Elsie, all tremulous and rosy, and profoundly thankful for the darkness, withdrew herself from Courtenay’s embrace and answered the Argentine.
“Ah,” said Suarez, “I am glad you are there too, señorita. Will you tell him that I am very hungry, and that I have not been relieved at the proper time. I have been waiting half an hour or more.”
“There!” cried the captain, squeezing Elsie’s arm, “that comes of using so many unnecessary explanations. I ought to have adopted the recognized Jack Tar method and just grabbed you round the waist without ceremony. I wonder where Boyle is. He and Christobal take the first watch, and it must be two bells, or later. I will hunt them up. Good-by, sweetheart. Meet you at supper in ten minutes.”
It was a strange and peculiar fact that Boyle had cornered Christobal in the saloon, and had insisted on telling him various remarkable anecdotes concerning the one-legged skipper of the Flower of the Ocean brig. It was still more odd that when Christobal yielded to a fit of unwonted and melancholy silence after learning from Suarez that the senor captain had been talking to the señorita for a very long time on the promenade deck, Boyle should feel inclined to sing.
The chief officer’s musical attainments were not of the highest, and his repertory was archaic. But there must be some explanation of his unwonted and melancholy chanting. He always spoke of Elsie with the utmost admiration, and it was no secret that he rendered Courtenay a sort of hero-worship hidden under the guise of an exaggerated belief in the good luck which followed the captain of the Kansas in all his doings. And then, with a chilling inspiration, Christobal knew why the chief officer had caused him to miss the hour for relieving the watch. Boyle had seen those two together, and had planned to leave them undisturbed!
The Spaniard was a dignified man; he had inherited from his English mother a saving sense of humor. It was intolerable that the pleasant relations existing between the few survivors on board the Kansas should be disturbed by reason of any failure on his part to acquiesce in Elsie’s right to bestow her affections where she listed. He wondered if the girl had come on deck after supper; her habit was to retire early, as she rose soon after the sun. He had seen her for a moment only in passing out of the saloon, and there was a suspicious brightness in her eyes for which solicitude on the dog’s behalf would hardly account. Why not put his fortunes to the test that night and have done with it? Yes, that was the right course. He would cease this petty watchfulness, this campaign of planning and contriving lest others should monopolize more of her smiles and pleasant words than he. A simple question would determine his fate. Either she was heart-whole, or not; at any rate, he would receive a straight answer.
So it was on the cards that Elsie would be the amazed recipient of two proposals in one evening, which is a better average than most women are favored with in a lifetime. Christobal had entered the chart-house with the fixed intent of warning Boyle that he was going below for a moment to ask Miss Maxwell to come on deck, when a hurried step on the bridge companion caused the imminent words to be withheld.
It was Courtenay, who had run up from the saloon to procure those fateful letters which had so nearly parted Elsie and himself. He had laughingly refused to tell her their history. That would spoil their effect, he said. She must take them to her state-room and read them at her leisure. Then she would see their true inwardness, and his feelings would be spared, as he could not deny that the majority of them had been written by ladies.
On his way, he looked into the wheel-house. There was no light in the interior. Boyle, wrapped in a heavy coat, was seated in the most sheltered corner.
“All quiet?” asked the captain, in his brisk way.