And lief lie down of nights.”
He stood alone with the wind and the clamorous sea and the stars in the velvet sky. Gazing forward from the bridge, the ship’s derrick booms and cargo winches were obscurely shadowed. The forecastle deck and lofty prow lifted against the curtain of night. The spray broke over them and beat like gusts of rain. It was possible to forget that this was a modern steamer, infinitely complex and cunningly contrived, a steel trough driven by tireless engines. To Richard Cary she was a ship steering across the Caribbean as ships had steered in bygone centuries. Never had his heart beat so high nor had he been conscious of such a keen-edged joy in living.
Teresa Fernandez, the blood in whose veins ran back to Don Juan Diego Fernandez, commander of the shattered treasure galleon! It pleased Richard Cary’s awakened fancy to picture such a girl as this in the Cartagena of long ago, a scarf of Spanish lace thrown over her lustrous hair, and a tall, fair Devon lad to woo her when the seamen of the Bonaventure had landed on the beach to parley for ransom.
At breakfast next morning, Cary could see the competent stewardess, graceful, light of foot, flitting to and fro on this errand or that, with a shrewd eye to the main chance. No nonsense, her aspect seemed to say. She was the “good scout,” the unsentimental friend of the second steward, the wireless operators, the purser, and the doctor. She colored divinely, however, when her sailor lover smiled a greeting from his table. A little later, when he passed her on the staircase, and they were unobserved, her fingers lightly brushed the sleeve of his coat.
The Tarragona was approaching the Colombian coast. In the afternoon a trifling incident occurred. It was destined, however, to affect the fortunes of Richard Cary in a manner unforeseen. Captain Jordan Sterry, that vigorous figure of a middle-aged shipmaster, had displayed a fatherly interest in a pert young creature with bobbed hair who seemed to enjoy it, for lack of a better game to play. He had invited her to visit the bridge. It was a courtesy often shown favored passengers.
The second officer was on duty. He happened to overhear some chance remark of the skipper, a rather silly thing to say, fatuous in a man old enough to be the bobbed one’s father. Most unluckily Richard Cary chuckled aloud. A lively sense of the ridiculous was too much for him. The infatuated Captain Sterry turned and glared. Cary was fairly caught. His face betrayed him. It mirrored the merciless verdict of youth. Words could have put it no more bitingly.
Captain Sterry turned red. He bit his lip. His second mate thought him absurd. To be laughed at was degrading, intolerable. It penetrated his vanity and seared his soul like acid.
A fleeting tableau, but Cary had made an enemy who both hated and feared him. His offense was beyond all forgiveness. He stepped to a wheel-house window and took the binocular from the rack. It occupied him to watch a distant steamer almost hull down. He felt rather sorry for what he had done. It was uncomfortable to think of the look in the skipper’s eyes, not so much anger as profound humiliation. Never again would these twain be happy in the same ship together.
It meant that Richard Cary might have to leave the Tarragona and find another berth. This was his regretful conclusion. He liked the ship nor could he imagine himself as forsaking the Caribbean Sea to return to the Western Ocean trade.