As a matter of fact, they did no harm aboard besides befouling the air of the alleyways with their eternal opium smoking. They had nothing at all to do with the men forward, and the only person who appeared to be able to hold intercourse with them was Komuri. He understood their lingo or singsong way of telling it, and he would talk to them for hours during the evening after the supper things were washed up, and Jack, the steward, had turned in.
I was a bit suspicious of this, for I don't like men of the after guard to be intimate with either the crew or the passengers. It starts something before long, and the voyage across the Pacific is a long one if nothing else. Slade commented upon the Japanese often, and he rather disliked our little second steward for his untiring efforts in behalf of the ladies. Slade was a jealous man, although he was a seaman from clew to earing, and his attentions to Miss Aline were more and more marked as the schooner sped on her course.
"Why shouldn't I get married?" he used to say to me when we had a chance to be together, which was seldom enough. "Why shouldn't I get a wife, and take up the simple life of the farmer? I've been through all the hardness of seagoing, and I'm tired of it. What is a man, after all, if he sticks to it? He gets to be a skipper of some blamed hooker that'll make him a couple of thousand a year when he is too old to enjoy spending it. Then he loses her, maybe, and then where is he? A fit subject, for the sailors' home. No, I'm going to marry that woman and get a berth ashore. You watch me."
Of course, I encouraged him all I thought necessary. I even grinned at times when I thought of the picture he would make as a husband of a woman like Miss Aline MacDonald—after he had been on the beach for a year or two.
And so we ran our westing down, and drew near the one hundred and sixtieth meridian to the northward of the Marshall Islands. Here the trade failed us for a wonder, and began to get fitful and squally. At times it would come with a rush, and then die away altogether, the squalls being accompanied by rain. A mighty swell began to heave in from the southeast diagonally across the trade swell, and it lumped up some, heaving the schooner over and rolling her down to her bearings when the wind failed to hold her.
The glass fell, and the air became sultry, the sun glowing like a ball of red copper in the hazy atmosphere. The squall clouds grew heavier, and when the sun shone between them it sent long rays, fan-shaped, through the mist.
The old man came on deck, and viewed the sea with a critical eye. It was nearly eight bells, and Slade was on watch. I came out and watched them take the sun for meridian altitude—both of them sometimes did this together—and when the bells struck off, Slade came down from the poop, and joined me on the main deck.
"What'd you make of the weather, old man?" he asked.
"Looks dirty to me; glass falling and the hot squalls coming from that quarter—whew! Look at it!"
As I spoke a huge roller swept under the schooner, lifting her skyward, and then dropping her slowly down the side. It was an enormous sea—a hill of water full forty feet high—and it rolled like a living mountain, a mighty mass that made nothing of the trade swell, and told of some tremendous power behind it.