Mr. Beveridge's commiseration would have been wasted on Captain Boyd Mayo that evening. The captain snapped off the light in the chart-room as soon as they had departed, and there in the gloom he took his happiness to his heart, even as he had taken her delicious self to his breast. He put up his hands and pressed his face into the palms. He inhaled the delicate, subtle fragrance—a mere suggestion of perfume—the sweet ghost of her personality, which she had left behind. Her touch still thrilled him, and the warmth of her last kiss was on his lips.
Then he went out and climbed the ladder to the bridge. A peep over the shoulder of the man at the wheel into the mellow glow under the hood of the binnacle, showed him that the Olenia was on her course.
“It's a beautiful night, Mr. McGaw,” he said to the mate, a stumpy little man with bowed legs, who was pacing to and fro, measuring strides with the regularity of a pendulum.
“It is that, sir!”
Mr. McGaw, before he answered, plainly had difficulty with something which bulged in his cheek. He appeared, also, to be considerably surprised by the captain's air of vivacious gaiety. His superior had been moping around the ship for many days with melancholy spelled in every line of his face.
“Yes, it's the most beautiful and perfect night I ever saw, Mr. McGaw.” There was triumph in the captain's buoyant tones.
“Must be allowed to be what they call a starry night for a ramble,” admitted the mate, trying to find speech to fit the occasion.
“I will take the rest of this watch and the middle watch, Mr. McGaw,” offered the captain. “I want to stay up to-night. I can't go to sleep.”
The offer meant that Captain Mayo proposed to stay on duty until four o'clock in the morning.
Mate McGaw fiddled a gnarled finger under his nose and tried to find some words of protest. But Captain Mayo added a crisp command.