The captain laughed. Then, pointing, he asked: “What’s that handbill?”
The “handbill” was a fair-sized poster announcing the production at the “Eureka Opera House” of the “Thrilling Comedy-Drama, The Golden Gods.” Pearson looked at it, made a face, and shook his head.
“That,” he said, “is my combined crusher and comforter. It is the announcement of the first, and next to the last, performance of a play I wrote in my calf days. The ‘Eureka Opera House’ is—or was, if the ‘gods’ weren’t too much for it—located at Daybury, Illinois. I keep that bill to prevent my conceit getting away with me. Also, when I get discouraged over my novel, it reminds me that, however bad the yarn may turn out to be, I have committed worse crimes.”
This led to the captain’s asking about the novel and how it was progressing. His companion admitted having made some progress, more in the line of revision than anything else. He had remodeled his hero somewhat, in accordance with his new friend’s suggestions during their interview at the Warren apartment, and had introduced other characters, portrait sketches from memory of persons whom he had known in his boyhood days in the Maine town. He read a few chapters aloud, and Captain Elisha waxed almost enthusiastic over them.
Then followed a long discussion over a point of seamanship, the handling of a bark in a gale. It developed that the young author’s knowledge of saltwater strategy was extensive and correct in the main, though somewhat theoretical. That of his critic was based upon practice and hard experience. He cited this skipper and that as examples, and carried them through no’theasters off Hatteras and typhoons in the Indian Ocean. The room, in spite of the open window, grew thick with pipe smoke, and the argument was punctuated by thumps on the desk and chair arms, and illustrated by diagrams drawn by the captain’s forefinger on the side of the dresser. The effects of oil on breaking rollers, the use of a “sea-anchor” over the side to “hold her to it,” whether or not a man was justified in abandoning his ship under certain given circumstances, these were debated pro and con. Always Pearson’s “Uncle Jim” was held up as the final authority, the paragon of sea captains, by the visitor, and, while his host pretended to agree, with modest reservations, in this estimate of his relative, he was more and more certain that his hero was bound to become a youthful edition of Elisha Warren himself—and he thanked the fates which had brought this fine, able, old-school mariner to his door.
At length, Captain Elisha, having worked “Uncle Jim” into a safe harbor after a hundred mile cruise under jury jig, with all hands watch and watch at the pumps, leaned forward in triumph to refill his pipe. Having done so, his eyes remained fixed upon a photograph standing, partially hidden by a leather collar box, upon the dresser. He looked at it intently, then rose and took it in his hand.
“Well, I swan!” he exclaimed. “Either what my head’s been the fullest of lately has struck to my eyesight, or else—why, say, Jim, that’s Caroline, ain’t it?”
Pearson colored and seemed embarrassed. “Yes,” he answered, “that is Miss Warren.”
“Humph! Good likeness, too! But what kind of rig has she got on? I’ve seen her wear a good many dresses—seems to have a different one for every day, pretty nigh—but I never saw her in anything like that. Looks sort of outlandish; like one of them foreign girls at Geneva—or Leghorn, say.”
“Yes. That is an Italian peasant costume. Miss Warren wore it at a fancy dress ball a year ago.”