“I am quite certain you can, Captain Mayo,” she assured him, demurely. “And I am grateful. But perhaps we'd be better off on board that other vessel—father and the rest of us.”
“I insist,” he said, but he did not dare to meet her searching eyes. “I insist!” he repeated, resuming the decisive manner which he had shown before on board the Polly.
The Olenia, slowing down, had come close aboard, and her churning screws pulled her to a standstill. Her crew sent a tender rattling down from her port davits. As she rolled on the surge her brass rails caught the sunlight in long flashes which fairly blinded the hollow eyes of the castaways. The white canvas of bridge and awnings gleamed in snowy purity. She was so near that Dolph smelled the savory scents from her galley and began to “suffle” moisture in the corners of his mouth.
They who waited on the barnacled hulk of the Polly, faint with hunger, bedraggled with brine, unkempt and wholly miserable after a night of toils and vigil, felt like beggars at a palace gate as they surveyed her immaculateness.
A sort of insolent opulence seemed to exude from her. Mayo, her captain though he was, felt that suggestion of insolence more keenly than his companions, for he had had bitter and recent experience with the moods of Julius Marston.
He did not find Marston a comforting object for his gaze; the transportation magnate was pacing the port alley with a stride that was plainly impatient. Close beside the gangway stood Alma Marston, spotless in white duck. Each time her father turned his back on her she put out her clasped hands toward her lover with a furtive gesture.
Polly Candage watched this demonstration with frank interest, and occasionally stole side-glances at the face of the man who stood beside her on the schooner's bottom; he was wholly absorbed in his scrutiny of the other girl.
Mate McGaw himself was at the tiller of the tender. His honest face was working with emotion, and he began to talk before the oarsmen had eased the boat against the overturned hulk.
“I haven't closed my eyes, Captain Mayo. Stayed up all night, trying to figure it out. Almost gave up all notion that you were aboard the schooner. You didn't hail the boat we sent out.”
“I tried to do it; perhaps you couldn't hear me.”