about to break upon the _Wanderer_ and its people.

XVIII

Captain Brack was sitting in Chanler’s chair when we went in to dinner that evening and Miss Baldwin’s place was beside him. Dr. Olson and myself—neither Riordan nor Wilson had appeared—sat opposite.

Brack was dressed with the care of a captain of a popular trans-Atlantic liner, and his attitude toward Miss Baldwin was solely that of a captain solicitous for his passenger’s comfort and pleasure. The yacht might have been the _Mauretania_, our little party the dinner crowd of the liner’s first saloon. Brack’s personality, polished and radiant for the time being, his flashing conversation, filled and illumined the room. It was difficult not to forget young Larson as one sat beneath his spell.

“An apology is necessary, Miss Baldwin, for my absence from luncheon,” he said. “It is not etiquette to fail to welcome a passenger to her first meal on board. It was necessary, however, that I stay on the bridge until I was sure that the _Wanderer_ had reached her limit of speed and that we were holding true on our course. I have stolen thirty minutes from that duty this evening to fulfil my social obligation as captain.”

“Then we are in a hurry, Captain Brack?” she asked.

His eyes were upon her—those eyes with their compelling power—and her manner was subdued.

“The crew is in a desperate hurry, Miss Baldwin,” he said with one of his flashing smiles. “Men are always in a hurry when they hear of gold. And, really—” he bowed to her deferentially—“we have much to thank you for, Miss Baldwin, for relieving a tense situation this morning. I do not mean that there was the slightest danger of any trouble. No, no! But the situation was a trifle uncomfortable when you appeared and voted that we go hunting for gold instead of bones.” He laughed softly. “I have wondered why you did that, Miss Baldwin; is it presumptuous to ask?”

Miss Baldwin toyed with her spoon.

“I thought that this—going gold-hunting—was so much more alive.”

“Good!” he said earnestly. “That is why I voted for it, too. To be alive while we are living—that is more important than to unearth old skeletons. Isn’t that your idea, Miss Baldwin?”

“Yes,” she said with a strange smile.

“And to be alive means to live in the open, free and untrapped.”

She looked up at him, and by her expression I knew that she saw only his eyes.

“You don’t look as if you would be contented indoors, captain,” she said with a little laugh.

“Are you?” he said, and looked straight at her.

She smiled in puzzled fashion without replying.

“No, you are not,” he answered for her. “For you are very, very much alive, and so must naturally have longings for the free life, which means life outdoors. Am I not right?”

“Yes.”

“Life—we can make it a free, glorious thing, or a gray, trapped affair, just as we choose. It is all a matter of courage. There is still much room in the world. It is not crowded except in spots. If we choose to remain in one of those crowded spots, or rather, if we are afraid to leave them, we must, of necessity, become one of the gray, trapped crowd, existing through a certain span of years without ever knowing what it is to be truly alive. But in the great open spaces people live—they are alive. They are natural, they are hand-in-hand with Nature, and Nature gives them more reward for living than does what man calls civilization.

“As one who has lived under both conditions, Miss Baldwin, I assure you that it is only in the uncrowded spaces that man may get close enough to the root of Life to experience the sensation of immortality. Haven’t you felt something like that yourself?”

“Yes,” she said again, and her eyes were puzzled and full of wonder.

“You will learn,” he said, nodding his head gravely. “You are one of those who will learn quickly the message that the open has for you. You are free-born. You would not be here unless the call to freedom had come to you. Isn’t that so?”

“I—I have always longed for an experience like this. How did you know?”

“It is written upon you as plain as print; you are finding your true sphere. Tell me truthfully: do you not at this moment feel stirred as you never did before in your life?”

She looked up at him quickly; it seemed as if he had frightened her.

“How could you know that?” she faltered.

He smiled, leaning toward her, his eyes holding hers.

“That and many more things you will learn, Miss Baldwin,” he said impressively. “You are beginning a new life. The new impulses you feel are the commands of your true spirit, stricken free of the bonds of civilization. Obey them. Remember, they are your true self; there can be for you no realization of the full possibilities of life save along the way they lead you. There is hidden country in all of us, and until we explore it we don’t know what it is to live.”

He sat back in his chair, smiling, satisfied.

“And now you must excuse me; my thirty minutes are up and I have promised Riordan thirty minutes to dine.” As he bowed and rose his glance went across the table to me. “Now, Mr. Pitt, I will wager, never has felt a call to be free—to explore any hidden country.”

I did not reply.

“No, Mr. Pitt is not one of us. But, Miss Baldwin,” he concluded, bending over her as he passed out, “you are. Your true life is about to begin.”

And she followed him with her eyes as he left the room, though there was that in her expression which suggested that she did so unwillingly.

“Ah!”

The faintest exclamation of relief escaped her lips as the captain disappeared. She sank back in her chair as if suddenly released. She looked around; our eyes met. She excused herself in a dazed sort of fashion and went to her room.

* * * * *

Hours afterward I was pacing the deck. It was another pitch-dark night, and to one fresh from the glare of New York, the darkness was well-nigh appalling. The _Wanderer’s_ searchlight seemed only a thin knife-gash, parting the darkness before us. On either side of its beam the blackness of night stood like a wall. There were no stars to be seen above. East, north, south and west, naught but the dead night; below, only the hiss of unseen waters through which we were rushing toward—what?

I shuffled to and fro on the deck, caring neither where nor how I was going. The scene between Brack and Miss Baldwin at the dinner-table repeated itself again and again, each time with a new, sinister significance. I know what power lay within Brack’s eyes. Had they not roused me and thrilled me and made me fighting mad, which was exactly what Brack, in idle sport wished to do? What would be the effect of his will, gleaming through his glances, on a woman, on a young, inexperienced girl like Miss Baldwin? For after all, she was nothing but an inexperienced girl. Yes, I told myself, she was so inexperienced, so ignorant, through the sheltered life she had lived, that she did not know enough to recognize a distressing situation when she met it. She was brave because she didn’t have sense enough to be cautious.

“Mr. Pitt,” called a voice softly, “is that you?”

I swung around. I was near a cabin porthole and by its light I made out Miss Baldwin coming toward me.

“I’m glad,” she said. “Don’t stop, please; let us walk.

“I came out,” she continued, as we fell into step, “because I didn’t like to be alone.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I seemed lonesome. It was nice to come out here and find you.”

I made no response, and our walk was silent for a long time.

“I wanted to speak to you about something,” she said at last, “about Captain Brack.”

“Yes?”

She hesitated.

“Is—is he as wonderful as he seems?”

“Captain Brack is a remarkable man,” I replied.

“I thought he was wonderful when he was speaking,” she said falteringly. “But when he was gone I—it seemed different.”

“How different?”

“I don’t know just. I loved to listen while he was talking. But after he’d gone I felt relieved. It frightened me a little. That’s why I came out. What do you know about him?”

I was at loss for a reply. To tell her what I knew of Brack, of my first sight of him in the Seattle saloon, of what I had learned aboard the _Wanderer_, would serve to alarm her in an uncomfortable manner.

“Chanler selected him as his captain,” I said.

She gave an impatient toss to her shoulders as we walked on.

“Oh, that doesn’t mean anything. What sort of a man is he?”

“Very strong.”

“I know that.”

“Very capable.”

“Yes.”

“And entirely unscrupulous.”

She nodded her head, not in the least surprised.

“I thought so,” she said.

There was a moment of silence. We heard the murmur of waters against our bows.

“He’s something like that,” she said, pointing out over the dark sea. “A blind, remorseless force; isn’t he?”

“But more subtle.”

“Oh! Is he?”

“As subtle as he is strong.”

She gave a little gasp, as if she had caught herself in an error.

“I didn’t know that. I didn’t realize—I must be going in. You’ll excuse me. Good night, Mr. Pitt. Pleasant dreams.”

Pleasant dreams! It was past one in the morning before I ceased my troubled pacing of the _Wanderer’s_ promenade, and such sleep as weariness finally brought to me was beset by a jumble of nightmares, dominated by Brack’s eyes and smile.

XIX

After breakfast next morning I went to see Chanler. He was sitting up in bed, and he had changed greatly overnight. His face was puffed and gray-looking, and the swollen eyelids were parted only enough to disclose a slit of blood-shot eyes. Dr. Olson was with him, whisky-glass in hand, but he was watching Chanler shrewdly.

“I’ve got him filled up with bromides,” whispered the doctor to me. “If we can’t get him to sleep he’ll have the D. T.’s.”

Chanler slowly turned his head toward me and endeavored to open his eyes wide. The effort was too much for him and his face became distorted with a drunken smile.

“There he is—li’l Gardy, the foe of rum,” he murmured sleepily. “Model young man. Gardy, know wha’ I’d like see? Like see you stewed to zenith. Like see you spiff-iflicated. Oh, wha’ ’n ez’bition you’d be! Horr’ble, horr’ble!” He shook his head slowly. “Nay, nay! Don’ catch Gardy spiff-iflicated. Don’ catch Gardy putting things in’s brain to steal his mouth away, do they, Gard’? Noshirr-rr! Noshir-r! Let George do ’t, eh, Gardy? Let George—let——”

His head fell forward. With an effort he raised it, but his eyes were closed.

“Gardy—you—you——”

He collapsed slowly upon the pillow and was sound asleep.

Dr. Olson set his glass down and wiped his forehead.

“That’s good,” he said. “But he’s going to be a very sick man.”

“Of course,” I said. “But now that you have got him asleep we are going to stop his drinking and get him straightened up.”

The doctor looked at Chanler’s puffed face.

“What’s the use?” he said with a shrug of his thin shoulders. “Besides, he doesn’t want to do anything of the sort.”

“What he wants doesn’t matter,” I insisted. “He’s got to be straightened up. What can you do for him?”

The little man looked at me with a weary smile.

“Why this eagerness, Pitt? If I put Chanler on his feet——”

“Then that’s settled,” I interrupted. “You admit you can put him on his feet, therefore you’ve got to do it. Your word?”

“My word,” he said solemnly, and went to work.

Miss Baldwin was waiting for me as I came from Chanler’s stateroom.

“I saw you just as you went in,” she said. “Well?”

“He’s sleeping now,” I replied. “He’ll be all right—or, at least better—when he wakes. George will straighten up.”

She looked at me in that wonderful quiet way of hers.

“Are you so loyal to all your friends, Mr. Pitt?” she said.

“George will straighten up,” I repeated. “He is in Dr. Olson’s hands. He will make amends when he is himself again.”

She turned away, a wistful—perhaps bitter—smile faintly touching her lips.

“Miss Baldwin!” I cried apologetically. “Have I said anything to hurt you, to give you pain?”

“You?” she said, smiling brightly. “Of course you haven’t. How could you think that? I—I merely happened to think of how different George was a few months ago. No, no! Don’t grow sad out of sympathy, please, Mr. Pitt. I’m not unhappy. Do I look it? I cared for George. I know it now. Maybe I could have learned to care for him deeply if he had cared for me truly. But he didn’t, and I’m glad I found it out.”

“You mustn’t say that, Miss Baldwin. You must give him another chance when he’s himself again.”

“Loyal Mr. Pitt!” she laughed. “Well, I can scarcely help giving George another chance, can I? Here on the same yacht with him. Mr. Pitt, I’ll bet I know what you think of me?”

“And that is?”

“That I’m an awful fool to be here?”

I smiled.

“I knew it!” she cried.

“You’re wrong!” I protested. “I do not think so at this moment.”

“But you have thought so?”

“I have thought you—well, not quite as cautious——”

“Prevaricator! You’ve thought: ‘What sort of a silly madcap is this girl!’ I know it. Well, I guess you’re right. It was a foolish thing to do; it’s foolish to be glad at the prospect of adventure. Other girls wouldn’t do it. They wouldn’t think of it. They’d think a girl queer who did. That proves it’s foolish, doesn’t it? It isn’t done. I can’t help it, though; I’ve needed something like this.”

“It is the day of restlessness among American women,” I said fatuously.

“Restlessness? Is it? Yes, I suppose it is. But my restlessness doesn’t take the regular, honest truth road, you know. Lots of my girl friends have felt they wanted to do something, but they’ve wanted to go suff’ing, or paint, or write, or teach folk-dances, or something like that. I didn’t, not any more than I wanted to be considered a doll in pretty clothes all my life.

“I wanted to break away. Well, I did. Here I am. And, scandalous as it may sound, I’m enjoying every minute. Now, Mr. Pitt, there’s my whole confession. I have acted foolishly, and I know it, but really, I feel as if I had broken loose from something that had held me down. I feel as if it was the beginning of a new life for me—of my real life.”

“A new life?” I said. “Why, that’s what Captain Brack said last night.”

She looked away.

“Yes, so he did,” she said slowly.

And I thought she shivered a little.

* * * * *

I am afraid I cursed poor George Chanler in unchristian fashion during the rest of that run up to Kalmut Fiord. For during those days Captain Brack wooed Miss Baldwin steadily. At each meal he sat at her side; his eyes were upon her, his magic words were for her alone. And even while he spoke to her I saw in his eyes that terrible, ruthless look I knew so well.

“What does the hidden country of Kalmut Fiord hold?” he speculated one evening. “Ah, Miss Baldwin, if we knew our interest would be discounted. It is a primitive spot, surely; a primal piece of earth. Let us pray that it holds Romance, without which there can be no beginning of a new life.” Once more he repeated: “Hidden country! There’s some in all of us, and until we explore it we don’t live.”

The effect of his efforts was apparent upon Miss Baldwin. She seemed to dread each meeting with him, yet she sat beneath his spell in a state of fascination. So I cursed poor Chanler. Had he been the man Miss Baldwin had hoped she would have had no attention for Brack.

Near dusk on the third day after changing our course we sighted land over our bows, a tiny gray smudge on the horizon. Our speed was cut down to a crawl at once. The captain, after studying the land through his glasses, ordered our course changed to west by nor’west, and through the thickening darkness we moved at a foot-pace, gradually drawing nearer a harboring, fir-lined coast line.

That night, while most of us slept soundly, we slipped into Kalmut Fiord. The cessation of the yacht’s motion aroused me in the morning, and half awake I dressed and stumbled out on deck to learn the cause.

In the darkness I had a jumbled impression that the _Wanderer_ was lying in a small lake surrounded by a circle of small, craggy mountains. Then, my senses clearing, I realized that I had stepped into the midst of events of sinister portent.

XX

It was still too dark to gather an accurate impression of the yacht’s surroundings, yet light enough to make out what was going on directly before me. A number of sailors were dropping two of the port life-boats into the water. They worked eagerly and cautiously, like men in haste and with a desire for silence. A block, carelessly handled, swung with a clang against one of the davits and a subdued voice cursed the guilty man for his clumsiness.

“Don’t do that again.” Through the darkness and morning fog the whisper sounded like a threat of murder. “Now over with those sea-ladders.”

The voice was Brack’s.

“All right here Foxy,” said another low voice as the second boat was dropped with little noise into the water. “Let ’em come.”

This was a new voice to me. It was not Riordan’s nor Garvin’s, nor Wilson’s, yet it had in it a note of authority which did not belong to any of the sailors. I was further puzzled because I seemed to have heard it somewhere before.

“Bring them up, Garvin. Hurry; we’ve got to be up there before it’s light.”

Brack was speaking again in a loud whisper. Garvin’s great bulk slipped past me toward the after deck, his feet shuffling along the deck to make as little noise as possible. He was breathing swiftly and heavily as a man breathes under the stress of great excitement.

I now saw that the captain was standing at one of the sea-ladders and at the other was a man whose figure I did not recognize as belonging to any of the men on board. It was a spare, wiry figure, with a poise that belonged to no ordinary sailor. I moved a little closer. Now I saw that the man carried a rifle in the hollow of his arm. I looked at Brack; he was armed likewise.

That movement proved my undoing.

“Who the devil’s that?” demanded the wiry man hoarsely.

Brack leaned forward and looked at me steadily for several seconds.

“Don’t you sleep soundly, Pitt?” he asked.

“Not very,” I replied.

He continued to look at me steadfastly. Presently he began to grin.

“That is unfortunate for you,” he said at last.

“Surely not,” said I. “Had I been sleeping soundly this morning I would have missed the sight of all this mysterious preparation.”

He chuckled ominously.

“Had you been sleeping soundly—” he began and stopped. “All right, men. Hurry.”

A file of men came slipping up from aft. They moved with their bodies crouched far over and stepped softly. I heard their excited breathing as they drew near. And each of them bore in his hands a rifle.

“Four in this boat; four in the other,” commanded Brack. “Get down there without any noise.”

Garvin started to tumble over the side with the rest of the men; but Brack stopped him. They whispered together, and Garvin again went aft.

The men were all in the boats now and Brack and the new man stood at the ladders waiting to follow. The new man had his back toward me. He was speaking to the captain.

“Who the devil is this guy, Foxy?” he whispered. “I thought we were going to make a clean getaway.”

“Pitt,” said Brack, “step up and meet the gold-finder, the man whose story you didn’t think a good excuse for coming here.”

I stood where I was, but the man turned and took a step forward to have a better look at me, and then I knew why his voice had puzzled me. The man was Madigan, whom I had seen quarreling with Brack back in Billy Taylor’s saloon in Seattle.

Perhaps some instinct had warned me to be prepared for a shock, for I looked Madigan over without betraying the rush of thoughts with which my mind was seething. In a flash the whole of Brack’s scheming, from the time he had met Chanler in San Francisco to the present moment, was made plain. He had influenced Chanler to purchase the _Wanderer_ and go north; he had engaged Madigan to hide away on board and play the wrecked miner at the proper moment; he had brought the _Wanderer_ into the bay at night; and he was now starting out—for what?