He crossed from the bath into the skipper's room again, hoping that he might have overlooked there some place where a sextant or quadrant might be stored. Alongside the desk he spied a silver frame. It contained the photograph of a laughing, blonde-headed girl of not more than two and twenty—an wholesome English type of face; just such a woman as he imagined a man like McGavock would go a-wooing and take to wife. He regretted that he had not found it sooner. John McGavock might have wished to take it with him. Paul set it on top of the desk again, from which it had evidently been knocked, and turned away cudgeling his brain to suggest where he might carry his search. His glance picked up a knobless door in the bulkhead to the right of the desk. He dimly remembered noticing it when he had taken the mackintosh and of fixing it in his mind at the time as the vessel's medicine chest. It was fastened with a spring lock. He stepped back from it, hesitated a second, and with a heave of his shoulder burst it in.
An odorous wave of English lavender rolled out upon him. The man closed his eyes and inhaled the sweet freshness with a lingering breath. It conjured memories of mother, sister, home, boyhood—all the tender recollections of the days which had known no clouds; no bitternesses.
The room which the door revealed was half filled with a woman's skirts and gowns and coats hanging in order from the beams overhead. Along a shelf against the forward side stood a neat row of six or seven pairs of shoes and slippers. The drooping tops of some of them suggested little soldiers grown tired of marching. The invader felt as if he had broken into a holy place. A cedar-wood chest stood open on his left. On top of a filmy heap of woman's things lay a Leghorn straw, trimmed with a wreath of faded red silk roses. Across the hat was a baby's dainty underslip.
Turning away from the chest with a pang in his heart and a tightening at the throat latch his eyes found the object of his search. A sextant lay on top of the medicine chest which was built into the vessel's side. As he picked it up eagerly and examined it, he discovered two new chart pipes standing in the corner. In one of these was a new Admiralty chart of the North and South Pacific Oceans.
Carrying the pipes and the sextant, Paul Lavelle backed out of the little room, and as he went he could not help feeling that he had violated a shrine.
CHAPTER XXIV
Warned of a sudden that the sun was near the zenith, Paul hastened from the engine room aft. Although he tried to go softly when he reached the poop for fear of waking Emily he could not control the heels nor the squeaking of his new slop chest shoes. He heard her calling him before he was halfway to the wheel.
As he appeared in the lounge door she sat up in dumb fear. For the moment she did not recognize him in the rough blue shirt and corduroys and strange cap into which he had changed.
"It's I," he said, removing his cap with a smile.