Madame Reynier was willing if Mélanie was; and Mélanie had no strength, if she had the will, to combat Aleck's masterful ways. It was soon settled. Aleck swung off down the street, re-reading Jim's letter, intent only on the Sea Gull and the preparations for his guests. But at the back of his mind he was thinking, "Poor girl! She needs me more than I thought!"
CHAPTER VI
ON BOARD THE JEANNE D'ARC
If hard usage and obstacles could cure a knight-errant of his sentiment, then Jimmy Hambleton had been free of his passion for the Face. His plunge overboard had been followed by a joyous swim, a lusty call to the yacht for "Help," and a growing amazement when he realized that it was the yacht's intention to pass him by. He had swum valiantly, determined to get picked up by that particular craft, when suddenly his strength failed. He remembered thinking that it was all up with him, and then he lost consciousness.
When he awoke he was on a hard bunk in a dim place, and a sailor was jerking him about. His throat burned with a fiery liquid. Then he felt the plunging and rising of the boat, and came to life sufficiently to utter the stereotyped words, "Where am I?"
In Jim's case the question did not imply the confused groping back to sense that it usually indicates, but rather an actual desire to know whether or not he was on board the Jeanne D'Arc. Plainly his wits had not been badly shattered by his experience overboard. But the sailor who was attending him with such ministrations as he understood, answered him with a sample of French which Jim had never met with in his school-books, and he was not enlightened for some hours.
It turned out, indeed, to be the Jeanne D'Arc, as Jim proved for himself the next day, and he was lying in the seamen's quarters in the fo'cas'le. By morning he felt much better, hungry, and prepared in his mind for striking a bargain with one of the sailors for clothes. He could make out their lingo soon, he guessed, and then he would get a suit of clothes and fare on deck. Suddenly he grasped his waist, struck with an unpleasant thought; his money-belt was gone! He was wearing a sailor's blue flannel shirt and nothing else. He turned over on his hard bunk, thinking that he would have to wait a while before making his entrance on the public stage of the Jeanne D'Arc.
And wait he did. Not a rag of clothing was in sight, and no cajolery or promise of reward could persuade the ship's men into supplying his need. He received consignments of food; short rations they would be, he judged, for an able-bodied seaman. But inactivity and confinement to the fo'cas'le soon worked havoc with his physique, so that appetite, and even desire of life itself, temporarily disappeared in the gloom of seasickness.
In spite of difficulties, Jim tried to find out something about the boat. The seamen were none too friendly; but by patching up his almost forgotten French and by signs, he learned something. His sudden failure of strength in the water had been due to a blow from a floating spar, as a bruise on his forehead testified; "the old man," whom Jim supposed to be the captain, was a hard master; Monsieur Chatelard was owner, or at least temporary proprietor, of the yacht; and the present voyage was an unlucky one by all the signs and omens known to the seamen's horoscope.