"Oh!" gasped the girl, startled, for Tunis Latham and Orion stood behind her.
"Your tongue's hung in the middle and wags both ends, Horry," growled the young skipper. "You trying to scare Miss Bostwick out of her wits? What you poor, weak-minded, misguided fellows heard that time in the snow squall was a flock of black gulls coming down with the wind. And somebody aboard of the Marlin B. was a ventriloquist. Your whole crew weren't ignorant of the accident that happened on her first trip. Somebody had it in for Sutro Brothers, and made much of little, same as usual."
"Oh, they did?" muttered Horry.
"Anyway," said Captain Latham, "that's neither here nor there. We aren't sailing the Marlin B., for she's in Chilean waters, owned by a South American millionaire. You can stow that kind of talk, Horry—anyway, while Miss Bostwick is aboard."
They were until late in the evening beating into Paulmouth Harbor, but the heavens were starlit and the air as soft as spring. The tolling of the bell buoy over Bitter Reef was mellow and soothing; they heard it for a long time before the Seamew made the short leg of the final tack and went rushing in past the danger mark under the urge of a sudden puff of the fitful breeze.
"The old bell is welcoming us, Ida May," Captain Latham said to the girl who reclined in a canvas chair which the cook had raked out of the lazaret for her use. "I've beat my way in here when it hasn't sounded so cheerful."
"I am wondering what sort of welcome I shall receive when we get to—Wreckers' Head, do you call it?" she asked softly.
"That'll be all right, too," he told her with confidence. "Just wait and see."
They dropped anchor near the Main Street dock in order that they should be able to warp the schooner in to unload her cargo in the morning. Tunis allowed shore leave, late as the hour was. But he sat beside the passenger on the Seamew's deck, and they talked. It was surprising how much those two found to talk about! Perhaps a good deal of their inconsequential chatter was to hide the anxiety each felt in secret as to the future.
However, that talk was a memorable one for both Tunis Latham and the girl posing as Ida May Bostwick. Two young people can tell a great deal to each other under certain circumstances in the mid-watch of a starlit night. The lap, lap of the wavelets whispering against the schooner's hull, the drone of the surf on a distant bar, and the sounds of insect life from the shore were accompaniments to their long talk.