II
When Kieran came on deck again the third officer had gone forward, but the passenger was still on one of the towing bitts and still smoking. Kieran, strolling to the taffrail, resumed his study of the tossing ship's wake and the cavorting barge in tow. When he seemed to have settled the matter to his satisfaction, he seated himself on the other towing bitt.
"You can get an idea into your head and sometimes [pg 285] it'll swing you around like that barge on the end of that hawser, won't it? Or perhaps your mind don't run that way?"
"I don't see," retorted the passenger, "that that barge has to stick there forever. What's to prevent her from making a leap and fetching up suddenly, and if she did she'd part that hawser like a piece of twine."
"Yes, but she won't make the leap—not till something outside of herself drives her to it. If a sea should rise, or a gale of wind, she might. But it would take something like that. In the meantime she points this way and that, slewing now to this side—see—and now to the other—but never getting away from this ship which has her in tow. Our course must be her course."
"Yes, I suppose that is so."
"Well, then, Cogan that I've been telling you about was nearly always in tow of a force that seemed to be outside of himself. A storm, a high sea, or a gale of wind in his case would be an upheaval of his soul like. But in those days he hadn't come to that. Maybe he was still only half awake. Martin Jackson, sitting out on the sidewalk of his Fourth of July saloon, came nearer to making him think than all of the school teachers he'd ever seen. Maybe, too, life was too smooth in those days. However, he was always in tow of some fancy or [pg 286] other. And one day, being free of the navy, he went to Peru."
'"Twas love at first sight then with that young Peruvian girl on the beach?"
"No, I don't think so—not quite that. Even at that age Cogan could not fall in love with curves and color alone. At any rate, he put out to sea; and the beauty of the little Peruvian girl was with him in many a night-watch. Under the stars he could shut his eyes and see her—the flashing teeth as she grimaced up at the horrified nurse, and the eyes still rioting after the curved lips were closed. And yet it was not her beauty. A hundred rosy-marbled nymphs could have paraded the beach in a thousand silvery dawns and, once out of sight, his heart never quicken whatever it was—the innocence, the breathing innocence of her, it may have been that. And yet there was something more. There must have been. He gave it up, but he knew that if he had been born a girl he, too, would want to paddle in the sea at dawn."
"A sort of poet?" suggested the passenger.