V
The blue-belted Trades! Day and day, week and week, the little curly, white-headed seas, the unspecked blue sky, and the ceaseless caress of the pursuing wind. No yard nor sail, never a bowline, sheet, or halyard to be handled, and the Bess bounding ever ahead. Beauty, peace, and a leaping log—could the sea bring greater joy?
Captain Blaise had located the bullet—the second shot it must have been—which had lodged under my right shoulder and cut it out. We were nearing home, and the fever was now gone from me, but I was not yet able to take my part on deck. "Perhaps to-morrow," she had said. And to-morrow was come, and I lay there thinking, and at times trying to write.
She had left me alone for a while. Her father had called her to hear another of the Captain's stories. Through the cabin skylight I could see her, [pg 152] or at least the curve of her chin, and her tanned throat and one shoulder pressing inward under the skylight shutters. Her face was turned toward Captain Blaise, whose head and shoulders, he pacing and turning on the quarter, came regularly within range. But she was not forgetting me; every few minutes she thrust her head beneath the raised skylight hatches and looked down to see that I wanted for nothing, and always she smiled.
I was propped up in an easy chair. Up to two days back I had been on a cot. Mr. Cunningham had improved so rapidly that for more than a week now he had been allowed on deck, and there he was now, as I said, listening with his daughter to the tales of Captain Blaise. His laughter and her breaths of suspense, I could hear the one and feel the other.
I took up my pad of paper and resumed my writing. And reviewing my writing, I had to smile at myself, even as I used to smile at Captain Blaise when he would submit his couplets or quatrains for my judgment. He might marshal off-hand a stanza or two of his vagabond thoughts, but here was I carefully composing with pencil and paper, and had been for a week now.
I had never been ill before, never for five minutes. And this illness had driven me to a strange introspection. There had been time to think. I [pg 153] smiled at Captain Blaise's amateurish rhymings on the veranda of the manor-house. I had condemned him in my own mind for this death or that death of his irregular career; on that last night on the veranda I had even allowed him to read my thoughts of such matters. And now I could not recollect of his having ever killed or maimed except in defence of his life or property; and yet that night in Momba I had shot, caring not whether I killed or no. Self-defence? At the instant of shooting I had thought, had almost spoken it aloud: "There! There's for a channel to let the starlight into your unclean brain." Self-defence? Tish! The Governor's son desired, possibly loved in his way, a girl that I had known no longer than I knew him, and there it was—I loved her, too! Captain Blaise himself had probably never killed on less provocation; and meditating on his emotional side, on his many provocations, his life-long environment, I had to concede that the Captain Blaise I condemned was a less guilty man than I.
This, as I was beginning to see, was but an argument with myself for a final dismissal of my old life. Surely I should be ashamed to admit that in such fashion was my brain trying to fool my soul; but so it was. Remorse? I should have been worn with remorse, I know; but I was not. I tried to grieve for my hasty judgment of Captain Blaise: [pg 154] and I did. But for the Governor's son, not a qualm. I, too, like Captain Blaise, had become the creature of hereditary instincts and overpowering emotion. Never in all my life before had I thought that any sin or shortcoming of mine was ever to be anybody's business but my own. My salvation lay in the future, which, now that my conscience was awakened, I would have only myself to censure if it did not become what I wished.
But these serious thoughts were of previous days. This morning I was to have some little composition ready for her when she came down. I turned to my paper and pencil and began to write. But thoughts, such thoughts as I conceived would please her, came slowly. My new conscience or it may have been the voices of the quarter-deck,—her father's questions, Captain Blaise's muffled answers, her exclamations of delight and wonder,—all these diverted me. In despair I tried to catch, as I usually could, what Captain Blaise was saying, but to-day he spoke in so low a tone that I could not quite.
Ubbo came down for a chart, a particular chart which Captain Blaise has always kept apart from the others. I pointed out to him where he would find it. And my eye followed his figure up the cabin steps. In a sailor's costume Ubbo was proud but perspiring, though devotion shone out in every drop of perspiration.
[pg 155]
After a long look I saw that he did not resume his narrative. By that I knew that the stranger was troubling him.
Through the skylight I saw Captain Blaise take the chart from Ubbo, unroll and scan it. "I was right. Yes, here's the spot." He was addressing Shiela. "In red ink, see, and here's about where we are now—not ten miles from here, north by east."
Shiela was bending over the chart when "Sail-ho!" rang out from the lookout in the foretop. He had a grand voice, that man on watch.
With one hand Captain Blaise held the chart so Shiela still could read it; with the other he reached through the skylight opening for his long glass. After a long look I saw that he did not resume his narrative. By that I knew that the stranger was troubling him.
Shiela came below to see me. The traces of tears were in her eyes.
"It's a large ship to the northward," she said. "From something Captain Blaise whispered to father it may be a man-o'-war, though I hope not. But what have you done since I've been gone? You mustn't feel put out when I have to go on deck. It's an ungrateful girl, you know, who is not courteous to her host, especially when that host is Captain Blaise. Think what father and I owe him! And what a wonderfully interesting man he is! And what adventures he has had!"
"But what made you cry?"
[pg 156]
"Captain Blaise was telling of a happening on this very spot almost. It was a ship from Cadiz for Savannah. She had taken fire. He picked up among others three people lashed to some pieces of wreckage—a man, a woman, and their baby. She was dead and he dying. He did die later aboard his ship, the predecessor of the Bess. The baby lived. Do you recall the story?"
"No, he never told me that one. And the baby?"
"The father had practically supported the baby in the water for four days—the baby was less than a year old—and the mother had nursed him till she died. For two days, the man said, with nothing to eat herself. She and he, they had practically killed themselves for the baby boy. She was a Spanish woman—a lady. The father died aboard Captain Blaise's ship. He was an American who had married abroad without consulting his father, and the old gentleman made such a fuss about it that the young man had stayed away—intended to remain away and renounce his heritage; but at last the father had sent for him, and he was then on his way home. But you should have heard Captain Blaise tell it. He made us feel that mother's love for her baby, that mother who was dead before he picked her up, and made us feel, too, what a man the father was. What an actor he is! I tried not [pg 157] to cry, but I did. But let me see—what have you there?"
I showed her some things. She picked up the nearest and read it aloud:
"I was walking down the glen—
O my heart!—on a summer's day.
He passed me by, my gentleman—
Would I had never seen the day!
"True love can neither hate nor scorn,
And ne'er will true love pass away.
And his hair was silk as tasselled corn,
My heart alack—that summer's day!
"Oh, he wore plumes in his broad hat
And jewelled buckles on his shoon,
And O, the sparkle in his eye!
And yet his love could die so soon!"
"H-m. Suggests satin breeches and hair-powder, men who could navigate a ball-room floor more safely than the Trades, doesn't it? Wherever did you get such notions?"
I showed her a volume, one of Captain Blaise's, an anthology of the Elizabethan and Restoration poets. "I was trying to write like one of 'em," I explained. "And I thought it was pretty good."
"I don't—a poor girl believing that Heaven made her kind for the high people's pleasure. No, I don't like that. And 'hair as silk as tasselled corn!' Do you like tasselled corn hair?"
[pg 158]
"Why, no—in a man. But my own being black—"
"Hush! Black's best. No, you're not intended for that kind of writing."
"But here—listen:
"'True love can neither hate nor scorn,
And ne'er will true love pass away.'
"Don't you like that?"
"Something like it's been said so often. Why don't you put it in your own words?" She took up another sheet. "What's this about?"
"That's about a day and night at sea—a fine day in the Trades, such a day as to-day—and last night."
"It was a beautiful moon last night, wasn't it?" And she read to herself. Coming to the last stanza, she read aloud, unconsciously I think:
"The stars gleamed out of a purple light,
The moon trembled wide on the sea;
The Western Ocean smiled that night—
Sweetheart, 'twas a dream of thee!"
She paused. "But the ocean doesn't smile." "But it does. Smiles and frowns, and roars and coos, and coaxes and threatens, and strikes and caresses, and leaps and rolls—and so many other things. I've seen it. And Captain Blaise will tell you the same."
[pg 159]
She looked strangely at me. In the deep sea I had seen, at times, that deep dark blue of her eyes—ultramarine, they call it; but hers softer. I almost told her so, but I was afraid.
She looked away and repeated softly:
"'The Western Ocean smiled that night—Sweetheart,
'twas a dream of thee!'"
It's pretty, but more like what men who cruise for pleasure would write. You're a sailor—have taken a sailor's chances. Why don't you write like a sailor? It is a sad sea, a terrible sea, despite all your beautiful blue Trades. Why don't you write of the tragic sea?"
"I knew that some time you would say something like that. I've seen it in your eyes before."
"You have?"
"Why, many times. And so, here." And from between the pages of Captain Blaise's book of verse I drew another sheet. At that time I would have been ashamed to let anybody else see these things, but I did not mind her. "Here," I said, "is one I felt. One night in the Caribbean we were caught in a tornado, and we thought—Captain Blaise said afterward he thought so too—that we had stood our last watch. And at the height of it—we could do nothing but stand by—one of the crew, a young fellow—I was only sixteen years old myself then—said [pg 160] to me, 'Oh, Master Guy, what will she say when she hears?' He meant his young wife. He'd been married just before we put out, and she'd come down to the ship to see him off. So listen:
"'The spray, most-like, was in my eyes,
He waved his hand to me—
The wind it blew a gale that day
When he sailed out to sea.'"
"Ah-h!" She leaned closer.
"It was a gale the day we put out. We had to get out—in Charleston Harbor it was—and they were hot after us—gale or no gale, Captain Blaise put out. I'm trying to imagine what she would think when she heard.
"'And now no spray is in my eyes,
No hand is waved to me—
But all the gales of time shall blow
Ere he comes back from sea!'"
"And she a bride! Oh-h, the poor girl!" She had leaned over my shoulder to read it for herself, and her breath was on my cheek.
"That is why, if I had—a wife, I should dread the sea."
"And that is why a woman—But how long have you been writing poetry?"
"Poetry? Or rhyme? Never before the day I saw you."
[pg 161]
"But when did such ideas before take hold of you?"
"The other night I was lying here looking up, and after a time the moon shone through onto my cot, and you crossed its path—you had given me my night cup and I had pretended to be asleep; and I thought of you looking out on the moonlit sea and I got to wondering what you were thinking of. And I remembered a thousand such moonlit nights when you were not there. And I thought what a difference it would have made had you been there, and so when I say
"'The Western Ocean smiled that night—
Sweetheart, 'twas a dream of thee!'
"you must not smile. I meant it; for if the ocean smiles and whispers and makes men dream of—"
"Oh-h!" her head had settled and now her cheek was against mine. "Go on," she said softly.
"It made me dream of her that was never more than a dream-woman until I saw you. No longer a dream—not after you stepped out onto the veranda of the Governor's house that night in Momba. I knew it again when, looking out from the shrubbery in the garden, you looked at me and said, 'And who is this?' And I knew it when with you in the long-boat, when I wanted to reach out and take your hand—"
[pg 162]
"And why didn't you? I knew you were weak from your wound, and it would have been a charity in me to cheer you up."
"Divine charity—but I was not weak—not from any wound. I had not the courage. A sailor may shape his course by a star, but that does not mean that he ever thinks of reaching up and trying to grasp it."
"And you've heard the sea whisper, too, Guy?"
"Many a time. In the night mostly—in the mid-watch, when it's quietest. I've leant over the rail and heard it whisper up to me. People laugh at that, but they know nothing of the sea. And the day, or the night, comes to some men, when she whispers up to him and beckons with her wide arms and on her deep bosom offers to pillow him, and weary of the wrong-doing, mostly it's wrong-doing, or despair, when men hear it—weary, weary to death, they are glad to—"
"No, no—no, Guy—you must never go like that!"
"But when a man's alone?"
She rested her chin on my shoulder, she reached a hand down to mine. "You will not be alone, dear—never, never again."
A voice from above recalled me. "Guy! O Guy! If you can make shift to come on deck, you [pg 163] would do well. We are in close quarters and like to be yet closer."
I looked up, not in full time, but in time to catch a glint of his eyes. Pain in his voice, suffering in his eyes—never till that moment did it come to me that this whole cruise had been but a wooing of Shiela Cunningham. And I, who owed him everything in life, I had stood in his way. And even with Shiela there my heart ached for him.