Under Rocking Skies

by L. Frank Tooker

"You reckless! You are self-control itself," he declared.

It is strange, but there are times when to be called self-controlled is like an accusation.

"That sounds like calling me hard and unfeeling," she said.

"Rather say it's calling you happy. I think there is no happiness without self-control," he replied.

"Do you call it happiness," she cried—"rolling like this? I think it is dull."

"All happiness is more or less dull," he declared. "It's the price it pays to discontent, which is supposed to know all the ups and downs of life."

"I should not like to think that," she said soberly.

"Then I hope your whole life may prove it false," he answered.

In the silence that followed, his eyes, searching the night with the fascination in the thought of discovery that the sea gives even to the sighting of a sail, came back to her face and lingered there. For a moment he looked at her with the intent, impersonal gaze that he had directed toward the horizon. She was leaning against the guard-rail, with her hands clasped over her knees, and her eyes turned up to the stars. Her head was uncovered, and her hair looked black above the gleaming whiteness of her face, which wore the intense look of abounding vitality that pallor sometimes gives in a larger measure than vivid coloring. As he watched her face in the dim light, he became distinctly alive to a new impression—the impression that he was becoming strangely drawn to her. The knowledge came upon him suddenly, like a ship looming above him in the night.

It was inevitable that his first thought should be of Medbury; but whatever he might later come to think of his own ethical implication, in this first moment of self-discovery the thought was little more than that he should have a care. In a rush of mental restlessness he rose to his feet and walked to the rail. He could hear the second mate as he tramped steadily back and forth on the quarter-deck, passing like a shuttle from darkness to light as he crossed the glow from the binnacle-lamp. The thump of the wheel jumping in its becket was almost continuous; it irritated him as the louder noises of the sea and the vessel had not done. In the east a red light shone and vanished; again it appeared for a moment. He called Hetty's attention to it, but she did not rise. When it appeared again it was farther to the north.