Then he heard a woman laughing somewhere in the ship, as if a long way off, and was swept by a flood of conflicting emotions.
In a way, it had all begun long before, when the Helen of Troy slipped through the narrows of my old New England port on a day in early June, the wind abeam, and was passed by a ship outward bound under full press of canvas. The scene came back to Hastings there in the dim light of the stateroom; the New England shore dark against the yellow sunset; the ship, phantom-like, her sails barred by shadows of spar and rigging; then the rumbling voice of the mate of the Helen of Troy: “The Winnemere, as I’m alive! It ain’t in nature to be meeting with her always. Nagasaki! Batavia! Sumatra! Aye, she sang another tune, though, the night we passed her in Macassar Strait.”
It seemed to Hastings that he could hear again his own reply, faint and far off: “There were light winds that night. But she’s an able craft in coarse weather.” Training his glass at the tall figure on the deck of the outgoing vessel, he had muttered, “Grin, damn ye, grin!” and flung back his head with an air of elation. Not in ships alone were Donald Hastings and Amos Widmer rivals.
So the Winnemere had sailed to meet the oncoming dusk, and the Helen of Troy had come bravely into port. And there Donald Hastings had heard an old story, and like many a better man before him, had gone back to the sea to forget that he ever had loved. But one thing he had not been able to forget.
After a time that faint laughter, breaking the pregnant silence of the little stateroom, came again to Hastings’ ears. There was in it a strange note that puzzled him, an unfamiliarity that overbore the lingering familiarity of its tone. Presently, as he stood with parted lips, the boy came, knocking, and asked him to the captain’s cabin. As he traversed the narrow passage he heard the laughter yet again, louder now, and more than ever was puzzled by it. For though it reminded him of Christine Duncan’s voice, it had a penetrating wildness like no laughter he had heard before. He entered the door with his hands half raised, as if to guard against an unexpected attack. But the gesture was needless. Amos Widmer, calm as Buddha, was seated already at the oak table.
Smiling softly when his guest appeared, Widmer motioned him to a chair. “Now then, boy,” he murmured, “what has that black scoundrel in the galley got ready for us?”
And the boy vanished, flinching in the door.
“I did not expect this honor,” Hastings began.
“The honor is mine.” Unstopping the decanter on the table, Widmer filled two wine glasses. “Your health, sir!” he said.
Hastings fingered the stem of his own glass. Young and hot-headed, versed in rough courtesies and frank enmities, he was placed at a singular disadvantage by this quiet man with the eyes of a devil. “I did not expect this honor, sir,” he repeated, “or this pleasure. Your—” his pause was almost imperceptible—“wife?”