He rose to his feet, and, going to the taffrail, expectorated over the side with unnecessary violence. Like most men whose lives have been spent in rough places and whose knowledge of women is limited, he cherished a pathetic belief in their legendary gentleness and timidity. It was true that this particular young woman had not displayed these qualities in any marked degree, but he had never doubted their existence even so. He felt now that, in being a woman, she was living under false pretences, so to speak. It was a very real grievance in his eyes, more especially when he reflected on the noble restraint he had exercised over his speech and manners out of regard for her sex.
He returned moodily to the hatch and sat down. The girl was still discussing Calamity with McPhulach, her voice defiantly enthusiastic.
"If I were a man I'd ask for no better Captain to sail under," she was saying.
"It's a pity you ain't, then," growled Smith, who had returned just in time to overhear this remark.
"I've often thought so myself," she retorted. "Men are getting too soft nowadays."
"Meybe so," put in the engineer soothingly. "But ye'll hae no cause to complain o' the saftness aboord this packet, I'm thinkin'. And gin it's devilry ye're so muckle fond of, ye've no need to fash yersel' aboot missin' any here."
"Not half you needn't," added Smith with a grim chuckle. "When the old man——" he broke off abruptly as the ship's bell struck. "Holy Moses! eight bells already!" he ejaculated, and, rising to his feet, went off to relieve Mr. Dykes.
As the latter descended the companion-ladder after handing over the watch to the second-mate, he paused suddenly before reaching the deck. He was not an imaginative man and had never made a study of beauty except as represented by the female crimps and spongers who infested the various ports he had visited. But for a moment the sight of the girl sitting on the hatch, her beautiful hair softly radiant in the moonlight, and her figure in its close-fitting jersey so strangely alluring in the half-concealment of the shadows, held him spellbound. The splendour of the night, with its star-powdered sky of deepest, limpid blue; the brilliant moon whose beams made an ever-widening track of molten silver with shimmering tints of bronze, across the blue-black waters; the wake of foaming, sparkling iridescence in the steamer's track,—all these things moved him not one jot for he had witnessed them times without number. He saw nothing, in fact, but the girl, sitting with her face resting on her hands, gazing pensively out to sea. Never before had he realised that she was beautiful and intensely feminine despite all her affected masculinity.
"Durned if she don't look like a picture postcard," he murmured ecstatically.
He walked up to the hatch and sat down near her, but she did not turn her head nor show any sign of being aware of his presence. He coughed to attract her attention, but without result; she continued gazing with sad, thoughtful eyes into the distant mingling of crystal blue and glistening silver-grey which marked the junction of sea and sky.