“Sailors are queer folk, believe me. That same brig, Flower of the Ocean, an’ a pretty flower she was, too—all tar an’ coal-dust, with a perfume that would poison a rat—put into Grimsby one day, an’ the crowd went ashore. They kicked up a shindy with some bar-loungers, an’ the fur flew. When the police came, old Peg-leg, the skipper, you know, was the only man left in the place, havin’ unshipped his crutch for the fight. ‘What have you bin a-doin’ of here—throwin’ grapes about?’ asked the peeler, gazin’ at the floor, suspicious-like. ‘Grapes,’ said Dot-an’-carry-one, ‘them ain’t grapes. Them’s eyeballs!’ Another time—”
“Mr. Boyle!” shrieked Elsie, and fled.
“Huh!” he grunted. “Off before the wind when she hears a Sunday-school yarn like that. Wonder what she’d say if I told her about the plum-duff with beetles for Sultanas. Girls are brought up nowadays like orchids. They shouldn’t be let loose in this wicked world.”
As Elsie passed along the promenade deck she saw Courtenay, Tollemache, and Walker deep in consultation. They were arranging a percussion fuse of fulminating mercury. While she was watching them, Walker dropped a broken furnace bar on top of a small package placed on an iron block. Instantly there was a sharp report, and Joey, who was an interested observer, jumped several feet. The men laughed, and she heard Courtenay say:
“That is the right proportion of fulminate. Now, Tollemache, I’ll help you to fix them. We do not know the moment those reptiles may choose to attack.”
So the captain did not leave the Alaculof menace altogether out of count. Something rose in her throat, some wave of emotion which threatened her splendid serenity. She ran rather than walked to her cabin, flung herself on the bed, and sobbed piteously. It had to come, this tempest of tears. When desperate odds demanded unflinching courage, she faced them dry-eyed, with steadfast heart. But to-day, in the bright sunshine and apparent security of the ship, sinister death-shadows tortured her into rebellion. She did not stop to ask herself why she wept; being a woman, she yielded to the gust, and when it had ended, with the suddenness of a summer shower, she smiled through the vanishing tears. Her first concern was that none should be aware of her weakness.
“How stupid of me,” she murmured. “What would the men think if they knew I broke down in this fashion.”
She looked in a mirror. In the clear light without, any one could see she had been crying, and there was so much work to be done that she did not wish to remain in her stateroom until all tokens of the storm had passed. She searched for a powder-puff, and was at a loss to discover its whereabouts until she recollected that the doctor had borrowed it for the use of a man slightly scalded when his own supply of antiseptic powder was exhausted. So she went into Isobel’s room, entering it for the first time since the Kansas struck on the shoal. The two cabins communicated, as Mr. Baring had gone to the expense of having a door broken through the partition for the girls’ use during the voyage. If Elsie had not already given way to tears she must have faltered now at the sight of her friend’s belongings strewed in confusion over the floor, chairs, dressing-table, and bed. Isobel possessed a gold-mounted dressing-case the size of an ordinary portmanteau. It held an assortment of pretty, and mostly useless, knick-knacks, and they had all been tumbled out in a frantic hurry. At first Elsie flinched from further scrutiny, but common sense told her that this despondent mood must be fought. She dropped to her knees, found a mother-o’-pearl poudrier, and picked up other scattered articles and replaced them in the dressing-case. To accomplish this it was necessary to rearrange various trays and drawers. Portraits of girl friends, including her own, and of men unknown to her, letters, memoranda, and other documents, were thrown about in disorder. All these she put back in their receptacles, wondering the while what motive had led Isobel to make such a frenzied search for some special object that she cared not a jot what became of the remaining articles.
Yet, who could account for the frenzy of that terrible hour when the captain announced the ship’s danger? Even Courtenay himself, she remembered, had emptied a locker in a rapid hunt for the dog’s coat; but he had laughingly explained his haste later when some chance reference was made to his soaked garments.
Anything was explicable in the light of panic. She gathered up a skirt and some blouses, locked the dressing-case, put the key in her purse, and quitted the room with a heavy heart, for the handling of her friend’s treasures had brought sad memories.