No tenderer hands could have given the Daphne's master and mate to the sea; no voice could have bespoken their souls a kinder journey than the stranger who shrouded and weighted them. He sent them away with a prayer and a heartfelt farewell that a friend who had known them and loved them a lifetime might have breathed.
Paul was near breaking down when it came to the parting with William Elston. Among the papers scattered around the lad he found the first page of a letter which the boy had started to his mother on the day after the Daphne had put out from Sydney. That was the day after Christmas.
"I'll be home in England—merry England—with you next Christmas, mother mine——"
That was as much as he could read. He put the crumpled sheet in the dead boy's hands where he had already folded a photograph which had hung over the berth. It was a picture of a simple vine-covered cottage such as are to be met in the byways of villages and towns throughout England. Clusters of roses peeped and seemed to nod over a hawthorn hedge in the foreground. A collie stood at the gate, head lifted, ears cocked, and muzzle searching the distance as at a master's coming. On the back of the photograph was written in the hand which had kept the log: "My Sussex Home.
"'In a fair ground—in a fair ground—
Yea, Sussex by the sea!'"
While the mystery which Paul met at every turn beckoned him on in pursuit of it, he was careful to guard against giving any time except to necessary things. He was compelled to give his attention to the donkey boiler and galley fires forward as well as keep an eye on the sun's ascension toward noon. The Daphne's position was the most important thing to be ascertained. To this end he searched high and low for a sextant. The mate's was missing; the skipper's, too. He found McGavock's empty case in a corner of the chart room, where it had been thrown and smashed. A mercurial barometer lay crushed beside it. Nor could he discover the sailing chart of the bark's present voyage nor any other chart of the Pacific.
Abaft the companionway staircase he came upon a room which had escaped his attention before. It opened upon a short alleyway into the lazarette. Here were stowed the ship's slop stores. A door on the left hand, as one went aft, led into the skipper's room. He had noticed it when he had returned to get the ulster for Emily. Immediately opposite was the entrance to a snug bathroom.
Paul took advantage immediately of his discovery of the slop stores to levy upon them for an outfit of clothing and shoes. When he had found how plentiful was the vessel's supply of water he had vanquished the dust and grime of his venture into the fore hold. The touch of the fresh clothing, rough though it was, was pleasant. It was a link with the world again.
The while he dressed in the bathroom he observed many things which told of a woman's presence—articles of the toilet too fine and dainty for a man's use. A leather traveling dressing case lay on a small stand. It contained a silver-mounted assortment of brushes and screw-top bottles. He paused to examine them for a marking. There was none but the English Sterling impression. Another thing which indicated to him that this room had known a woman's presence was a tiny fern basket which swung over the bath. Similar baskets hung in the skylight of each saloon and from the ceiling in the skipper's room. These meant a woman's watchfulness and tender care. Men who live and die by the sea know no green-growing things; no flowers. The sea gives no flowers to its children; no sweet odors for memory. It has gardens, but they are scentless and one may enter them only when life is done. So perhaps it is just as well that its flora is without fragrance.
At one moment Paul was convinced that a woman had been in the Daphne but recently: the next he doubted it. He did not wish to think that she had been carried off in those small boats. The thought sickened him.