The Girl of the Golden Gate

by William Brown Meloney

"There, there, dear. Let us never think of it again. I have only a glimmer of an idea—of what happened. I don't know what happened; in fact, I don't want to know. All I do know and all I care about is—that somehow I had the sand—the brute strength to save you. Just you of all the world!"

He seized her passionately as he spoke and kissed her. The pressure of her firm, lithe body against his sent his blood clamoring. The natural perfume of her hair made his brain hammer drunkenly. Still above the tumult which beset his senses rang a mocking laugh—a devil's laugh. As he caught it a chill went over him. He put Emily away from him as fiercely as he had taken her and, crying, without a word, she sank on the bench in front of the fire and hid her face in her hands. As he turned away his brow was clouded with anger; his eyes filled with bitterness.

A second Lavelle stood motionless, his trembling breath an unuttered curse of himself. Then he turned to the door at his side and banged it open. It was the entrance to the cook's cubby-hole of a room. A piece of matting and a wooden pillow in the bunk told that its late occupant had been either a Chinese or Japanese. There was an odor, too, that bespoke the recent presence of an opium smoker. He had departed in a hurry.

There was another door leading aft from the galley. This was the entrance to the carpenter shop and donkey engine room. A cubby-hole with a bunk in it to port had been the carpenter's abode. Lavelle noted with satisfaction the equipment of glistening, well-kept tools on the engine room bulkheads.

Hurrying forward, Paul entered the forecastle. It was an exceptionally large one for a vessel of the Daphne's size. Echo answered his hail. Mattresses—the straw pallets which sailors call "donkeys' breakfasts"—clothes' bags, ditty bags, oilskins, sea boots, sou'westers, an assortment of greasy pots, pannikins, and spoons, and two filthy kids littered the black deck. Half a dozen chests gaped open, their contents falling over their sides. The hands that had gone through them had sought only the bottoms where money, trinkets, and supposed valuables had been hidden by their owners. So had he found the chests in the rooms of the second and third mates, the carpenter, and the cook. In their extremity they had all acted alike—thought only of useless baubles and left useful, necessary things behind.

A sailor before the mast, used and inured to hardship, living by the hour hand in hand with death, trained in the expectancy of sudden danger, ever aware of the constant attendance of peril, might be expected to act with more intelligence in an emergency which may cost him his life than the humdrum-going citizen ashore. Left to himself, he will go out of a ship in mid-ocean with a few shillings he has stored in the bottom of his bag or chest, a model upon which he has been spending most of his watches below, a derby hat or flash necktie for which he paid four times too much at his last port. Rarely has he a thought of necessary things—the countless useful articles of clothing such as Paul Lavelle saw on every hand—overcoats, jackets, underclothing—which a day or an hour in an open boat can make worth a king's ransom.

The forecastle had been emptied in a hurry, but it told no other tale than that. There is no lair of mankind, no habitation of man's devisement more cheerless than a ship's forecastle. There is no sight more depressing, more dismal than one deserted.

Paul, with a shudder, crossed from the starboard side, through which he had entered, to port. The breath of fresh air which he caught as he threw back the door and stepped out on deck was like a draught of wine. His spirits lifted as it dissipated the sea-sour stench which his nostrils were carrying. He turned forward immediately to at last come upon an explanation of the exodus from the Daphne.

The fore hatch was open. The covers were strewn about the deck. Up out of the glistening cargo of coals came an odor of fire. There was no smoke, but fire had been or was down there.

He recognized the dangerous quality of the coals at once. It was fear of it that had emptied the crew overside in panic. His mind, in the stress which had been upon it while he was aft, had not grasped the probable character of the cargo when he read in the log book with what the Daphne was laden.