Chauncey Gale found me staring off at the horizon and building a fair castle in which the South Pole had no part.
“Chase,” he said, “don’t you make a mistake, too, and forget what I told you about Johnnie.”
The abruptness of it startled me a bit, but there was a quality in his voice that called for confidence and sincerity.
“Thank you, Mr. Gale, and—and I believe you spoke just in time.”
“I had my suspicions of it,” he admitted. “Tony got his medicine last night, I guess.”
“Oh!” I had started a bit, and Zar’s report of Miss Gale’s depression took on a new meaning.
“Yes, he’s no good this morning. He got all tangled up on his dynamo and we had an explosion that nearly set the ship afire. Then he went off half crying and I haven’t seen him since. I guess he wishes himself ashore, now, but wishin’ won’t do any good. He might get a message there all right, but he’s got to have something more than vibrations to get himself there. You see this ain’t any matrimonial excursion. We ain’t got any preacher along, and Biff’s license don’t cover that sort of a splice. Emory’s got a doctor’s diploma, but that wouldn’t fit the case, either.”
Mr. Emory was the Second Officer of the Billowcrest—a quiet, unobtrusive man whose love for the sea had led him back to it through devious ways. A runaway cabin boy, he had returned home in early manhood to become a country doctor, a naval hospital surgeon, a ship’s doctor and officer by turns, and was now serving us in the double capacity of the last two.
“Anyway,” concluded Gale, “we’ve got the South Pole on hand, and I’m in favor of taking things in their turn. You can’t afford to get in Macarony’s fix just now. We’ll need you when we get down there below the Horn. Besides we’re a long ways from shore, and the water here’s full of sharks.”
The last was certainly true. A black knife-like fin at that instant cut the water below us, and the swish of a steel-like tail as it disappeared made me shudder.