No one was stirring in the inn except a sleepy, draggle-headed pot-boy, lazily sweeping out the tap-room. Although I was very hungry, I determined on a ramble along the water-front before breakfast, and I headed down the street.
I remembered very well where I had landed from the Minetta, and that upon the occasion of her entering the harbor I had been surprised at the number of vessels at the wharves; but now they seemed to be trebled. A maze of masts and rigging arose above the tree-tops, but the scene lacked the life and movement of loading and unloading.
The vessels appeared slovenly and unkempt, their yards at all angles, and their shrouds sagging. Close to me, with a long bowsprit extending almost into the front yard of one of the white houses that clustered at the southern bend of the harbor, was a great three-masted ship. Her cut was different from most of those that I had seen, but what held my eye was this: her foremast had been spliced neatly with wrappings of great rope, and three or four jagged breaks showed in her topsides and bulwarks. She was lying close to a great warehouse that prevented a view of the open bay, and I walked down the pier. The great vessel had quarter-galleries, like a man-of-war, and above her rudder-post I read the words, "Northumberland of Liverpool"; then I remembered hearing the night before that this vessel had come in under the lee of the Young Eagle, and had been one of the richest fruits of her first cruise.
When I reached the pier-head I walked out on the string-piece, and climbing on the top of a pile of lumber, I looked out across the smooth water. A quarter of a mile from shore lay the tidiest-looking craft that I ever clapped my eyes on. She was not very small, but sat low in the water. A backward rake to her masts gave her a jaunty appearance, and the tall spars that lifted high above her deck looked as slender as whipstocks. Her jib-boom was of tremendous length, but at that time I did not know enough either to criticise or to appreciate her altogether at a glance.
It was setting out to be a scorching day. The smell of sperm-oil and pine timber came from beneath and about me, and so still was it that the sound of a man rowing a dory over against the farther shore sounded plainly. I could hear every thump in the thole-pins. The clicking of a block and tackle broke out, and a musical high-toned bell hurriedly struck the hour from the little brig. That she was the Young Eagle I had no doubt, and it flashed across me that maybe I had gotten myself in somewhat of a predicament, and that maybe it would be better for me to find Captain Temple and inform him that, while I did know something of small arms, I was in truth nothing of a sailor.
I took the paper out of my pocket, and saw that there was no reference made to performing the duties of seamanship, but that I had been enlisted to instruct the crew in a branch with which I felt myself perfectly familiar.
My old friend Plummer had promised to help me learn the ropes, and so I determined to go ahead without any explaining.
Thinking that it would be best to report to my commander at the inn and await his orders, I turned my footsteps back into the town. And as I walked the path along the tree-lined street, why I should fall to thinking of Mary Tanner I do not know. I took a squint down at myself in my sailor finery, and rather admired the way the wide bell-shaped trousers flapped about my ankles. The wish grew upon me that Mary could see me as I was. Thus, with my head down, I hastened on, and did not perceive that an open gate swung across the way until I had run afoul of it, bows on.
As I leaned over to rub my shin I heard a laugh, and looking up, there, not ten feet from me, was the very person who had been in my mind—Mary Tanner herself! The power is given to women to control the expressions of their feelings in a manner that fails men altogether. At least I might say we are more clumsy at it. I was so astounded that I could not speak a word, and stood there on one leg like a startled sand-piper. She spoke first.
"Well, where did you come from?" she laughed, gathering up her apron in one hand. It had been filled with roses she had been clipping from a bush.