Chapter 6

_Thump!_ It was as if a huge fist had thrust up out of the ocean's depths and jolted the Clan Macgregor in the ribs. Several minor impacts jarred beneath his feet. Then the engines stopped, and the great hulk began to swing slowly to starboard in the still water.

Excited talk broke out. Questions to which nobody made reply filled the air. An officer hurried past.

"No. No damage done," he cried back mechanically over his shoulder.

Presently the engine resumed work. The rhythm appeared to the Tyro to drag. Dr. Alderson came along.

"Nothing at all," he said with the _sang-froid_ of the experienced traveler. "Some little hitch in the machinery."

"Do you notice that there's a slant to the deck?" asked the Tyro in a low voice.

"Yes. Keep it to yourself. Most people won't notice it." And he walked on, stopping to chat with an acquaintance here and there, and doing his unofficial part to diffuse confidence.

One idea seized and possessed the Tyro. If that gently tilted deck meant danger, his place was on the farther side of the ship. Quite casually, to avoid any suggestion of haste, he wandered around.

Little Miss Grouch was sitting in her chair, alone and quiet. As the Tyro slipped, soft-footed, into the shelter of a shadow, he saw her stretch her hand out to a box of candy. She selected a round sweet, and dropped it on the deck. It rolled slowly into the scuppers. Again she tried the experiment, with the same result. She started to get up, changed her mind and settled back to wait.

The Tyro, leaning against the cabin, also waited. With no apparent cause--for he was sure he had made no noise--she turned her head and looked into the sheltering shadow. She smiled, a very small but very contented smile.

An officer came along the deck.

"The port screw," he paused to tell the waiting girl, "struck a bit of wreckage and broke a blade. Absolutely no danger. We will be delayed a little getting to port, that's all. I am glad you had the nerve to sit quiet," he added.

"I didn't know what else to do," she said.

She rose and gathered her belongings to her. Going to the entrance she passed so near that he could have touched her. Yet she gave no sign of knowledge that he was there; he was ready to believe that he had been mistaken in thinking that her regard had penetrated his retreat. In the doorway she turned.

"Good-night," she said, in a voice that thrilled in his pulses. "And--thank you."

VI

Sixth day out. Bump! And we're three days late. Suits me. I don't care if we never get in.

SMITH'S LOG.

Whoso will, may read in the Hydrographic Office records, the fate of the steamship Sarah Calkins. Old was Sarah; weather-scarred, wave-battered, suffering from all the internal disorders to which machinery is prone; tipsy of gait, defiant of her own helm, a very hag of the high seas.

Few mourned when she went down in Latitude 43° 10' North, Longitude 20° 12' West--few indeed, except for the maritime insurance companies. They lamented and with cause, for the Sarah Calkins was loaded with large quantities of rock, crated in such a manner as to appear valuable, and to induce innocent agents to insure them as pianos, furniture, and sundry merchandise. Such is the guile of them that go down to the sea in ships.

For the first time in her disreputable career, the Sarah Calkins obeyed orders, and went to the bottom opportunely in sight of a Danish tramp which took off her unalarmed captain and crew. Let us leave her to her deep-sea rest.

The evil that ships do lives after them, and the good is not always interred with their bones. For the better or worse of Little Miss Grouch and the Tyro, the Sarah Calkins, of whom neither of them had ever heard, left her incidental wreckage strewn over several leagues of Atlantic. One bit of it became involved with the Clan Macgregor's screw, to what effect has already been indicated. Hours later a larger mass came along, under the impulsion of half a gale, and punched a hole through the leviathan's port side as if it were but paper, just far enough above the water-line so that every alternate wave could make an easy entry.

The Tyro came up out of deep slumber with a plunge. He heard cries from without, and a strongly bawled order. Above him there was a scurry of feet. The engines stopped. Three bells struck just as if nothing had happened. He opened his door and the coldest water he had ever felt on his skin closed about his feet. The passageway was awash.

Jumping into enough clothing to escape the rigor of the law, the Tyro ran across to 129 D and knocked on the door. It opened. Little Miss Grouch stood there. Her eyes were sweet with sleep. A long, soft, fluffy white coat fell to her little bare feet. Her hair, half-loosed, clustered warmly close to the flushed warmth of her face. The Tyro stood, stricken for the moment into silence and forgetfulness by the power of her beauty.

"What is it?" she asked softly.

He found speech. "Something has happened to the ship."

"I knew you'd come," she said with quiet confidence.

"Aren't you afraid?"

"I _was_ afraid."

A roll of the ship brought the chill water up about her feet. She shivered and winced. Stooping he caught her under the knees, and lifted her to his arms. Feeling the easy buoyancy of his strength beneath her, she lapsed against his shoulder, wholly trustful, wholly content. Through the passage he splashed, around the turn, and up the broad companionway. Not until he had found a chair in the near corner of the lower saloon did he set her down. Released from his arms, she realized with a swift shock the loss of all sense of security. She shot a quick glance at him, half terrified, half wistful. But the Tyro was now all for action.

"What clothes do you most need?" he asked sharply.

"Clothes? I don't know." She found it hard to adjust the tumult which had suddenly sprung up within her, to such considerations.

"Shoes and stockings. A heavy coat. Your warmest dress--where is it? What else?"

"What are you going to do?"

"Go back after your things."

"You mustn't! I won't let you. It's dangerous."

"Later it may be. Not now."

She stretched out her hands to him. "Please don't leave me."

He took the imploring little hands in his own firm grip. "Listen. There's no telling what has happened. We may have to go on deck. We may even be ordered to the boats. Warm clothing is an absolute necessity. Think now, and tell me what you need."

She gave him a quick but rather sketchy list. "And your own overcoat and sweater--or I won't let you go. Promise." Her fingers turned in his and caught at them.

"Very well, tyrant. I'll be back in three minutes."

Had he known what was awaiting him he might have promised with less confidence. For there was a dragon in the path in the person of young Mr. Diedrick Sperry, breathing, if not precisely flames, at least, fumes, for he had sat late in the smoking-room, consuming much liquor. At sight of the Tyro, his joke which he had so highly esteemed, returned to his mind.

"Haberdashin' 'round again, hey?" he shouted, blocking the passage halfway down to Stateroom 129. "Where's Cissy Wayne?"

"Safe," said the Tyro briefly.

"Safe be damned! You tell me where before you move a step farther." He stretched out a hand which would have done credit to a longshoreman.

Fight was the last thing that the Tyro wished. More important business was pressing. But as Sperry was blocking the way to the conclusion of that business, it was manifest that he must be disposed of. Here was no time for diplomacy. The Tyro struck at his bigger opponent, the blow falling short. With a shout, the other rushed him, and went right on over his swiftly dropped shoulder, until he felt himself clutched at the knees in an iron grip, and heaved clear of the flooded floor.

The stateroom door opposite swung unlatched. With a mighty effort, the wrestler whirled his opponent clean through it, heard his frame crash into the berth at the back, and slammed the door to after him, only to be apprised, by a lamentable yell in a deep contralto voice, that he had made an unfortunate choice of safe-deposits.

In two leaps he was in room 129 D, whence, peering forth, he beheld his late adversary emerge and speed down the narrow hall in full and limping flight, pursued by Mrs. Charlton Denyse clad in inconsiderable pink, and shrieking vengeance as she splashed. Relieved, through this unexpected alliance, of further interference, the messenger collected a weird assortment of his liege's clothing and an article or two of his own and returned to her. There was no mistaking the gladness of her relief.

"You've done very well," she approved. "Though I don't know that I actually need this lace collar, and I suppose I _could_ brave the perils of the deep without that turquoise necklace."

"I took what I could get," explained he. "It's my rule of life."

"Did you obey my orders? Yes, I see you did. Put on your overcoat at once. It's cold. And you're awfully wet," she added, with charming dismay, looking at his feet.

"They'll dry out. There's quite a little water below."

Little Miss Grouch studied him for a moment of half-smiling consideration. "I want to ask you something," she said presently.

"Ask, O Queen, and it shall be answered you."

"Would you have come after me just the same if--if I'd been really a Miss Grouch, and red-nosed, and puffy-faced, and a frump, and homely?"

He took the question under advisement, with a gravity suitable to its import. "Not just the same," he decided, "not as--as anxiously."

"But you'd have come?"

"Oh, yes, I'd have come."

"I thought so." Her voice was strange. There was a pause. "Do you know you're a most exasperating person? It wouldn't make any difference to you who a woman was, if she needed help, whether she was in the steerage--"

He leaped to his feet. "The baby!" he cried, "and his mother. I'd forgotten."

On the word he was gone. Little Miss Grouch looked after him, and there was a light in her eyes which no human being had ever surprised there--and which would have vastly surprised herself had she appreciated the purport of it.

In five minutes he was back, having calmly violated one of the most rigid of ship's rules, in bringing steerage passengers up to the first cabin.

"Here's the Unparalleled Urchin," he announced, "right as a trivet. Here, let's make a little camp." He pulled around a settee, established the frightened but quiet mother and the big-eyed child on it, drew up a chair for himself next to the girl and said, "Now we can wait comfortably for whatever comes."

News it was that came, in the course of half an hour. An official, the genuineness of whose relief was patent, announced that the leak was above water-line, that it was being patched, that the ship was on her way and that there was absolutely no danger, his statement being backed up by the resumed throb of the engines and the sound of many hammers on the port side. Stateroom holders in D and E, however, he added, would best arrange to remain in the saloon until morning.

So the Tyro conveyed his adoptive charges back to the steerage, and returned to his other and more precious charge. There he found Judge Enderby in attendance.

"Isn't there something more I can get from your room?" the Tyro asked of Little Miss Grouch, after he had greeted the judge.

She shook her head with a smile.

"So the dumb has found a tongue, eh?" remarked the lawyer.

"Emergency use only," explained the Tyro.

"Well, my legal advice," pursued the jurist with a reassuring grimace at the girl, "is that you can make hay while the moon shines, for I don't think any officer is going to concern himself with your little affair just at present. But my personal advice," he added significantly, "in the interests of your own peace of mind, is that you go and sit on the rudder the rest of the voyage. Safety first!"

"I think he's an awfully queer old man," pouted Little Miss Grouch, as the judge sauntered away.

"Don't abuse my counsel," said the Tyro.

"He isn't your counsel. He's my counsel. I paid him five whole dollars to be."

"Hoots, lassie! I paid him ten."

"You want my house," said Little Miss Grouch, aggrieved, "and you want my lawyer. Is there anything else of mine you'd like to lay claim to?"

It may have been accident--the unprincipled opportunist of a godling who rules these matters will league himself with any chance--that the Tyro's eyes fell upon her hand, which lay, pink and warmly half-curled in her lap, and remained there. It certainly was not accident that the hand was hastily moved.

"Do you suppose Baby Karl and his mother are safe?" she inquired, in a voice of extreme detachment.

"Just as safe as we are. By the way, you heard what Judge Enderby suggested to me about 'safety first'?"

Her face took on an expression of the severest innocence. "No. Something stupid, I dare say."

"He advised me to go and sit on the rudder for the rest of the voyage."

"Wouldn't it be awfully wet--and lonely?"

"Unspeakably. Particularly the latter."

"Then I wouldn't do it," she counseled.

"I won't," he promised. "But, Miss Grouch, the dry land may be just as lonely as the wet ocean."

"Haven't you any friends in Europe?"

"No. Unless you count Lord Guenn one."

"You never met him until I introduced you, did you?"

"No. But he's asked me to come and visit him at Guenn Oaks."

"Has he! Why?"

The Tyro laughed. "There's something very unflattering about your surprise. Not for my _beaux yeux_ alone. It seems he's sort of inherited me from a careless ancestor."

"_I_ came to him by marriage."

"So he tells me. Also that you're going to Guenn Oaks."

"Yes."

"Well?"

"Why 'well'? I didn't say anything."

"You didn't. I'm waiting to hear you."

"What?"

"Tell me whether I'm to go or not."

"What have I to do with it?"

"Everything."

"Your servitude ends the moment we touch land."

"It will never end," said the Tyro in a low voice.

Little Miss Grouch peeked up at him from under the fascinating, slanted brows, and immediately regretted her indiscretion. What she saw in his face stirred within her a sweet and tremulous panic, the like of which she had not before experienced.

"Please don't look at me like that," she said petulantly. "What will people think?"

"People are, for once, minding their own businesses, bless 'em."

"Well, anyway, you make me n-n-nervous."

"Am I to come to Guenn Oaks?"

"I'll tell you to-morrow," she fenced.

"To-morrow I shan't be speaking to you."

"Why not?--oh, I forgot. Still, you might write," she dimpled.

"Would you answer?"

"I'll consider it."

"How long would consideration require?"

"Was there ever such a human question-mark! Please, kind sir, I'm awfully tired and sleepy. Won't you let me off now?"

"Forgive me," said the Tyro with such profound contrition that the Wondrous Vision's heart smote her, for she had said, in her quest of means of defense, the thing which most distinctly was not true.

Never had she felt less sleepy. Within her was a terrifying and quivering tumult. She closed her eyes upon the outer world, which seemed now all comprised in one personality. Within the closed lids she had shut the imprint of the tired, lean, alert, dependable face. Within the doors of her heart, which she was now striving to close, was the memory of his protective manliness, of his unobtrusive helpfulness, of the tonic of his frank and healthy humor--and above all of the strength and comfort of his arms as he had caught her up out of the flood. As she mused, the slumber-god crept in behind those blue-veined shutters of thought, and melted her memories into dreams.

While consciousness was still feebly efficient, but control had passed from the surrendering mind, she stretched out a groping hand. The Tyro's closed over it very gently. At the corner of her delicate mouth the merest ghost of a smile flickered and passed. Little Miss Grouch went deep into the land of dreams, with her knight keeping watch and ward over her.

Came then the destroying ogre, in the form of the captain, and passed on; came then the wicked fairy, in the person of Mrs. Charlton Denyse, and passed on, not without some gnashing of metaphorical teeth (her own, I regret to state, she had left in her berth); came also the god from the machine, in the shape of Judge Willis Enderby, with his friend Dr. Alderson, and paused near the group.

"Love," observed the jurist softly, "is nine tenths opportunity and the rest importunity. I hope our young protégé doesn't forget that odd tenth. It's important."

"It seems to me," observed his companion suspiciously, "that you boast considerable wisdom about the tender passion."

The ablest honest lawyer in New York sighed. "I am old who once was young, but _ego in Arcadia fui_ and I have not forgotten." Then the two old friends passed on.

VII

Seventh day out.

This sea-life is too darned changeable for me. You never know what next. It's bad for the nerves--

Smith's Log.

Thus the Tyro, in much perturbation of spirit, at the end of a lonely day. "_Varium et mutabile semper_," was written, however, not of the sea but of woman. And it was of woman and woman's incomprehensibility that the keeper of the private log was petulantly thinking when he made that entry.

For, far from harrying him about the decks, Little Miss Grouch had now withdrawn entirely from his ken. He had written her once, he had written her twice; he had surreptitiously thrust a third note beneath her door. No answer came to any of his communications. Being comparatively innocent of the way of a maid with a man, the Tyro was discouraged. He considered that he was not being fairly used. And he gloomed and moped and was an object of private mirth to Judge Enderby.

Two perfectly sound reasons accounted for the Joyous Vision's remaining temporarily invisible. The first was that she needed sleep, and Stateroom 129 D, which she had once so despitefully characterized, seemed a very haven of restfulness when, after breakfast, it was reported habitably dried out; the other was a queer and exasperating reluctance to meet the Tyro--yes, even to see him. As the lifting of the embargo on speech was not known to him, she knew herself to be insured against direct address. But the mere thought of meeting him face to face, of having those clear, quiet gray eyes look into hers again, gave her the most mysterious and disquieting sensations.

"I do wish," said Little Miss Grouch to herself, "that his name weren't so perfectly _awful_."

Some thought-demon with a special mission for the persecution of maidens, put it into her head to inquire why she should so vehemently wish this thing. And the trail of that thought plunged her, face-first, into her pillow.

Thereafter she decided that if she went on deck at all that day, it would be with such a surrounding of bodyguard as should keep wandering Daddleskinks quite beyond her range of association. As for his notes, she would answer them when she thought fit. Meantime--as the writer thereof might have been enheartened to know--she put them away in the most private and personal compartment of her trunk, giving each a tender little pat to settle it comfortably into its place.

* * * * *

Doubtless the sun shone that day (the official records said, "Clear with light winds and a calm sea"); doubtless the crippled ship limped happily enough on her way; doubtless there was good food and drink, music and merriment, and the solace of enlivening company aboard. But the snap-shot of the Tyro surreptitiously taken by Judge Enderby--he having borrowed Alderson's traveling-camera for the purpose--showed a face which might suitably have been used as a marginal illustration for that cheerless hymn, "This world is all a fleeting show."

Life had lost all its flavor for the Tyro. He politely accepted Dr. Alderson's invitation to walk, but lagged with so springless a step that the archæologist began to be concerned for his health. At Lord Guenn's later suggestion that squash was the thing for incipient seediness, he tried that, but played a game far too listless for the Englishman's prowess.

In vain did he seek consolation in the society of Karl, the Pride of the Steerage. That intelligent infant wept and would not be comforted because the pretty lady had not come also, and the Tyro was well fain to join him in his lamentations. Only the threatening advance of Diedrick Sperry, with a prominent and satisfactory decoration in dusky blue protruding from his forehead, roused him to a temporary zest in life. Mr. Sperry came, breathing threats and future slaughter, but met a disconcertingly cold and undisturbable gleam of the gray eye.

"If you interfere with me again," said the Tyro, "I'll throw you overboard."

And it was said in such evident good faith that his opponent deemed it best to forget that matter, vaguely suspecting that he had encountered a "professional."

A more fearsome opponent bore down upon the depressed scion of all the Smiths, late that afternoon. Mrs. Charlton Denyse maneuvered him into a curve of the rail, and there held him with her glittering eye.

"I beg your pardon." This, pitched on a flat and haughty level of vocality, was her method of opening the conversation.

The Tyro sought refuge in the example of classic lore. "You haven't offended me," he said, patterning his response upon the White Queen. "Perhaps you're going to," he added apprehensively.

"I am going to talk to you for your own good," was the chill retort.

"Oh, Lord! That's worse."

"Do you see that ship?" The Denyse hand pointed, rigid as a bar, to the south, where the Tyro discerned a thin smudge of smoke.

"I see something."

"That is the Nantasket."

"At this distance I can't deny it," murmured the Tyro.

"Which left New York two days behind us, and is now overhauling us, owing to our accident."

He received this news with a bow.

"On board her is Henry Clay Wayne," she continued weightily.

"Congratulations on your remarkable keenness of vision!" exclaimed the Tyro.

"Don't be an imbecile," said the lady, "I didn't see him. I learned by wireless."

"Rather a specialty of yours, wireless, isn't it?" he queried.

She shot an edged look at him, but his expression was innocence itself. "He will reach England before us."

"Then you don't think he'll board us and make us all walk the plank?" asked the Tyro in an apparent agony of relief.

"Don't get flip--" cried the exasperated lady--"pant," she added barely in time--"with me. Mr. Wayne will be in England waiting for you."

"Anyway, he can't eat me," the Tyro comforted himself. "Shall I hide in the stoke-hole? Shall I disguise myself as a rat and go ashore in the cargo? What do you advise?"

"I advise you to keep away from Miss Wayne."

"Yes. You did that before. At present I'm doing so."

"Then continue."

"I shall, until we reach solid earth."

"There my responsibility will cease. Mr. Wayne will know how to protect his daughter from upstart fortune-hunters."

The Tyro regarded her with an unruffled brow. "Never hunted a fortune in my life. A modest competence is the extent of my ambition, and I've attained that, thanking you for your kind interest."

"In the necktie and suspender business, I suppose," she snapped, enraged at her failure to pierce the foe's armor. "It's a crying scandal that you should thrust yourself on your betters."

This annoyed the Tyro. Not that he allowed Mrs. Denyse to perceive it. With a bland, reminiscent smile he remarked:--

"Speaking of scandals, I observed a young man, rather informally clad, entering Stateroom 144 D at a late hour last night, in some haste."

"Oh!" gasped Mrs. Denyse, and there was murder in her tones.

"He looked to me like young Sperry."

Mrs. Denyse glowed ocular fire.

"And, according to the list, Stateroom 144 D is occupied by Mrs. Charlton Denyse."

Mrs. Denyse growled an ominous, subterranean growl.