And an hour later, and while the crew and passengers of the ill-fated packet steamer were being warmed and re-clothed in the farm houses near the scene of the wreck, Captain Donald McKenzie was stiffly and painfully pacing the quarter of the Amy Anderson standing out to sea.
The wind had dropped to a light breeze when they passed out of the channel. A heavy swell—aftermath of the gale—was running, and the wreck of the steamer could be distinctly discerned in the moonlight with the waves making a complete breach over it. The whole superstructure was gone, and nothing but the hull remained, and as he stared at it, McKenzie thought of the mental wreck he had experienced but a few hours previous. “Mrs. Walter Moodey,” he murmured, and he smiled bitterly.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
McKenzie drove the Amy Anderson for Porto Rico in a manner that gave his small crew some trepidation whenever there was more than ordinary wind blowing. He felt that he had to give vent to his feelings—to blow off steam as it were—and as he was too good-natured a man to take it out of his crew, he took it out of the vessel, and kept sail on her at times when prudence suggested otherwise.
On these occasions, he twirled the wheel himself and seemed to take a savage pleasure in hounding the schooner along, and several times he had her with half the deck under lee water and threatening to jump the masts over the side. Try as he might, he could not erase Ruth Nickerson from his mind, and with harassing persistence, the memory of the night in Halifax and the afternoon at Salvage Island kept rising before him—odious and inexplicable comparisons which tormented his thoughts and wrung his heart. He couldn’t fathom the complex feminine nature which was capable of shifting around so quick. In his opinion, Ruth had led him on; he had bared his soul to her, and she had spurned him, cut him adrift, and given her heart and hand to another two months after he concluded she was his, and his alone.
When he thought of this, and of the visions, dreams and ambitions in which Ruth played so prominent a part, he endured mental agony which demanded relief. As he had neither taste nor inclination for drink or brutality, he found a counter distraction in driving the vessel. And under such pressure, the Amy Anderson arrived off San Juan nine days after leaving Eastville, with her foretopmast gone and all her light sails split through sail-dragging in one or two hard breezes.
In the Porto Rican city, he sought solace in riding into the country—leaving the schooner early in the morning and returning late at night. During these solitary excursions he debated his future course of action, and finally concluded to carry on as though nothing had interfered with his peace of mind. Ruth Nickerson would live in Halifax after she was married and he would see but little of her in Eastville. He loved that town; liked its people, and the Bank fisheries gave him a vocation and a livelihood which he enjoyed and which catered to his fascination for the sea and the myriad life which dwelt within it. In future, he would live and act as though Ruth Nickerson never existed. This was his resolution, but he found it terribly hard to forget.
An hour before sailing for Halifax with a cargo of barrelled molasses, the agent brought him three letters which came in the morning’s mail-boat from New York. One was from his mother, the other from Judson Nickerson, but the hand-writing on the third—a small pink envelope—made his heart leap. His first impulse was to tear it open, but pride arrested him. “She’s not worth it,” he growled. “Mother comes first.” And he thrust Ruth’s letter into his pocket, adding under his breath, “Explanations, most likely ... or an announcement.”