Skelton was a right good sort, but he was not the man with whom to share loneliness, and Bobby, who had plenty of money of his own, was thinking how jolly this winter cruise would have been if he had only taken it on board a passenger liner, with girls and deck quoits and cards in the evening, instead of Skelton.
Bobby was only twenty-two, a good-looking clean youth, well-balanced enough, but desirous of fun. Oxford had not spoiled him a bit. He had no “manner,”—just his own naturalness,—and he had shocked Skelton at Barbados by getting a great negro washing woman on board (she had come alongside in a blue boat) and giving her rum, for the fun of the thing. “Debauching a native woman with alcohol!” Skelton had called it.
Skelton vetoed shark fishing. It messed his decks. He was like an old woman about his decks. “I tell you what you ought to do, Skelly,” Bobby had said. “You ought to start a blessed laundry!” They had nearly quarreled at Guadeloupe over sharks.
And again at St. Pierre, where, lying off the ruins of the town, Skelton had likened it to Gomorrah, declaring it had been destroyed because of the wickedness of its inhabitants.
“And how about the ships in the bay?” had asked Bobby. “What had they to do with the business? Why weren’t they given notice to quit?”
“We won’t argue on the matter,” replied Skelton.
And there was still two months of this blessed cruise to be worked out!
He was thinking of this when Skelton came on deck, his white shirt-front shining in the starlight. He was in an amiable mood tonight and, ranging up beside Bobby, he spoke about the beauty of the stars.
It was chiefly on Bobby’s initiative that they had dropped the anchor so that they might prospect the island on the morrow, and as they smoked and talked the conversation passed from stars to desert islands, and from desert islands to the old Spaniards of the West Indies, bucaneers, filibusters, pirates, and Brethren of the Coast.
Perhaps it was the starlight, or the tepid wind blowing up from the straits of Florida, or the distant starlit palms of Palm Island that set Skelton off and touched a vein in his nature hitherto unsuspected: whatever it was, he warmed to his subject and for the first time on the voyage became interesting. He could talk! Nombre de Dios, Carthagena, and Porto Bello,—he touched them alive again, set the old plate-ships sailing and the pirates overhauling them, sacked cathedrals of gold and jewels, showed Bobby Tortuga, the great rendezvous of the bucaneers and the Spaniards attacking it, men marooned on desolate places like Palm Island, treasure buried—and then all of a sudden closed up and became uninteresting again. The remnants of the boy in him had spoken, the old pirate that lives in most men’s hearts had shown his head. Perhaps he was ashamed of his warmth and enthusiasm over these old romantic things—who knows? At all events, he retired into himself and then went below to find a book he was reading, leaving the deck to Bobby and the anchor watch.