“Well, sir, some of the boys are getting restless. And I’ll be mighty glad when we raise that old Dutch bucket of yours. They ain’t bad, understand; just young and heady and wanting a little fun. They growl a lot because they can’t sleep on deck. They growl because there’s nothing to drink. Of course it might hurt Cleigh’s feelings, but I’d like to see all his grog go by the board. You see, sir, it ain’t as if we’d just dropped down from Shanghai. It’s been tarnation dull ever since we left San Francisco.”
“Once on the other boat, they can make a night of it if they want to. But I’ve given my word on the Wanderer.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And it’s final.”
Cunningham returned to his chart. All these cogitations because a woman had entered his life 223 uninvited! Ten days ago he had not been aware of her existence; and from now on she would be always recurring in his thoughts.
She was not conscious of it, but she was as a wild thing that had been born in captivity, and she was tasting the freedom of space again without knowing what the matter was. But it is the law that all wild things born in captivity lose everything but the echo; a little freedom, a flash of what might have been, and they are ready to return to the cage. So it would be with her.
Supposing—no, he would let her return to her cage. He wondered—had he made his word a law simply to meet and conquer a situation such as this? Or was his hesitance due to the fear of her hate? That would be immediate and unabating. She was not the sort that would bend—she would break. No, he wasn’t monster enough to play that sort of game. She should take back her little adventure to her cage, and in her old age it would become a pleasant souvenir.
He rose and leaned on his arms against a port sill and stared at the stars until they began to fade, until the sea and the sky became like the pearls he would soon be seeking. A string of glass beads, bringing about all these events!
At dawn he went down to the deck for a bit of exercise before he turned in. When he beheld 224 Dennison sound asleep in the chair, his mouth slightly open, his bare feet standing out conspicuously on the foot rest, a bantering, mocking smile twisted the corners of Cunningham’s lips. Noiselessly he settled himself in the adjacent chair, and cynically hoping that Dennison would be first to wake he fell asleep.
The Wanderer’s deck toilet was begun and consummated between six and six-thirty, except in rainy weather. Hose, mops, and holystone, until the teak looked as if it had just left the Rangoon sawmills; then the brass, every knob and piping, every latch and hinge and port loop. The care given the yacht since leaving the Yang-tse might be well called ingratiating. Never was a crew more eager to enact each duty to the utmost—with mighty good reason.