The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Madcap Cruise, by Oric Bates.

Boston and New York
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1905

Chapter One THE CARDINAL POINTS

"It strikes me," said Jerrold Taberman, "that we are booked for everlasting fame, win or lose. We'll either sail down the ages as a brace of heroes, or as the most egregious pair of donkeys that ever botched a job."

"Well, Jerry," returned his companion, smiling, "you've as much to do with making the thing a success as I have. I hope you realize the responsibility."

The young men chuckled in concert at the thought of all that was involved in this remark, although they looked, not at each other, but out over the sea.

It was early twilight in the last week of the month of May. The two speakers were standing on a little jetty that ran out into a small and all but landlocked harbor of an island in East Penobscot[Pg 2] Bay. Both were evidently in the earlier twenties, both were dressed in such canvas working-suits as are worn by the sailors in our navy, and both were, at half a glance, gentlemen.

The second speaker, John Castleport, was tall and dark. His face, with its prominent features and keen brown eyes, was rather striking than handsome. He stood looking southward to where, in the fading light, the Atlantic shouldered away to the west as if with a hidden purpose of its own. In his hand he held a pair of powerful binoculars, and despite his smile he had the air of being pretty seriously in earnest.

Taberman contrasted curiously with his host. He was short and thickset, with blue eyes and fair hair which showed a tendency to curl. As he stood with shoulders turned to the wind, the square collar of his canvas jumper was blown against his round pate, and made a background for his tanned face. He held a briar drop-pipe between his teeth, and his hands were thrust deep into his trousers pockets. Working his pipe into the corner of his mouth, he spoke again.

"Hope this breeze won't trouble the old gentleman," he remarked, casting a glance at the billowing double-headers that were driving by aloft.

"Guess not," replied Castleport; "anything short of a hurricane's a sailing-wind for him. He's a mettlesome old chap."

"That's right enough. Can't have him spoiling our game by being late, you know. Let's go up; it's getting beastly chilly."

They turned and walked along the pier. At the point where it met the shore stood a small boathouse. Thence the ground, covered with a stunted growth of spruce and fir, and the inevitable New England boulders, rose abruptly. Directly in the line of the jetty the shingled roof of a small house showed above the trees. To the westward, in the dimming afterglow of the sunset, the Camden Hills stood out luminous, purple, yet rimmed with a thread of golden fire. Away to the east, clad in soberer colors, rose Mt. Desert, a mass of shadowy greens and blues. The steepness of the path they were ascending soon cut off from the view of the young men these beauties and grandeurs, which, however, they were probably not in a mood to dwell upon; and a minute's walking brought them to the door of the house, a small affair with high-pitched roof and broad veranda. Its shingles were almost the color of the dark [Pg 4]evergreens that encircled the clearing in which it stood; its windows reflected with a vacant and glassy stare the fast-fading light. Castleport opened the door for his guest, and followed him into the living-room.

The darkness seemed the greater from its contrast with what light yet remained outside, and not until Taberman had put a match to the pile of old shingles and light driftwood in the wide fireplace could they see fairly. The crimson glow showed a room some twenty feet square, with windows on two sides,—the south and east. The joists and sheathing were of planed spruce, left unpainted. The big Mexican fireplace of brick occupied the northwestern corner; in the middle of the room stood conspicuously a round deal table, covered with a litter of pipes, tobacco, magazines, and nautical hardware; between the two eastern windows, below a box-like cabinet which was attached to the wall, was a smaller table with a square top, piled with books and charts. Beneath the southern windows was placed a heavy desk with a faded baize top, the cloth ink-stained and full of holes due to moths and carelessly handled cigars. Of the happy-go-lucky assortment of chairs which completed the furniture of the room, no large portion was in an entirely unbroken condition, but all evidently were[Pg 5] meant for service and ease. The walls of the room were decorated with devices in scallop-shells and a few unframed water-colors of the impressionist type. A large chart of Penobscot Bay was tacked to the inside of the door, and a venerable flintlock musket hung below a battered quadrant over the chimneypiece. Everything was simple almost to rudeness, yet the place gave at once and most strongly the impression of comfort and good-fellowship.

Castleport laid his binoculars on the desk, and, stepping to a door on his right, opened it and called out:—

"Sair?" promptly replied some one from beyond the short passage into which he looked.

Taberman had seated himself by the fire, and here Castleport joined him. Each filled and lighted a pipe, and together they stared at the flames roaring up the wide chimney. The smaller sticks already began to fall apart, pitching outward or dropping between the dogs, and for some moments the young men watched them in silence. At length, as Taberman flung a fresh stick into the flames, Castleport spoke, half to himself.

"What a lesson it'll be to the old chap! My aunt! He'll grind his teeth to powder!"

"Tooth-powder, eh?" queried the other with a grin. "But we must be sure we have the laugh on the right side. It isn't merely the getting away with the Merle that's the joke; it's the hanging on to her and bringing her back safe."

"That's true enough," assented Castleport; "but with pluck and luck and an eye to the three L's, we ought to manage."

"You'd better go over the whole plan for me, Jack; you haven't given me half the details, and I'd like to know the latest version. It's certainly important to have everything perfectly understood beforehand."

"All right; I'll go over the whole business after dinner, old man. We will act the conspirators rehearsing their villainy; but let's wait for food. I hate discussions on an empty stomach."

A tall, gray-haired man, with a much-bronzed face, came in and began to clear away the litter on the round table. He had a rugged, weather-beaten countenance, with prominent features and luminous black eyes. Beneath his big, hooked nose a large white mustache, stiff and curled like that of a walrus, half hid a firm, full-lipped mouth. A[Pg 7] native of Provence,—soldier, sailor, cook, and deck-hand,—old Gonzague Mairecalde had led sixty-odd years of exciting and polyglot existence, the last three of which had been spent in Castleport's service. Dressed in blue flannel trousers and an immaculate white jacket, the old man moved noiselessly about, swiftly disposing of the things on the table. He seemed to have a place for everything, and the lightest tread and deftest hands imaginable. Having cleared away, he went out, and soon reappeared with linen and service. In a short time the table was ready for the bringing in of the food.

"A' ready, sair?" asked Gonzague, tugging at his mustache with his bony fingers.

In ten minutes they were seated before a dinner plain but hearty, well cooked and appetizingly served. They were apparently not at all troubled by any incongruity between their rough and not over-fresh sailor clothes and the snowy napery and the silver on which the fire threw dancing and wavering lights. On the walls opposite the fireplace mute, shadowy grotesques helped each other to huge supplies from dishes of vague outline and uncertain size, plied dark forks and[Pg 8] spoons with ogre-like gusto, or with heads thrown back and crooked elbows drank like trolls from enormous tankards.

After dinner the table was cleared, a jug of ale was placed upon it, with a plate of ship-biscuit and a supply of tobacco. It was the theory of Castleport that the climate of the Island was English enough to warrant this nightly attack upon the October, of which his uncle, who owned the Island, kept always a butt in the cellar. In truth, the fresh coolness of the air at night, the pleasant blaze of the fire, the agreeable scent of burning tobacco, made a tankard or two of ale seem hardly to need an excuse of any sort.

With the table pulled forward so that its edge came between them, their pipes lit, their feet stretched out comfortably toward the hearth, the pair of friends smoked for a time in silence, until at last Jack, after refilling and relighting his pipe with great deliberation, broke into speech.

"Before I go into the details of this job," he observed, "there's one thing I have to say. It's a waste of breath for me to talk until I know you're with me. I haven't done anything more than to ask you off-hand, old man; now I'd like you to say seriously whether you'll come on this cruise with me or not. I hate to be so horribly[Pg 9] businesslike, Jerry, especially in the matter of a lark; but in—er—larking on this scale, things have got to be put on a definite basis,—be perfectly understood, as you said before dinner."

Taberman gave his companion a sidelong glance, and began to smile. The smile grew into an audible chuckle; and this in its turn developed into a laugh increasing to a jovial roar.

"You solemn old pirate," he cried, "what sort of a quitter do you take me for? I'll give you any kind of a promise you like, provided—semper more equitis, you know—Can't bind myself to cut throats, scuttle ships, fly the jolly roger, et cetera. What's your form of oath, eh? Do we drink each other's blood out of a skull, or what?"

There was a boyish exuberance about Jerrold Taberman, a debonair abandon, which he never could outgrow. It accorded well with his youthful face and careless mien, which made him so marked a contrast to his friend. Castleport, although impulsive and disposed to jollity as only a hale and hearty young man of twenty-two can be, was, on the whole, of a temperament the reverse of boisterous. He responded frankly to Jerry's outburst.

"Well, old man," said he, "there's nothing more needed than your word that you'll go, and[Pg 10] stick it out to the end. I knew you would, Jerry. Confound it, give us your flipper!"

In his enthusiasm he caught Taberman's hand and wrung it heartily, being evidently moved more by some inner consciousness of the weighty nature of the scheme he was about to outline than by anything that had actually been said between them. Jerry laughed, and returned the grip with interest.

"And now," continued Castleport, "I'll let you have particulars galore. I'll tell you the beginning of it first: how the idea came to me. About three weeks ago I decided I'd go abroad,—I wrote you, you remember. Well, I went to Uncle Randolph, and asked him for a letter of credit. That's what comes of the pleasant arrangement by which all my property's in trust till I'm twenty-five! Beastly nuisance!"

"Of course it is," assented his companion. "It's queer your father made such a will. However," he added, as if with the feeling that he was perhaps touching upon delicate ground, "that's neither here nor there. Heave ahead."

"Slow up a bit," interrupted the other, mischief shining in his eyes; "why should you want to go particularly?"

"Confound you!" retorted Castleport. "You know perfectly well! Do you think it's any fun to be here when—when"—

"When Miss Marchfield's on the other side," finished Jerry, with the air of enjoying a huge joke.

Jack shifted uncomfortably in his seat, leaned forward to rap the ashes out of his pipe on the firedog, and then looked at his friend seriously.

"I won't be roughed, Jerry," he said. "You know perfectly well I'm dead in earnest about her, and I'll thank you to let up."

"All right, Jack; I beg your pardon; but I would like to ask one thing. It's not exactly my business, of course, but really it's something I'd like to know in connection with this scheme."

"Well, then, what I want to know is why the President's so set against your marrying Katrine Marchfield?"

"It isn't time to talk of marrying," Jack returned somewhat stiffly. "She may have something to say to that."

"Of course, old fellow; but you know what I mean. What's his objection to your trying?"

"I don't see how that affects the cruise, exactly, but I don't mind telling you; only of course I[Pg 12] shouldn't want it talked about. It's so unreasonable, and honestly I should hate to seem to be giving Uncle Randolph any sort of a black eye."

"I shouldn't repeat it, Jack; but you needn't say anything if you'd rather not."

"It's only that it looks as if Uncle Randolph was infernally obstinate and cranky, and he really isn't. He hadn't any reason to give me, that amounted to anything. He talked about Katrine's not having any money; but of course that's all poppy-cock. I've got a good bit myself when I come into it, and he's always told me I should have all his. Of course Katrine hasn't much, though she'll have something, I suppose, from her aunt."

"Why, Mrs. Fairhew. Katrine's traveling with her now. She's the only near relative Katrine has."

"No, it isn't that. The truth is—I heard it from Mrs. Fairhew once; I wasn't sure then, and I'm not now, whether she knew quite how much she was telling me, and meant it for a warning, or not. I'm half inclined to think she did."

"But what was it?" inquired Jerry, as Jack[Pg 13] paused to meditate, with his eyes fixed earnestly on the fire.

"Oh, Uncle Randolph had some sort of a row with Katrine's father when they were young men. I fancy it was about a girl, for I know there was one somewhere along about that time. I've heard father speak of it, and say it altered Uncle Randolph's whole life. Anyway, there was some sort of a scrap, and Uncle Randolph never forgave it."

"Humph!" was Taberman's comment. "It's rather crotchety of him to vent his spite on Miss Marchfield."

"Of course it is," Castleport answered, "but he's not so bad as it looks. He's been awfully good to me all my life."

A brief pause followed, in which both were probably reflecting upon the character of Randolph Drake, one of Boston's prominent men, president of one of the largest banks, and trustee of a dozen important corporations; a man whose chief aim in life was, apparently, making money, whose amusement was yachting. It was in connection with this sport that he had a few years before bought the island and put up the house in which his motives were now being discussed. The place served as a shooting-box or as a base of [Pg 14]supplies, and was provided with a trig little harbor exactly adapted for the accommodation of the President's yacht, the Merle.

"After all," Jack said at length, "Uncle Randolph really cares more for me than he does for anything else in the world."

"And so when he suspected that you were going abroad to try to marry the daughter of his old enemy, he wouldn't supply the funds."

"He can't seem to get it into his head that I am grown up, anyhow," grumbled Jack. "I've made up my mind now that I'll convince him that I am."

"Why in the world didn't you borrow the money, Jack? That would have been easy enough."

"Well, when I came of age I made Uncle Randolph a sort of a promise that I wouldn't borrow. He put it that it would be evading the intent of my father's will; and of course it would. Anyway, Uncle Randolph himself put a bigger idea into my head. It took me one day and two nights, mostly without sleep, to think it out, and then I got hold of you."

"He was really sorry for me; I could see that. Only he had the air of feeling I was so young that[Pg 15] any other cake would do as well as the one I wanted. The very day that he refused to let me go abroad, he suggested that I come down here with Gonzague and some friend or other. He thought that if I fooled round the bay until he came to pick me up on the Merle, I should get over my wish to go abroad. He said I was run down, needed change, and so on. He's coming June 5, and plans to go on down to the Provinces. Then he said that after he had had his cruise on the Merle I might perhaps like to have her a week or two myself. It was a mighty great concession, let me tell you. When I think of taking the boat, I'm half ashamed of myself, the old gentleman's so rum fond of her."

"Yes, only not at the moment. I said to myself that if I was going to cruise in the Merle I'd like to go across in her; but it wasn't till that night, just as I was turning in, that the idea of getting her now and running off came to me. It fairly bowled me over!"

"At first it seemed the easiest thing in the world. Then I began to think of objections, and as fast as I got one out of the way another popped[Pg 16] up. I've worked at it like a prize puzzle. I've got my crew picked out, I've planned how to get possession of the yacht and to get rid of her old crew; and then—Hurrah for the Mediterranean!"

"Oh, Jacko, you devil!" cried Taberman. "I wouldn't have believed you had it in you! Do you really think we can do it?"

"Do it! Of course we'll do it. Didn't I tell you I'd got my crew already? Ten strappers, not counting Gonzague."

"Gonzague? Did you ever consider, Tab, those eyes of his, with that nose and mouth?"

"No," Jerry responded, "I've never given his features any especial critical overhauling."

"Saracen!" Jack said, lowering his voice. "When you see that combination in a Spaniard or a Provençalese, it spells Moorish marauder every time. He doesn't know it, I fancy; but there's good old ripe Moorish pirate blood in him, and it came sizzling to the top the moment I broached the scheme. Besides, Gonzague would have his throat cut for me any time."

"Of course I told him, and I told the crew,[Pg 17] that it was a lark. You know I've knocked about Penobscot Bay ever since I got out of the nursery. Everybody knows me, and at Isle au Haut I've been so much that I'm almost like one of their own pals to the natives. I got hold of my men pretty easily. Of course they look on me as the same as the President's son; and they were willing enough to leave the fishing for better wages than they could earn anywhere else. They all like me, and so of course they all take advantage of me in the way of wages."

"I confess I don't see where your economy comes in, Jacky," observed Taberman, giving a poke to the wasting fire. "I don't know much about expenses, but I should think it would cost as much to hire a crew as to go without one."

"There's a question for a casuist," he said. "I'm taking these men off on the trust that Uncle Randolph will let me pay them when I get home. It's a deuced sight more like borrowing than I wish it were, though of course my allowance comes in; but I'm bound that he shall get it into his head that I'm no longer in leading-strings, and"—

"That'll be all right, old man," he said consolingly. "We'll get out of that somehow. I'd like to see the President's face when he finds he's left high and dry down here and the Merle has flitted across the Atlantic without him."

"Oh, he won't be here. We'll capture the yacht at North Haven. I'll show you the whole scheme to-morrow on the chart. I've brought down more than a thousand for this coast and the Mediterranean! Now let's get to bed. It's only a week or so that we have left to sleep with a clear conscience."

Taberman rose from his seat, then without warning suddenly slapped his knees with his hands and burst into a roar of laughter.

"That's the cream of the whole thing," responded Jack, joining in the laugh. "He'll be so surprised to find out that I'm grown up."

Chapter Two THE FOG COMES IN

The Casino at North Haven is a curious little box, known locally—possibly from its situation at the end of a fairly long wharf—as the "Fo'c'sle." It has but one room, paneled with imitation Japanese carvings, and having an attractive divan-like seat in a wide bay-window, where one may lounge and watch the vessels passing through the Thoroughfare. Outwardly the building is very plain, its two prominent features being the bay-window, which looks south, and a flight of outside stairs on the west which lead to a little nest of a balcony half hidden under the gable-end of the roof above this window.

The balcony is so covered by the peak of the roof that its interior is not visible from the wharf, and a person sitting on the settle at the back of it can be seen only from a boat some distance out on the water.

The Casino is little used, and although the [Pg 20]caretaker unlocks the door each morning, the place is more generally deserted than not. The subscribers who come down to the wharf to start for rowing or sailing sometimes step in, wait for friends, or use the place as a storage for extra wraps; sometimes a riotous group of children holds brief but noisy possession; but after sunset the solitude is generally unbroken until ten o'clock, when the caretaker comes to lock up for the night. If the weather be bad, it is not unusual for the Casino to remain unvisited for the entire day. It affords a convenient shelter when it is needed, however, and its wharf, with a float on either side, makes a good landing-place; and it is, in a word, one of the numerous class of things which in this world are not constantly in demand, but which, when they are wanted at all, are wanted badly.

Here, on the evening of the fourth of June, Jerrold Taberman, wrapped in a shapeless ulster,—for a thick fog was driving in from the southeast,—sat awaiting his friend. Half an hour earlier Jack had gone to get something to eat, and Jerry had agreed to meet him here. Taberman was somewhat tired to-night, and beginning to feel the strain of three crowded and exciting days in which he had had little time for anything but action and sleep. The young men had completed their arrangements[Pg 21] at the Island, had left Gonzague in charge there, had notified the future crew to report to the Provençalese on the evening of the third, and to hold themselves in readiness to sail immediately on the arrival of the Merle. The pair had then taken the big market-boat, a whitehall used for bringing supplies from Isle au Haut, and with a couple of the most able of the Isle au Haut men, selected beforehand, had sailed over to an unfrequented cove in Vinal Haven, on the south side of the Thoroughfare. There they encamped in hiding. They had reached their place of concealment by night, and next afternoon had the satisfaction of seeing the Merle come in from the westward and drop anchor just inside the channel, off the "Fo'c'sle."

"By Jove, isn't she a fine sight!" Castleport exclaimed enthusiastically; and Jerry assented no less warmly.

The Merle ran in under full sail, with a quartering breeze. Her clean white hull, eighty-four feet on the water-line, her shining brasses, her broad spread of snowy canvas, the easy run of her long counter, combined to make a picture which, even personal interest aside, could not fail to stir such enthusiasts as Jack and Tab.

On the evening of the arrival of the Merle two[Pg 22] gentlemen and three ladies had gone on board, evidently to dine, as they did not leave until nearly ten o'clock. Castleport and Taberman, lying concealed among the bushes overgrowing a tiny promontory on Vinal Haven, had watched all this through their night-glasses. Jack, whose eyes were as keen as a hawk's, had even thought that he could distinguish who the visitors were. With guests on board there was evidently nothing that the conspirators could do but to watch, and when this was over they smoked a good-night pipe together over their campfire, and for the hundredth time fell to considering their chances of success. Behind them in the shadow lay the two sailors, wrapped in their blankets and sleeping the sleep which only the genuine mariner knows; Jack glanced at them as if he felt that somehow he was personally responsible for carrying through the enterprise for which they had been enlisted.

"What the deuce shall we do if the President takes it into his head to get under weigh for the island to-morrow?" Jerry demanded in a subdued voice.

"Oh, that's all right," Jack answered in the same key. "He won't. He's fond of North Haven; it's an old stamping-ground of his, and he'll never go on without having had at least[Pg 23] one night's bridge here. That's part of the cruise. Besides, it's going to be thick, or I'm a duffer."

Thick it certainly was next day. The brisk southeasterly breeze that blew through the Thoroughfare all day seemed to roll in white billows of fog far more rapidly than it could take them out at the other end. The strait acted as a sort of condenser, in which the mist became almost tangibly more solid, until at nightfall it was, as one of Castleport's men put it, "blacker 'n a tar-bucket." Under cover of the obscurity Jack had had the market-boat reloaded with such necessities as they had brought over for their camp, and rowed silently over to one of the Casino floats. Here he and Taberman got out, and then the men, by his orders, worked the boat into concealment between the spiles of the wharf, there to await further orders, utterly invisible in the fog.

The two arch-conspirators mounted the wharf, and for some time kept watch to see if any one came ashore from the Merle; but as the time wore on to half-past seven they concluded that the President must be dining on board. Assured of this, Jack left Jerry to keep watch, and went up to the village bakery for food, dinner for himself and his friend having been forgotten in the midst[Pg 24] of more important things. Tab, left alone in the wet darkness, had mounted to the balcony, and there sat in gloomy state, wondering if Jack were never coming back. He had no light by which to see his watch, but since he had heard seven bells from the Merle he felt sure that eight o'clock must be close at hand, when his attention was caught by the sound through the fog of the quick thud-thud, thud-thud of oars against thole-pins. In an instant he was thoroughly alert, his senses primitively acute, and his growing sensation of vague depression utterly dispelled. He heard some one pull hastily to the "Fo'c'sle;" the muffled chugging of the oar-blades as the rower held water; the gentle slapping of the boat's wash against the float; and then the clatter of the oars on the thwarts. Then by the dim light of the lantern at the end of the pier he saw a man spring on to the east float and secure his boat; give a quick, nervous tug at the painter to be sure that it was fast, and disappear from the field of vision which was bounded by the edge of the sloping roof. He fancied he heard a murmur as if the newcomer spoke a word of encouragement to the sailors in damp concealment under the wharf, and then had hardly time to wonder where Jack had been in a boat, before Castleport had run lightly up the[Pg 25] plank from the float to the pier, and thence up the steps to Tab's place of concealment.

"Sh! We've the chance of a lifetime! I—I"—He gasped for breath, but caught it with a great gulp, and hurried on. "I've been aboard, Tab! Come in, man! Get back, get back!" He forced his friend into a seat in the farthest corner of the little balcony, caught his breath again, and began to chuckle. The sound of oars was again audible,—this time the steady, measured stroke of a heavy boat well pulled.

"Here's Uncle Randolph," cried Jack with a sort of whispered shout. "Here's Uncle Randolph!" And seizing his friend by the shoulders, he shook him and banged his head noiselessly against the wall for sheer glee.

"Stop, Jacko, stop it! Hold up, or by Jumbo I'll yell! Look there! Here they are."

As the pair hurried cautiously to look out over the edge of the balcony, a large cutter, pulled by six men, came out of the fog into the dim illumination of the pier-light. Three gentlemen in light overcoats were visible in the stern-sheets, the one in the middle steering. A little removed from the President and the two men who were[Pg 26] evidently his guests, sat one of the officers of the Merle.

"Oh, my aunt!" whispered Tab, giving Jack a nudge. "The President has very little idea that he's made all the way in the Merle he's likely to for one while."

At the word the oars were unshipped, and a couple of sailors caught the rope which edged the staging. The cutter came to a stop. A seaman leaped out and held the boat, the officer sprang to the float and presented an arm for the President and his guests as they stepped to land.

"We'll be down at eleven," the President said to the officer. "If you want an hour or two ashore, there's some sort of a shindy going on opposite the post office, I believe—dance or something. Mind you're sharp on time for me, though."

"All right, sir. Eleven o'clock it is, sir," returned the officer, touching his cap deferentially as the three gentlemen turned away.

"Great Scott!" cried Jack into Tab's ear in an excited whisper. "Do you suppose the [Pg 27]President's going to get rid of all those men for me himself? Was ever such luck!"

The boat still lay at the landing. The men began to discuss going ashore, and every word was easily audible to the two watchers in the balcony.

"I vote we go," quoth he with the boat-hook. "It ain't every day the old hunks gives us a chance to stretch a leg ashore."

"It'll be dry, Tom," spoke up one in the boat. "Ye won't get so much as a swig o' cider-water this side o' Bar Harbor."

"Well, boys, let's try it, anyhow," advised the officer. "If it's dry there, it's wet enough here."

"That's right," responded another. "Damn yer slops, Bill, ye dude; the' 're's good as mine, an' any togs is good enough for po'r Jack. Let's go ashore an' take a look at these Thoryfare bewties."

This seemed to settle it. The boat was made fast, and the men straggled up the pier, talking and laughing as they went.

Tab and Jack fairly hugged each other in delight at this development, and then Jerry opened fire.

"When I left the bakery," Jack answered, without waiting for the question to be finished, "I said to myself that the fog was so thick it would be perfectly safe to take a boat and row out, on the chances that I might find out something. I meant to get astern of the Merle and give the wind a chance to bring me some of the talk aboard. I borrowed a little pea-pod from the pier behind Staples', and out I went. When I got to the yacht, I found I could lay alongside, for there wasn't a soul on deck. I hauled off my jacket and hung it over the boat's side for a fender, so she wouldn't make any noise, and took the painter in my fist. Then I stood on the thwart and jumped for the rail on the port side."

"I lay flat along the bulwark," Jack went on, "by the main rigging. The skylight-covers were on, of course, but the frames were half up, and I could get scraps of the talk in the cabin. The men Uncle Randolph's got along with him are old Melford and Tom Bardale. I thought I'd die to[Pg 29] hear them go on. Old Melford was grumbling away,—he's always an awful croaker, you know. He piped up once, and said it was just his luck to have to suffer both fog and bridge when he came for solid cruising. Uncle Randolph and Bardale both poo-poohed him, and asked him if he'd rather play slap-Jack. The old boys are going to play bridge somewhere,—I didn't find out where, but it doesn't matter; they're settled, anyway. I didn't hear anything else, for I'd hardly time to drop into the pea-pod and get out of the way of the men from the fo'c'sle that came out to haul in the cutter on the boat-boom. I rushed ashore as tight as I could pelt, and you saw the rest. This dance business, too! Luck's with us!"

He stopped, all but breathless. With one accord the pair started for the stairs, and took their way to the pier, where the lantern made a dim and watery illumination in the midst of the fog. Castleport seized Jerry by the arm and led him to the edge of the pier.

"With this wind," he said with great earnestness, "we'd best run out to the westward, and beat along the south of Vinal Haven. We'll have more sea-room, and with the weather as thick as this, I don't deny that even that's risky enough."

"It is a nasty night," Taberman assented with emphasis. "Are you for going outside Wooden Ball Island?"

"Tell that when we've got by Dogfish and the rest of 'em," replied Jack briefly. "I mean to leave that to Dave, anyhow."

"You're dead sure you want to do it, old man?" queried Tab with the air of one who would not have asked the question had he not been confident that the answer would be in the affirmative.

"I'd do it ten times over just for the lark!" snorted Jack. "Now then—business!"

They descended the ladder to the eastern float, and Castleport called out guardedly to the men who had all this time been lying concealed in the market-boat under the wharf. A slight bumping, a muttered oath, the rattle of an oar on the thwart, and then the nose of the boat emerged from beneath the pier. A vigorous thrust with the boat-hook against one of the outer stringers shot her up alongside the float.

"Well, Dave, we'll fix that in a spell," said[Pg 31] Jack. "We've got a bit to do first, though. Let's have your watch, Tab."

He pulled out his own as he spoke, and took Jerry's with it in one hand. Then with the other hand he struck a match, which he craftily sheltered from the wind.

"You're a minute fast of me, Jerry," he commented, throwing away the match and returning the watch. "I say eight seventeen, and you say eight eighteen. You and Jim take the market-boat and go over to the other float. Take the Merle's cutter and tow her out to one of the moorings off the club here. At eight forty-eight sharp,—just half an hour,—you hail the Merle. Sing out like the deuce, and tell 'em to send a boat ashore. I'll see that they send one, and that when they've left there'll be nobody aboard but me. In about fifteen minutes from now a boat'll come ashore, but you needn't mind her. Dave'll look out for that business. Just you pick out some mooring a bit to windward of the direct line between the yacht and the Casino, so they shan't spot you. When you hear a boat coming in answer to your hail, you come out yourselves, and tow the cutter. That you're to make fast astern the Merle. Got it all clear?"

"I guess so," Jerry answered. "I don't notice[Pg 32] a boat till eight forty-eight; then I hail, and when I hear a boat coming in answer I cut out to the Merle. Give me some matches to see the time with. Well, good luck, old man; be sharp, or you'll dish the whole game."

With this parting caution Taberman stepped into the market-boat, while Dave got out. Oars were not needed, but Jerry and the sailor easily pulled the market-boat around by the spiles to the other float, where they lay concealed in the rolling fog.

"Now then, Dave," Jack said as they disappeared, "you and I are the ones that are going to open this ball. You take me out, set me aboard just as if you did that sort of thing regularly,—do you see? As if I'd paid you a quarter for setting me aboard, you know. Then you row back. Here's a boat that'll do," he broke off, pointing to a small whitehall boat made fast to the staging. "Get in, and pull me out."

The pair stepped into the little craft, and when Dave began rowing Jack continued his instructions.

"When you get back to the float," he said, "you just make this boat fast, and hide under the shadow of those stairs on the outside of the Casino—you know?"

"Wait for a boat from the yacht with three or four men in it.—Pull on your port oar a bit; that's good.—When they get ashore and go up the wharf, you take their tender and rush her out to a mooring same as Mr. Taberman's done. Do you see?"

"Any one'll do, provided it won't be seen by a boat pulling ashore from the Merle. You won't have to go far to hide in this fog.—Little stronger on your port oar again; tide's cutting you down.—When you hear Mr. Taberman hailing, you stand by, and as soon as a boat goes by in answer, you pull out to the yacht and make fast astern. Give her plenty of painter; all she's got. Do you see now?"

"I guess I do, sir. You're going to have a boat on every davit that way, ain't you, sir?"

"If it works," Jack answered in a low voice, for they were now under the yacht's port quarter.

The Merle, dimly visible by the foggy glow of her riding-light, was pitching slightly in the chop,[Pg 34] and the small dinghy bobbed up and down beside her like a cork beside a floating spar. The waves slapped against the yacht's sheer, wetting her top-sides with spray and poppling away merrily under her counter. In the thick dimness her masts loomed up almost supernaturally tall.

"Hello?" answered a voice from forward, and in a moment a tall, burly figure appeared on deck by the ladder.

"Hello, Camper," cried Jack, recognizing the voice as that of his uncle's sailing-master. "Hello, Camper, don't you know me?"

"Why, Mr. Castleport," the skipper cried in a hearty tone, "whatever are you doin' here? Thought you was over to the Island. How are you, sir?"

"Cold," Jack answered with a laugh. "How's yourself? Fit as usual, I suppose. President aboard?"

"No, sir. He's gone ashore to some sort of a gatherin'. I never thought to see you here, sir."

"Oh, I came over to join the yacht here. I got tired of waiting. I shan't want you any longer,"[Pg 35] he called down to the figure in the dinghy below. "Much obliged."

"Come below, Mr. Castleport, sir. You'll have a bracer?" the genial sailing-master asked. "Nasty night, ain't it?"

And smiling at the thought how truly the words expressed his secret intent, he followed the worthy Camper below.

Chapter Three IT BLOWS SOUTHEAST

The saloon of the Merle was a spacious cabin, paneled in Cuban cedar. Along both sides ran transoms cushioned in dark green corduroy, which contrasted pleasantly with the red of the woodwork. On either side of the companion-way were big closets, the doors of which, framing large mirrors, opened forward against the after ends of the transoms. Both to port and to starboard the cabin was lined with lockers for flags, charts, and bottles, except where the recessed bookcases came in the middle. Large nickeled Argand lamps to port and starboard on the for'ard bulkhead illuminated the interior. Sheathed in cedar, the butt of the schooner's mainmast stood in the fore part of the saloon; and aft from it ran a mahogany table around which were placed some comfortable-looking chairs. All in all, the impression of power and grace which one received from regarding the outside of the Merle was equaled by the feeling of comfort, and, indeed,[Pg 37] almost of luxury, one had upon viewing her below decks.

It was in this pleasant retreat that Jack had settled himself in less than a minute after his arrival on the yacht. The good skipper, who had kept an almost fatherly eye on the youth ever since he was old enough to "fist a rope," sat uneasily on the edge of the divan on the port side. Jack, sprawled out on the opposite transom, lit a cigarette, and looked up at the skylight.

"My aunt! But I'm glad to be aboard again," he declared. "How is everything? What sort of a run down did you have?"

"Pretty fair, sir," returned the master. "We went to Marblehead, and then to Portsmouth. Mr. Drake, he spent the time in seeing his friends. Then we run to Portland, and then to Boothbay. We run in here yesterday. Nothin' much to tell of on the cruise."

"You've made schedule time," Jack commented. "You are here just when you were due."

"Yes, we got here," Camper assented, "though 't one time, when I see the stores that had to come aboard, I doubted if we should get started for a week."

"More stores than usual?" queried Jack, with a little spark of interest in his eye.

"Well, Mr. Drake, he 'lowed that last year when we got becalmed down the coast some of the provisions fell short, and he vowed he'd never get caught in that shape again; so this time he's stocked up fit to do the Nor'west Passage. He's got every kind of a thing to eat that man ever put into tins, you may bet your life."

"Trust him to have an eye to the galley," laughed Jack, reflecting how satisfactory a complement to the plain provisions waiting at the Island would be this extensive assortment of choice eatables. "Well, I'm for sleeping aboard. Can you give me a lift with my luggage?"

Everything he had said since he came on board had been preliminary to this. His one chance of getting the sailing-master to a safe distance lay in inducing Camper to go ashore on an errand. To this question the skipper replied, Yankee fashion, with another.

"Go to Mullin's and tell 'em you're from me;—you'd better do it yourself, Camper;—and get them to give you a steamer-trunk and two bags. Do you know the place? It's the only boarding-house there is in the village. Anybody can tell you."

"Yes; that's it. I don't think you'll find the trunk heavy," Jack went on, with a secret inclination to speak very fast and a consciousness that he must appear cool and deliberate. "Of course you'll take a couple of men to tote it, but I don't like to send an ordinary seaman up there."

He wondered what he should reply if asked why not; but Camper, who had long been trained under President Drake to habits of unquestioning obedience, replied with perfect simplicity:—

"All right, sir, I'll have it aboard in half an hour. Your old stateroom's all ready, I believe. You just ring for the steward if you want anything, sir."

"Thanks," responded Jack, taking a book from its place as he spoke, as if with the intention of settling himself to read.

Camper withdrew, and Jack listened eagerly till he heard footsteps on the deck, the rattle of the davit-tackle, the splash of the boat alongside, and then the rhythm of receding oars. The moment he was sure of not being seen by the skipper he closed his book with a bang, flung it on the table, looked at his watch, and went hurriedly on deck. In the lee of the mainmast he paused to light a fresh cigarette, and then began untying the cover of the mainsail, loosening the points and pulling them[Pg 40] through the grommets. As he worked his way aft, he suddenly thought he heard the sound of oars. He stopped to make sure: there could be no doubt of it; some one was pulling toward the Merle. In a flash Jack saw his scheme ruined in any one of a thousand ways. He set his teeth and ran over rapidly in his head the possibilities, but without reaching any satisfactory conclusion. Then he walked aft, and putting his hands on the rail, bent over the yacht's port quarter and peered into the fog. With a feeling of relief he realized from the sound and time of the strokes that the approaching boat was a small one, and was pulled by one pair of oars only. He had hardly decided this when he discerned the cause of his alarm, and almost laughed to see nothing more formidable than a small pea-pod, pulled by a boy. The rower came alongside and rested on his oars, while Jack watched him curiously.

"The postmaster said 'f I'd bring ye these letters ye'd give me a quarter," replied the youthful oarsman.

"Well, ye c'n give me my quarter jes' the same," the boy rejoined. "I'll let ye hev the [Pg 41]letters, 'n' he'll make it right with ye later. He lef' word this evenin' for his mail to be brung him every time it come, an' 't was that foggy the Sylvy got in late from Rocklan', 'n' I couldn't get roun' to bring it out before. 'Twan't sorted till after Mr. Staples hed his supper."

He feared to create suspicion, and felt that the only thing to do at the moment was to get rid of the boy. He gave the youth a quarter, and took the letters in exchange, mentally saying to himself that he hoped they were not of importance. The boy went pulling away as if in most unusual elation, and Castleport, thrusting the letters into the breast pocket of his coat, returned to his work. He had not quite finished untying the points when he heard Jerry's hail from the mooring.

"Merle, ahoy! Ho-ro aboard the Merle!" came booming through the fog in Taberman's most stentorian tones.

Jack placed himself in the companion-way as if just emerging from the cabin, and waited for another hail.

"Merle ahoy! Aho-o-o-y aboard the Merle!" again rang through the thick night above the sound of the wind, the water, and the cordage.

Jerry was apparently able to outroar all the bulls of Bashan, and was doing his worst.

The steward had heard the rumpus, and was standing in the forecastle companion. Capless, and wearing his white jacket, he gaped about like a quizzical seal.

"Some one hailing from the shore," said Jack shortly; "want a boat. Don't know what you'll take unless you go in the longboat. Tell the men."

"Beg pardon, sir; there's only me and the cook and two hands aboard. It'll take us all to pull the longboat."

"Then you'll have to take an oar," Jack responded roughly. "There's some one ashore waiting, and I said I'd send a boat. Get a move on. I'll watch ship."

The steward went below grumbling, but soon reappeared with the cook and the two hands. With some delay they got off in the longboat, pulling wretchedly toward the shore and nagging at each other. As he stepped to the foot of the[Pg 43] mainmast to take the halyards off the pins, Jack fervently thanked his stars for the heaviness of the boat and the evident fact that both cook and steward were hopeless duffers with an oar. He cleared the halyards with nervous fingers, stripped off the cover of the mainsail, and undid the canvas stops with which it was furled. Then he turned to the headsails, and had all clear before his ear again caught the sound of oars. He ran aft, and called out guardedly. Dave's voice answered him, and then he heard Taberman urging his companion to quicken his stroke. In the mist Castleport could dimly distinguish the heavy boats slowly nearing the yacht. It was all the men could do to get them alongside and make them fast astern. Once this was accomplished, all hands turned eagerly to the still harder labor of getting the Merle under weigh.

"Jim," ordered Castleport, "skip along for'ard and take down that riding-light. Set it on deck so it won't show out-board. Dave, you get up the boat-boom. Haul it right up, 'thout minding the guys! Lively, now!"

As Dave and Jim hurried forward to execute these orders, Jack himself stepped aft, took off the binnacle-cover, and got the lamps lit and in their places.

"All hands for'ard on the anchor!" he sang out, rapping his shins on the cockpit combings as he scrambled out and ran along the deck. "We'll make sail when we get out the mudhook. 'F we try to get her mains'l up, they'll hear us all over the place. We'll drop down under heads'ls. Catch ahold there!"

The Merle was riding at her port bower in some six fathoms of water. She had out a good bit of scope, however, and between the eight hands which gripped the quarter-inch chain and the anchor to which it was bent were some ten fathoms to be "handed over." In the light of the big Fresnel anchor-lantern upon the deck, the men, silent, rigid, braced back, strained steadily. For a full half-minute there was no gain whatever, but then one link of the chain came to the brazen lip of the hawse-hole with a sharp rap. The men grunted and hissed, bringing every muscle into play. Taberman was foremost on the chain. He faced the hawse-hole squarely, his legs wide apart, and his head thrown back. His face, even as seen by the white light of the Fresnel, was a dark brick-red, and out of the left corner of his mouth his tongue protruded. Dave was behind him, his left knee bent, and his right leg straight from toe to hip. He hung on savagely, his face unnaturally[Pg 45] blank; his hair, damp with fog and sweat, clung to his brown forehead and temples. The third man was Jim, lying back in a strange posture, as though the small of his back were invisibly supported. His cheeks were white; his breathing was inaudible.

With a little salvo of metallic snaps a scant dozen links more came in. Jack was last on the chain, and was separated from the man next him by a space greater than that between any other pair, so that he could when necessary take a turn of the slack about one of the brass-capped bollards at his side. His body was tense and rigid, his face and forehead full of odd puckers and lines. He was white at the lips, and the corners of his mouth were drawn down. His nose moved nervously with almost the suggestion of a rabbit's. One more link came in.

Jim grunted and Dave drew a breath through his closed teeth with a sharp whistling sound. Suddenly the chain rattled in so quickly that they could almost over-hand it. The Merle was moving at last.

Jack threw a couple of bights of the chain over the bollard, and held it. The big yacht forged ahead slowly into the eye of the wind, carried along by the impetus given her by the handing of the chain. The bits creaked a little, the chain grew very taut and vibrant. The Merle checked up and began to drift back.

Each one of them grasped the chain with a fierce vigor, as a man might seize the throat of his enemy, while Jerry burst into an explosive whaling chantey, and the men fell into time with its rhythm.

"Here she comes!" he shouted in the midst of a stave, as, all at once, the anchor was broken out.

Jack dropped his end of the chain and ran aft to mind the wheel, leaving the men to take in the rest of the slack. The headsails were up in stops, but before breaking them out it was necessary to lay the yacht round on the port tack. As she was under sternway, Jack whirled the spokes over to port, and so—for her steering-gear was "balanced"—brought her head around to the southward.[Pg 47] When he felt the wind on his left cheek, he put his hand to his mouth and shouted.

"Break out fore-staysail!" he bellowed. "Trim it a-weather!—Hang on to the weather-sheet till she falls well off!"

"Catch on to that port sheet there!" shouted Jack. "Port, I say, port! Make fast! Not too flat! Give her all she'll use!"

The wind had so freshened that the yacht began to move in earnest. At this juncture voices, faint but frantic, were heard hailing from astern.

"Hear the steward?" called Jack to Jerry, who was at work with the head-sheet cleats.

"Ahoy-oy-oy!" came the voice again, fainter and full of a dismayed distress that made them both break out afresh into derisive laughter. "Ahoy! Anchor! An-chor—Anch"—

"Hope they won't poke round in the fog all night looking for the Merle," Jack said gayly. "I never did like that steward, though."

A moment or two later, as the yacht was nearing the entrance of the Thoroughfare, Jack called for Dave. The man came aft.

"See here, Dave," Castleport asked, suddenly grown grave; "we've got more weather than we counted on. Can you pilot this yacht round Vinal Haven in this fog?"

"Reck'n I kin, sir," Dave replied with pleasing assurance. "Man and boy I've worked round these shores twelve years."

"Very well, then,—come down here and take her. Her gear's balanced: put the wheel over same way you want to swing her head. She's quick as a flash. If you want the chart"—

"That don't bother me none," replied the intrepid Dave, with a glance at once scornful and defiant at the smart binnacle. "I go mos' gin'rally by the smell," he added by way of explanation.

Chapter Four IT BLOWS NORTHWEST

With Dave as her Palinurus the Merle ran down the wind until she was well outside the western entrance to the Thoroughfare. The headsails were then dropped, the yacht was put into the wind, and the mainsail was hoisted. The foresail was left furled, as the wind had freshened considerably, and the schooner started on a southerly course on the port tack.

How Dave knew where he was or by what subtle instinct he was moved to give the Merle now a spoke or two to starboard or again to port, were mysteries as insoluble as complex. Taberman was lost in wonder at Dave's cool assurance; but to Jack, who knew of old the marvelous way in which the local fishermen handle their craft in the fog, the helmsman's skill, if wonderful, was yet no new thing.

The beat to the Island was not, however, without incident. Twice, as they were tacking about[Pg 51] in the thick fog, they ran close to wicked ledges over which the slow seas just rolled without breaking. At another point they came about just in time to avoid going ashore against a precipitous cliff which loomed high in the mist. Near the end of the run they worked into some shoal water where the uneasy heave and thrust of the sea made the schooner reel and stagger madly, while all about them was the thunder of unseen breakers. But in each and every peril Dave kept his head completely and brought the Merle through in safety.

The passage was a busy one. Three times they luffed up in open water, and each time took a boat aboard. It was a difficult—almost a perilous—operation, but the night was flying and the boats dragged heavily. The foresail was made ready for hoisting, a reef being tucked into it without its being raised. The port bower was taken aboard; lanterns were got ready against the work which was to be done at the Island; a careful survey was made of the places available for stowage. Jack and Taberman made a list of the men, assigned watches and berths. They agreed that Gonzague, as cook, steward, and general major-domo, should have to himself the little cabin formerly occupied by the steward. To the men they gave the berths of the old crew; and in general[Pg 52] arranged everything for the ocean voyage which had been left for adjustment until they should be actually on board. The personal effects of the President, his guests, the officers and the crew, they made ready to leave at the Island.

"How about clothes for the men?" Taberman asked. "I never thought of that; and we should look like the deuce with a crew in fishermen's rigs. The police of any harbor in the world would be after us."

"The uniforms belong to the yacht," Jack answered. "They are cut for the crew, but the men never own them."

"Oh, by nine o'clock to-morrow morning the President will be on his way to the Island if he has to buy the Sylvia to go on. Camper'll tell him I ran away with the Merle, and he'll start to the Island to find me or get track."

So they talked until, about two in the morning, the yacht ran past Hardwood Island, hauled her wind, and worked along to the southeast. Suddenly through the fog a dull red gleam showed on the weather bow.

"There's Gonzague's bonfire," Jack cried. "You've brought us through, Dave, about as slick as anything ever was done in this world. 'Twas a tough job, too."

The main-peak was dropped to lessen the yacht's way, and as the red flare became more distinct, the outer jibs were doused. Keeping the shore close aboard on the port side, the Merle ran along toward the ruddy blur of the fire, which was now seen to be burning at the end of a point. As the boat neared this point, Jack seized the megaphone, and putting the big cone to his lips, faced the fire, which was now abeam.

A sudden and confused shouting out of the fog answered him. Then black figures, silhouetted against the red brightness of the fire and waving burning brands, ran to and fro with odd antics and caperings.

The Merle came over on the other tack, and the staysail and jibs were run down. The main-sheet was then so started as to spill the wind out of the sail, and the yacht's way was quickly lessened. Having rounded the point, the schooner[Pg 54] moved ahead sluggishly, again passing the bonfire on the port hand.

Dave twirled the wheel to starboard, and the Merle came slowly into the eye of the wind, where he kept her until she seemed to be making sternway.

It was after two o'clock, and still thick. The wind, however, was hauling around to the southward, and the fog was beginning to thin a little. The main-sheet had hardly been hauled aft when some of the men were alongside in a boat. Jack stood by the steps, which had not been taken aboard during the run, while Tab, standing by his side, held a lantern. The first man aboard was Gonzague. Agile as an ape, for all his years, the old Provençal ran up the steps and touched his cap smartly, man-o'-war fashion.

"I see you leaf in a great hoory, cap'n," he chuckled to Jack. "You 'av' loosed de matting of de step-grating, eh?"

"Yes, rather," laughed Jack. "Pile aboard there," he added, addressing the men in the two boats now alongside.

"Now, then, all hands aft here for a minute," Jack ordered, when every one was assembled on deck.

He knew that with such men as he had been able to collect for this expedition it was essential to bind them in some way. He had therefore prepared a paper in which were five articles for them to sign, and he was firmly resolved that unless they agreed to bind themselves, he would not trust the President's schooner to their care. The men were resolute in the face of danger, yet were unused to discipline; they were imbued with a crude sense of loyalty, but were unruly and quick to take offense; and unless they should consent at the outset to submit to his authority, Jack knew that little dependence could be put upon them.

He instinctively assumed an arbitrary air,—almost dropping half consciously into the latent bully which lies hid in all strong characters. Had he reasoned it out, he would have adopted much the same tone as that which he took by instinct.[Pg 56] These men, wild followers of the sea, would scorn to be led, and were to be mastered only by one who could browbeat and domineer,—who could, in their own word, "man-handle" them. They responded to the primitive necessity of seeing force in the man who is to command; and in showing his determination at the outset Jack was displaying at least one characteristic of a proper leader of men.

He took from his pocket the list of names, and telling the men to answer to the roll he read it off by the light of Tab's lantern.

They were all aboard: ten men, exclusive of Jack, Jerry, and Gonzague. When he had finished the list, Jack handed it to Jerry, and taking from his pocket a second paper,—the simple articles he had written,—he knocked the creases out of[Pg 57] it with a back-handed rap, and then made a short speech.

"My men," he began, "I don't want to haul you into any game with your eyes shut, so I've drafted articles for you to sign. Of course this whole business is only a joke, but it's got a serious side to it too. You can all see that plain enough; and it's my interest—and yours—to see to it that we don't have to laugh out of the wrong side of our mouths.

"If you come on this cruise you'll sweat for your wages, now let me tell you! I'm not for grinding any man,—most of you know what I am, for you've seen me growing up from a kid,—but the yacht's got to be kept up, and that means that every man-jack aboard has got to keep as neat as a pin and not slight his job.

"On the other hand, you men'll get a lot of experience in handling a larger vessel than you've been used to; you'll have good grub; and you'll see foreign ports. Top o' that, you draw good pay, and keep what clothes you can save.

"Now then, these are the articles that every man who sails with me has got to put his name to."

"Now," he concluded, "if any man here lacks[Pg 58] the heart for this business, let him clear out. The rest of you, step up and sign."

Jack laid the paper on the companion-hatch, and produced a fountain-pen, which he put beside it. Jerry was the first, in virtue of his position as mate, to put down his name. He set down his lantern and scrawled his signature at the foot of the articles in a hand that would have dwarfed that of John Hancock. He passed the pen to Gonzague, who, laboriously fisting it, wrote his name in a small, cramped hand, absurdly unlike the characters above it.

For an instant—an appreciable instant—the rest hung back. Jack's brown eyes challenged theirs, and every one was very silent. That Castleport was seconded by those who were obviously attached to him gave the men, rather than confidence, an uneasy feeling of being another party, and this prompted an instinctive caution almost like antagonism. Had things been allowed to rest for a moment, the day might easily have been lost. Discussion might have arisen to beget argument and discord, explanations have been demanded, and the men have asked to be satisfied as to the real grounds on which Castleport was to be justified in appropriating his uncle's yacht and making off with it, a question which could hardly have been [Pg 59]answered so as to satisfy everybody. At this unrealized crisis, old Gonzague quietly stepped among the men, passed a jest with one of them in an undertone, and so equilibrium was restored. He at once became one of them, and the vague idea of parties and opposition vanished into thin air before the men had had time even to recognize it. Dave stepped forward and signed, Jim followed him, and the rest of the men came after. Jack had sounded all of them separately before unfolding his plans, and the result was that not one of them drew back now. As the last one laid down the pen, Castleport spoke.

"Before we fall to work I don't think anybody'd mind a good glass of grog; and while Gonzague's getting it, I just want to add one word to my say. I know this gentleman, Mr. Jerrold Taberman, to be a good navigator, and I've chosen him as my mate. Gonzague'll be cook and steward, and A1 you'll find him. I'm bound to make things go as easy as may be, and I will. I'm sure you'll do your duties, and you may bank on my doing mine."

The grog being brought, Tab proposed the captain's health, and the crew drank it with enthusiasm. Jack emptied his glass to the "crew and a good cruise;" and then the entire company went to work, loading and stowing.

Under Jerry's orders part of the crew began to carry provisions from the boathouse to the yacht, while under Jack's surveillance Gonzague and two of the crew stored what the others brought out. Gun-tackle purchases were rigged by the foremast to take the heavier cases aboard. The men worked feverishly, and almost without sound, as if subdued by the fear of being heard. At the end of a couple of hours the Merle had only to fill her water-tanks and she would be ready for sea. The fog was by this time so thin that in the dim light of the yet unrisen sun Jack, as he stood in the rigging, could discern vaguely the form of the house on the Island. As he was considering the weather, Gonzague, his face red with exertion and his usually immaculate clothes stained and torn, came up hastily.

"Mistair Castleport, sair," he said, "I don' fin' any beeg funnel for de watter-tank. Dey mus' always feel dem from de watter-boat 'ose,—stick de en' into de deck-plate, I t'ink."

The tender containing the first installments of the water-supply had already left the jetty, and Jack fell hastily to considering how the water was to be got out of the big unheaded casks into the[Pg 61] tanks without its being dribbled in by the dipperful.

"I look in de peak and go all de way aft to de run," replied the steward, "and all I find was de funnel in de kerosene-barrel. It ees too small, and it do fair reek wid de pairfume of de oil, sair."

Gonzague shook his head, and at that moment the boat laden with water came alongside. Jack leaned over the rail.

"I say, Jerry," he called out, "there's no funnel to fill the tanks with. How the deuce can we make water-stowage?"

"Search me," returned Jerry with cheerful inelegance. "How should I know? Might use the megaphone."

The keys were found, the caps unscrewed from the deck-plates, and the large papier-maché cone of the megaphone was set big-end-up over the orifice. Two men held it by the rim, while others kept it brimming with buckets of water bailed out of the casks. At the end of another hour both tanks were filled and the caps screwed down.

The Merle was ready for her long cruise. Jack was well satisfied with the sufficiency of her stores, as in addition to the plain provisions which he and Taberman had provided, the yacht had been most abundantly victualed by the President for her summer's cruising.

Jack's official seriousness went entirely to pieces at this suggestion, but he turned to the steward with an air of business.

"Yes, sair. I t'ink de leest is feel," the old man responded, closely regarding the dirty paper on which he had made his inventory and checked off each article as it came on board. Each item in the list had a black scratch beside it.

The wind had come around to the west, and was blowing fresh. They made all sail, however, chancing the gusty squalls which they were likely to meet off the high land of Isle au Haut, which they meant to leave on the starboard. The fog[Pg 63] had gone entirely, except for long ghostly wreaths clinging to the dark green gullies of the Haut or encircling the distant mountain-tops of Mt. Desert; and when the sun rose clear and fair, all auspices seemed most cheeringly propitious.

Jack took his departure from the Eastern Ear of the Haut, when it bore west-northwest three miles. At four that afternoon, when he and Jerry came on deck for time-sights, no land was to be seen.

Chapter Five LAND HO!

Some three weeks after the morning when the Merle left the Island, Jack and Tab were sitting in the saloon, working out the sights they had just taken for longitude. It was shortly after eight o'clock in the morning; the air was warm, and had in it a suggestion of the south. Through the open skylight came a shaft of light which cast a brilliant patch on the green cushions on the port side of the cabin. As the yacht rolled or pitched easily over the long seas, the patch of light moved about,—up, down, fore, aft; now it glanced on the rich red sheathing, now on the transom, and again on the big table.

On the leeward side of this table the two men, dressed in canvas trousers and blue flannel shirts, were seated with their work lying before them. Between them lay several sheets of paper, parallel-rulers, the log-book in its brown duck cover, a copy of Norie open at the tables, and the [Pg 65]American "Ephemeris." A large sheet-chart of the North Atlantic, weighted with a pair of binoculars, was spread in front of Jack. A heavy line, full of zigzags and acute angles, and running nearly across this chart, represented the Merle's track. Presently Jack laid down the pencil with which he had been figuring, and reaching out for the "Epitome," turned to the table of functions.

"'Most," returned Jack, running one finger down a column of figures as he glanced first at his paper and then at the book. "I have it now," he added, and after jotting down a number he pushed the volume over to Tab, went to a cupboard on the port side, and brought back a case of instruments. He took out a pair of long-legged dividers, and with these and the parallel rulers he bent over the chart a minute or two, until the silence was again broken by Jerry.

"Nine-sixteen-nought," answered Tab. "Wait a shake, I'll average them;" and he fell to figuring rapidly. "Mean is nine-seventeen-seven plus. Prick it off, and let's see where we're at—the D. R. latitude's thirty-six forty-eight."

They bent together over the chart. Jack carefully manipulated rulers and dividers, found the point, and marked it in red ink.

"She's making just over six knots now," he said. "We ought to make old Cape St. Vincent shortly. Let's put up these traps and go on deck."

They stowed the things in their several lockers, and went out together. The Merle was running along with a quartering breeze, under all lower sails, sliding easily over the long swell on the port tack.

"How about putting a lookout up aloft, Jack?" asked Tab. "We'll be raising the land pretty soon—if we're anywhere right in our reckoning, that is."

"All right," agreed Jack. "Step down and get a pair of glasses; I fancy Hunter has the best eyes of any of the men. I'll get hold of him."

Jerry disappeared below, and Jack walked along the windward side. The sea, rolling eastward in long, measured swells, reflected the sun from a myriad of glancing ripples that gleamed and glittered in the morning light. The sky, light blue and cloudless, looked like pale fire. On board the schooner the brass-work, as she rose and dipped in the troughs of the long seas, flashed and shone[Pg 67] like burnished gold. The white canvas caught the sunshine, while on the decks, still undried from their recent scrubbing, the putty in the curving seams showed sharply white. The four boats were inboard, turned bottom up and cross-lashed to the rail.

Castleport found the four men of the watch gathered in the peak, looking over the bows. He came up and saw that they were watching a school of dolphins that were keeping ahead of the yacht. The big fish seemed to vibrate. They sounded and leaped clear of the water, flashing and dripping with sparkling drops. A thousand colors rippled along their backs, as they turned and swayed, and they swung ahead like the very incarnation of frolic.

The captain saw the man he wanted standing on the port side, and called him to him.

"Hunter," he said, "go aft to Mr. Taberman; he'll give you a pair of glasses. Go aloft and keep a sharp lookout for land. We ought to raise it on the port bow."

The effect produced by this order was electrical. The four men whipped around and stared at Jack and at each other.

Hunter touched his duck hat and flew aft; Jack followed more leisurely. In a couple of minutes Hunter was ensconced in the foretop, eagerly scanning the eastern horizon. Castleport settled himself in the sun on the leeward side of the cockpit, and filled his pipe. He had hardly lighted it and taken half a dozen whiffs, when from aloft rang out the magical cry, "Land!"

"Where away?" shouted the captain, leaping to his feet just as Tab appeared in the companion-way.

"Not yet, Tab. Just been sighted," returned Jack, peering up at the fore-crosstrees, and awaiting the lookout's answer to his hail.

"'Bout two points off the weather-bow," sang out Hunter from aloft. "Just a low bank. Looks like cliffs through glasses!"

They made their way quickly along the deck, gained the weather-shrouds, and ran up. The watch below had turned out, just as they were, half-dressed and bareheaded. Two of the men had run out to the bowsprit's end, and holding on to the topmast stay were looking over the luff[Pg 69] of the flying-jib. Old Gonzague, venerable as Vanderdecken, his white hair stirred by the wind,—for he was as usual without a cap,—had already gained the main-trees, where he stood shading his eyes with one hand while he gripped the shrouds with the other.

"There away, sir," Hunter answered, pointing as he passed the glasses to the captain.

With the unaided eye Jack and Jerry could discern, lying low on the eastern rim of the horizon, a faint brownish streak. With one arm about the topmast for support, Jack looked at the land through the glasses. At first, owing to the oscillation of the mast, he could not keep the brown streak in the field of vision, but in a moment he overcame this difficulty, and was able to make out a length of cliff of nearly uniform height, although split by numerous fjord-like bays. By its varied color—for he could see that the ribbon of shore was splashed with reds and blues—he decided that the land-fall was in the neighborhood of Cape St. Vincent.

"Have a look?" he asked, passing the glasses to Tab. "It's the Painted Cape, fast enough,—or close to it."

"Portugal," the captain answered. "Sou'-western point of the land. We'll have Spain aboard before eight bells this afternoon."

"By Grab, sir! Beg pardon, sir, but do them Portigee fishermen ye see to Boothbay an' Boston, do they come from hereaway?"

"Here or from the islands,—Cape Verde, the Canaries, or the Azores; here for the most part. You may go below, if you want, Hunter."

The man went, frequently pausing to look over his shoulder at the coast, glimpses of which could now be caught from the deck between the rolls.

After a brief consultation, the captain and the mate followed Hunter, and went aft to consult the chart. As they passed along the deck, they noted that all hands were much excited. These men, used as they were to the sea, had been fishermen of the purely local sort, and it was doubtful if any one of them save Gonzague had ever before been out of sight of the high land of his native place; and here they were, in view of a strange country where the people spoke outlandish jabber, and, for all they knew to the contrary, went about in toggery as ridiculous as that of the Chinese laundrymen at Green's Landing. Discussion[Pg 71] became all the more heated when Hunter came down and told them that the land was one of the countless possessions belonging to the "Portigee king." Frequent appeals were made to Gonzague, who had descended, and was the centre of an excited group. As Tab remarked, it was a sight worth remembering to see these self-contained New Englanders in such a state.

Down below, Jack and Tab held a brief colloquy over the chart. They calculated, if the wind held, to make the Straits at nightfall, and run through by the aid of the lights on Cape Spartel and Tariffa. Having settled this point, they went on deck and had the course changed slightly.

"By Jumbo!" cried Jerry, banging his fist on the deck as he stood in the cockpit, "by Jumbo, I can't sleep a wink with this land in sight. Portugal, too! By Jove, it's all very fine," he ran on, "for a blasé old globe-trotter like you to keep cool, but I'm fair dry with it all."

Jack laughed, and reminded his friend of having lived in England and France, and of having traveled not a little in northern Europe.

"Pooh!" sniffed Tab. "That's not really doing anything; everybody does that. And to think," he burst out, "that we brought ourselves! God bless me, Jacko, I little thought when you[Pg 72] crammed me with navigation in vacation days aboard the old Luna that I'd ever use it all; really, that is, as we have used it these three weeks past."

"Well, I hope you're duly grateful," laughed Jack. "It may prove a source of bread and butter if you're ever stranded."

All that day the Merle ran along gallantly over the bright seas, occasionally passing ships of different nationalities bound in or out of the Straits. At sundown, although the bold coast of Morocco was not yet in sight, a lookout was sent aloft to watch for the light on Cape Spartel.

At a little before nine o'clock in the evening, the breeze had so died down that the yacht hardly had steerage-way. Jack was asleep below; Tab had charge of the deck. What air there was was soft and warm. It had hauled around a couple of points against the sun, and was now fragrant with a faint tellurian odor, which would have been imperceptible to a landsman, but which was full of meaning to those who follow the sea. Overhead the great stars blazed in lustrous serenity. Their images kept appearing and vanishing on the now smooth and oily surface of the restless sea. The only sounds were those of the water and the [Pg 73]cordage,—the sudden spanking of a big wave under the counter as the yacht flung her nose starward; the occasional crashing of the great booms and traveler-blocks as she righted suddenly after a heavy roll to port or a lurch to starboard; the pattering of the reef-points against the canvas; and the sharp reports made by the slatting of the lazy-jacks against the sails.

In the west, growing smaller and smaller in the distance, the receding stern-light of an Italian steamship glimmered faintly. Taberman watched it long after it kept sinking out of sight and again rising in the weltering seas, and until it at last vanished as if quenched. He was following out certain grim speculations as to the feelings of a forsaken swimmer who should watch this star of his hope moving relentlessly away into the west, grower fainter each time it emerged from the waves, when—

"Light ho!" shouted the lookout from the darkness aloft. "There's—light; 'bout—point—off—starb'd—bow!"

"What kind?" hailed Jerry from the deck, straining his eyes to where, a dim blot against the stars, the figure of the lookout could be discerned standing by the rigging on the cross-trees.

"All right," shouted Jerry; and added in his ordinary tone of command to the hands on deck: "Lay along, now! Trim in main-sheet a bit—well enough. Now then, fore and head sheets. Good. That'll do.—We want to get what air there is," he added to himself.

Although the wind was slight, yet about the Straits is always a strongish set of current. The surface current flows into the Mediterranean continuously, and it kept setting the Merle steadily ahead. When Taberman judged the light to be no more than five or six knots away, he sent below to rouse the captain, who was asleep. When Castleport came on deck, the bearing of the light was taken, the chart consulted, and a slight change made in the course. It was now calm, and the yacht, no longer steadied by the wind, rolled heavily.

"We ought to see it air up before long," remarked Jack, after a short silence. "It's so beastly calm now. When it's calm on one side of the Straits, it's always blowing on the other. An Italian sea captain told me there is always just so much air about here, and however much or little is on one side, the balance is always kicking about on the other."

"Then we'll take the sticks out of her, once[Pg 75] we're through the Straits," Jerry responded with conviction.

As the schooner entered the Straits, the blue-black sky to the eastward became dimly albescent, and shortly a blood-red moon rose slowly behind the inky mass of Monkey Mountain. The huge pile of rock, the more impressive though the less famous of the Pillars of Hercules, loomed vast, mysterious, and perdurable in the soft darkness. The waves, as the face of the moon cleared, were lit with a gray light.

Suddenly, as a long, smooth swell shouldered the yacht past the edge of a small promontory, they opened out the lights of Tangiers on the starboard beam. The moon as yet illuminated only the western half of the scarped bowl in which lie the little villas which surround the town. The scattered lights on the east side of the valley were accentuated by the surrounding gloom.

"Jolly little hole. All white and pink in the daytime, with red tile roofs. Hot as Tophet, though. There's Tariffa, boy! That's Tariffa over there."

They excitedly discussed the points along their[Pg 76] way. To Jerry it was all new, but Jack had traveled a good deal about the Mediterranean, and was well able to play the mentor. For an hour they talked, and the Merle drifted with the current; but they had not passed out of the shadow of Monkey Mountain before a faint breath of air stirred the headsails. It came stealing down out of the upper canvas, hot and dry.

"By Jove!" cried Jack, "we'll have all the wind we want in a bit. You can tell how hard it is blowing outside the Straits by the distances it reaches in."

The men, who had a dog-like trust in the captain, obeyed quickly, though from the remarks they interchanged sotto voce it was easy to see that the order puzzled them. When everything was made snug aloft, Jack had a reef tucked in the main and foresails, and the outer headsails stowed.

Still no wind. The schooner slowly moved along the edge of the great shadow of the mountain, only her topmast trucks and the peak of her mainsail silvered by the moonlight.

A dull, hoarse whisper, faint and continuous,[Pg 77] was now audible ahead. It grew louder by very slow degrees, and Jerry, unused as he was to Mediterranean weather, knew it for the roar of a mighty wind. In the moonlight ahead the waters appeared troubled, the hard-heaving seas being strangely and almost weirdly demarked from the calm in which the Merle rolled forward languidly. All at once, as the yacht emerged from the obscurity of the mountain's shadow, a sudden gust of warm air struck her without warning, and heeled her lee-rail under.

Jerry leaped to the wheel, and it took all the force of himself and the helmsman to put the helm hard-a-lee. The Merle righted, and being unusually quick, flew into the eye of the wind. From the threshing sails came a thunderous volley of heavy boomings. The sheet-blocks were whipped to and fro with such violence that twice Jack saw red sparks struck from the fore-traveler guard. Then, as suddenly as it had come, the wind left, and it was only by the way she had gathered that the helmsman could pay the yacht off.

"We are going to catch it for fair," Jack said. "Best dowse the foresail entirely, I fancy. Pass the word along to Gonzague to make all snug[Pg 78] below. Jerry, step into the cabin and make sure of the course from off Ceuta to Port Mahon."

"Helm up a bit there—steady! That's the talk! Get all the stops on.—Now then—make fast that sheet there."

The Merle was hardly on her course again when a second squall struck her. Her canvas having been reduced, however, the helmsman kept her broadside to it. The yacht's strongest point was the quickness with which she gathered way, and on this occasion, when nine tenths of her class would simply have lain over and quivered, she rushed ahead with the fury of an avenging goddess. When the hot flaw left her, she was at the very last verge of the calm water.

The men had hardly time to get to their stations before a third squall caught the Merle and sent her tearing over the line into the full strength of the wind. The air, hot from the desert, and laden with fine, parching dust, sang in the shrouds and the running-rigging. It slashed the salt spindrift[Pg 79] in the smarting faces of the men. The seas grew suddenly confounding in size; huge weltering masses—tons—of greenly black water wallowed without rhythm all about the yacht, up as high as the light-boards. To a landsman it would have seemed impossible that thus scourged by the sirocco across these maddened seas the schooner should escape destruction.

The sheets were started, the yacht was paid off before the wind, and began the last stretch of her run. Tab came on deck with the course, staggering and holding on, and shouted it into Jack's ear. Jack nodded, and gave orders for setting it, a fresh departure being taken from the light on the mole at Ceuta.

The Merle ran close in on the eastern side of Gibraltar. The great rock, sheer and silver-gray in the moonlight, rose out of the raging seas which ringed it about with a zone of roaring breakers. Grimly self-reliant, it stood grand, silent, stupendous, unassailable in the midst of the turmoil and uproar. As the yacht raced by, staggering under her reefed canvas, Taberman regarded the rock, in face of which their craft seemed a mere mote on the blast, with a feeling as near awe as it is possible for buoyant youth to feel. He did not speak until the Merle had swept past the[Pg 80] rock-hewn fortress. Then he drew a deep breath and bent over so that Jack could hear him amid the hissing of the sirocco.

Without taking his eyes from the throat of the mainsail he was watching as a physician at a crisis watches the pulse of a patient, Jack nodded a deep assent.

At times the Merle seemed fairly to leap like a flying fish from one wave-crest to the next in her northeasterly flight.

Chapter Six DINNER ASHORE

On a Thursday afternoon in the middle of July, the Merle dropped anchor behind the inner mole of Nice. In her course northward from the Straits, she had passed to the eastward of the Baleares, crossed the Gulf of Lyons, and run smoothly into harbor before the same powerful wind that had greeted her so boisterously on her entrance into the Middle Sea.

The moment when the port officer came aboard had been a nervous one, but the dapper little official had merely glanced at the yacht's papers, complimented the captain on his seamanship, and then gone ashore without a sign of suspicion.

The yacht had no sooner been made trig and ship-shape, her sails stopped with "harbor furl," the canvas covers on, the boats unlashed and swung on the davits, the running-rigging coiled down, and the details proper to coming into port attended to, than Jack, unable to put off going[Pg 82] ashore until the morrow, gave orders for the crew to turn out in their best attire. Then with Taberman he went below to array himself for the land. In Castleport's mind the idea of calling on Mrs. Fairhew and Miss Marchfield, who he knew should now be in Nice, was paramount to all else. He would see Mrs. Fairhew, he would see Katrine, and then—well, then it would be time to consider.

Once below, Jack and Jerry began the overhauling of their wardrobes, doing their dressing half in their staterooms and half in the cabin, that they might go on with afternoon tea at the same time. During the voyage they had gone about most of the time in flannel shirts and duck trousers, the only two rules in regard to toilet having been that they should shave regularly, and that they should not come to dinner in oilers, no matter what the weather. The first rule had been framed by Jack; and Tab, as author of the second, had declared that he would rather eat hardtack in his pajamas, than a six-course dinner in his oilers. Now, as they stood in the doors of their staterooms examining their shore clothing,—each holding, like the Hatter at the trial of the Knave of Hearts, a teacup in his hand,—they had the air of being almost surprised at finding themselves[Pg 83] in possession of so many garments, or of not knowing exactly what to do with them.

"Got any extra duck trow-trows, Jack?" asked Jerry. "We made a great mistake not shipping a laundress along with the other stores."

"Hanging them up on the rigging to dry doesn't give them an extra fine polish," Jack returned. "I have two pairs I've been saving for shore, and I suppose I can sacrifice one of them on the altar of friendship."

"That's truly noble of you," Tab said, coming over to Jack's cabin after the clean ducks; "but it's all right. When we go ashore we'll take Gonzague and a bag of things, and have some real washing done on land. What's that official-looking envelope?"

From the pocket of a coat which Castleport had thrown aside in his search for the desired garment, a long blue envelope, still sealed, had fallen to the floor. Jack pounced upon it, with an exclamation of dismay.

"Why," the captain explained, rummaging in the pocket from which the letter had fallen and producing a couple of others, "I told you[Pg 84] about the boy's bringing out the letters to the Merle while she was changing crews at North Haven."

"Yes, damn it!" responded the other, regarding the letters with a troubled brow. "This is a pretty kettle of fish. Uncle Randolph's letters are apt to be important, and this one has a beastly official look. It's sure to be something that couldn't wait. It's probably the thing he was looking for when he gave orders to have his mail brought out to him."

"'If not delivered in five days return to R. B. Tillington, 57 State Street, Boston,'" read Jerry over his shoulder. "Tillington's the zinc-mine man, isn't he?"

"Zinc, copper, gold,—any old thing that you can make a mining speculation out of. I think he's a slippery old fraud, but he's hand in glove with Uncle Randolph; or rather they have a lot of business together. Uncle Randolph thinks Tillington wouldn't dare to play him false, but he's an eely old beggar. Anyhow, this letter may mean the making or the losing of a fortune for all I know. Gad! Running away with his yacht is nothing to going off with his letters!"

"That would dish us all right," Jack answered. "It would give us away by the postmark. Uncle Randolph isn't likely to think of our coming across. He can't know we were provisioned, and he very likely thinks we are still knocking about on the other side of the Atlantic."

"He might find out about the stores by asking at the express offices and that sort of thing."

"I suppose he wouldn't," Jerry assented thoughtfully. "How would it do to return this letter to Tillington?"

"Just as bad as to send it direct to Uncle Randolph. Once let them know at home where we are, and we are done for fast enough."

"Well," Taberman said, after a brief pause in which he had apparently been summing up the situation in his mind, "the harm's done by this time, anyway; and I don't see that there's anything for us but to stick to our guns, blow high, blow low. We'll mail 'em when we get ready to go back."

"I suppose there's nothing else to do," he said slowly. "The Merle is of course registered at Lloyd's, and he'd only have to cable over to have us nabbed anywhere along the whole coast."

"He may see the arrival in the shipping-lists as it is, I should think," Jerry observed rather gloomily.

"Of course; but we've got to run our chances on that. He's not very much in the habit of studying the sailing-lists as far as I know, but he may do it now. Anyway we've got to run for luck."

"The luck has been pretty good so far," was Jerry's consoling observation; "and I won't begin to distrust it now."

The result of the conversation was that the letters were put carefully away, and the two adventurers resolved not to worry about them. Castleport admitted that the matter troubled him not a little, but he was under the circumstances disposed to accept his comrade's very sensible observation that after all the letters might be of no especial importance.

"You see," Jerry said, with a laugh, as he gulped down the last of his tea, which had had time to become thoroughly cold, "we are really pirates, and here you go bringing the conscience of a gentleman into the business. None of that."

Castleport laughed, and once more their attention was given to dressing for the shore.

No one aboard understood the care and manipulation of the small steam-launch which the President used on state occasions, so they went ashore in the big cutter, with six men to pull and old Gonzague in charge.

They landed at the quays, and left Gonzague to act as interpreter and mentor to the men, while they took their way across the Quay Rosaglio and along the narrow Rue Paglione. They came out soon upon the Promenade des Anglais, thronged, in spite of the time of year, with foreigners of many nationalities. Delicate French ladies in the latest fashions from Paris, were here escorted by anæmic gentlemen looking absurdly out of place in evening dress; vulgar Teutons in baggy trousers with impossibly dowdy wives, legitimate evolutions from generations of sauerkraut and beer; now and then an unmistakable "remittance man" from England, with puffy eye-sockets and brutal face, accompanied by the companion paid by some noble family to take charge of the prodigal till he drank himself into a dishonored grave; the British cleric, too, with the inevitable string of hopelessly dull daughters tagging after him like bobs on a kite; swarthy Roumanians or Swabians; Russians[Pg 88] deep-eyed and surrounded by an almost palpable atmosphere of haughtiness; in a word, the cosmopolitan crowd of a fashionable promenade of Southern Europe. Through such a throng Jack and Jerry made their way toward the centre of the foreign element of the better sort, the Hôtel des Anglais.

As they reached their destination, Jack became visibly excited, and made his way to the office with an air of determination vastly amusing to his companion. He was on the point of asking for Mrs. Fairhew when he was startled by a voice behind him.

"Katrine—Miss Marchfield!" he cried. "How do you do? I—I— You know, I came here—this minute—I was just going to ask if you were here."

"Well," laughed the lady, whose heightened color and shining eyes were evidences of a pleasant excitement, "you see I am.—Oh, Mr. Taberman, how do you do? I'm delighted to see you."

"How are you?" responded Jerry, taking her slim hand in his own hard paw. "It's awfully jolly to see you here. How's Mrs. Fairhew? Well, I hope."

"Yes, thank you," answered Katrine. "She's never better than when she's traveling, you know."

Miss Katrine Marchfield was one of those girls who, though not beautiful, are more than pretty. She was too attractive to be fairly disposed of by being credited with mere prettiness; yet she had not fully that quality, august and indefinable, which confers upon the fortunate possessor real beauty. She was slightly above medium height, and could now, having been out for a couple of winters, carry herself exquisitely. A beautiful figure could not have been denied her by the most envious rival; and her fairly broad shoulders, always drawn well back, gave her a charming air of delicately athletic power. Her face, at first merely piquant,—perhaps from the slight arching of her eyebrows and the wholly delightful way in which she carried her head,—showed at a second glance, by the height of the forehead, the clear chiseling of the features, and the intelligent sympathy of the gray eyes, a true and sensitive nobility of nature which gave to her countenance a charm at once fine and abiding. Her eyes Jack—and for that matter a score of adoring youths—considered her greatest beauty. They were at times thoughtful, at others sparkling with vivacity. Now and then they might[Pg 90] be surprised in a quickly vanishing expression wistful or even almost sad, as if some deeper self looked out but did not will to be seen. A mouth small, the upper lip a trifle fuller than the under; a nose almost Greek; and above the high forehead a cloud of dusky brown hair,—these physical attributes, with a sympathetic temperament and a mind sensible yet deliciously feminine, a pleasant voice and a delightful laugh, had won for Katrine Marchfield more conquests than could be boasted by many an older woman of really marked beauty.

Her relations with Jack Castleport, whether she had admitted it to herself or not, had for some time been greatly different from those she held with any one else. They had met at a dinner shortly after Katrine, for two years doubly orphaned, had come from Philadelphia to live with her widowed aunt, Mrs. Fairhew, in Boston. After meeting Katrine, Castleport had taken to calling at Mrs. Fairhew's, at first nominally to see the aunt and later frankly to see the niece. He was at this time a Junior at Harvard, and a popular man on both sides of the river; the acquaintance during his Senior year had ripened into friendship, and the most important feature of Class Day for Jack was the presence of Miss Marchfield; he had thought more of her in the audience than of the dignitaries[Pg 91] on the platform when on Commencement Day he had taken his degree; and what with dancing with Katrine, driving with Katrine, and dreaming of Katrine for the winter which lay between Harvard and this summer, he had come to measure the uses of life chiefly as they might help to make her care for him or to reveal to him what were her feelings toward him.

For a moment or two the three Americans stood talking near the desk of the hotel. Then Miss Marchfield stepped forward and dropped into the mail-box some letters she was carrying.

"If you'll excuse me one minute," she said, "I'll send for Aunt Anne, and see about dinner. Of course you'll stay to dine?"

"Delighted," Jack said. "That is," he added, "if it's all right for us in these clothes. You see, we stupidly came off without evening togs."

"Gad! She's looking ten times better than when she left home," Tab said in an undertone.

"She always does," the captain responded with fervent fatuousness. "She can't help it, you know. God bless me," he added with equal fervor and[Pg 92] absurdity, "it's worth coming over steerage just to hear her voice!"

"Well, you are hit!" commented his friend; and then, seeing a shade come over Jack's face, he laid his hand on his friend's shoulder, and added: "Don't mind my chaff, old man. I really wish you all kinds of luck."

Jack gave him a flash of sympathy and understanding, and then turned his head aside.

"Pity we haven't got evening slops," Jerry remarked, by way of changing the conversation; "but I suppose we'll do, seeing the way we came over, and all that."

"I'm not worrying about clothes," returned the captain of the Merle. "Men wear all sorts of things traveling. I'm thinking what Mrs. Fairhew'll say about our being here in the yacht without Uncle Randolph."

"I'm hanged if I really know," Jack returned; "but I've got to pull it through somehow, and you'll have to follow my lead."

He had time to say no more, for Katrine came forward to rejoin them, and before she had reached the friends, Mrs. Fairhew appeared.

Mrs. Fairhew was a striking woman of some forty[Pg 93] years, of medium height, with quick and alert bearing, with the unmistakable air of a well-bred woman of the world. A widow of some six years, she still, except upon occasions of particular state, wore black,—from devotional feeling, according to her friends, and, according to the captious, because it so well became her. Between her and her niece existed a subtle and baffling likeness, but in what it consisted one would have found it well-nigh impossible to say. Of good birth, perfect breeding, and a wide social experience, she possessed also an intellect naturally good and improved by careful training; while for her rare good taste she was perhaps equally indebted to nature and to a somewhat old-fashioned training in whatever is best in the English classics. With these good gifts and graces and a perfect poise, she combined whatever is most admirable in the best type of American gentlewoman.

"Mr. Castleport," she said, giving that gentleman her hand with gracious cordiality, "this is an unexpected pleasure! How do you do, Mr. Taberman. I am very glad to see you both."

Greetings were exchanged, and then, after a moment's chatting, the men gave over their hats to an attendant, and the party went into the dining-room. On account of the season, the number[Pg 94] of people at the hotel was comparatively small, and the huge salle à manger, with its slim pilasters and its long French windows, its tubs of palmetto and oleander, might have impressed Jack and Jerry as rather barn-like and forsaken had either been in the mood to find anything in their surroundings unsatisfactory. The four made their way to a small square table in an alcove, behind which stood a tall, round-shouldered waiter in an antediluvian dress-suit. Jack put Katrine into her chair and was placed next her, and with much pleasant talk the party began dinner.

The fish was served before any mention was made of the President. Then Jack suddenly found himself in dangerous waters, owing to a random remark from Mrs. Fairhew.

"And Mr. Drake?" she asked. "What a pity he didn't come too. I suppose he couldn't get away."

"Not on the Merle," responded Jack. "It takes a long time to cross on such a small boat."

Jerry watched his friend closely to detect signs of embarrassment, but was able to perceive nothing more than a faint flush in the brown cheeks. He recalled the captain's words about following his lead, and at this point, in his own picturesque phraseology, "shoved in his oar."

"Besides," he said glibly, with a secret mischievous glee at feeling Jack's anxious eye upon him, "it's so hard to get the President away from his everlasting bridge,—Pons Asinorum, I call it. When we left North Haven he was so absorbed in his game that he didn't even see us off."

"I didn't know he was so attached to cards," Mrs. Fairhew commented, with a smile. "As you have the yacht, Mr. Taberman, you should at least speak well of the bridge that has brought you over."

"Did Mr. Drake put you two in charge of his sailing-master, Mr. Taberman?" asked Katrine, with a suspicion of a glance at Jack, as if she meant to tease him.

"No," returned Jerrold. "Jack and I did the navigating; he's a past master, I assure you."

"Yes," rejoined Katrine, "but I should have fancied he would have had some one that was—Well, some one with a professional experience, you know."

"If the idea struck him he didn't mention it," put in Jack. "If it occurred to him after we left, I can't tell, as I haven't heard from him."

"Haven't heard from him!" exclaimed Mrs. Fairhew in mild surprise. "Haven't you been to your bankers?"

"Haven't been anywhere except at this hotel," Jack returned sturdily; and then added: "It was after bank hours when we came ashore."

"Mercy! I might have done that, mightn't I? Upon my word, it never occurred to me."

"Well, I did get some letters ready to send to him," Jack protested, while Jerry grinned broadly.

"Got them ready! How like a man!" laughed Mrs. Fairhew. "A woman would have had them ready before she saw land, and had them mailed by the time the anchor was down."

Jack leaned forward and settled a pink candle-shade that threatened a conflagration, and by a comment on the inflammability of these table ornaments managed to bring the conversation into safer channels.

In the course of the talk it transpired that the ladies had no very definite plans, except that Mrs. Fairhew had determined, despite the heat of the[Pg 97] Italian summer, to visit an old school friend, whose husband was vice-consul at Naples.

"I fancy," she said, "that we shall go straight to Genoa. I'm going to make Katrine work, and to see that she does her duty by the galleries and things,—Florence and all the Tuscan cities, you know. Then Rome and the Campagna. It will be dreadfully hard on us both, I dare say, but we shall be upheld by the proud consciousness of doing our best."

"It would doubtless be intolerable to either of you without the other," said Jerry in one of his boyishly elaborate attempts to be gallant.

Mrs. Fairhew regarded him with a glance well-bred though quizzical, but evidently perceived that he was completely sincere in his desire to say something agreeable, and smiled, although less broadly than Katrine, who showed in her amusement a row of beautiful teeth.

"Won't it be pretty hot in the south?" asked Jack. "I've never been in Naples in summer, nor south of Rome, in fact; but I've always been told that it is too torrid for foreigners."

"Oh, we are used to it," Mrs. Fairhew returned. "Besides, it is after all the English that[Pg 98] have spread the stories about Italy's being so hot. They've been kept at so low a temperature all their lives by their horrid fogs that they're the greatest babies imaginable about climate."

"I fancy you're right," assented Jack. "At all events, as you are used to all climates, and as Miss Marchfield comes from Philadelphia"—

"Oh, but I've never been there in summer," Katrine broke in. "And, besides, I've lived in Boston so long that"—

Mrs. Fairhew toyed with her coffee-spoon thoughtfully a moment; then she looked up at Jack.

"I don't know," Jack answered quite frankly. "I think we shall probably coast along—Monaco, Bordighera, and Mentone, you know; and then go to Genoa. Then perhaps we'll see Elba and Naples and Capri. After that we must start for home. Nothing is settled with us."

"Why?" inquired Jack, with a smile. "Does[Pg 99] the gambling offend the Puritan that is in every Bostonian?"

"It certainly does," was the reply, "though my aversion isn't entirely a matter of conscience. I bought it on the spot for a thousand francs."

"That was awfully dear," remarked Jerry. "It would have been much cheaper to be born with it."

"Oh, one can't inherit all the virtues!" responded Taberman with the greatest seriousness.

"Most certainly not," laughed Mrs. Fairhew. "At least I had not that good fortune."

"Nature left you one to get for yourself, because she knew you'd do it so easily," Tab said gallantly.

"Really," cried the lady, "you are evidently determined to overwhelm me, Mr. Taberman. Compliments drop from your lips like the traditional showers of pearls."

"Oh, Mr. Castleport," declared Katrine, coming to the rescue of Jerry, "that is simply brutal."

"Of course it's brutal," retorted Jack, willfully twisting her meaning, "but he keeps it up all the same."

Jerry tried to defend himself by charging Jack with never being able to appreciate a compliment unless he were himself the subject, and so they drifted lightly from one bit of good-natured raillery to another. Now and then a more serious note was struck, and through it all the spirit of the party was more kindly and friendly than could be pictured by any words in which they might have tried to express it.

When dinner was over, they went for a short stroll on the promenade. It naturally happened that Mrs. Fairhew walked with Taberman, and that Jack and Katrine strolled on together some little distance behind.

"You don't know," said Jack, for the fourth or fifth time that evening, but with an evident sincerity which might have excused even further repetition, "how good it is to see you again."

"Yes," Katrine responded with a carelessness too complete to be entirely genuine, "I suppose that it must be pleasant for you to see any one after being cooped up in a boat for five or six weeks."

"That's not at all what I meant," he returned pointedly, and with a little vexation.

"I said it gave me pleasure to see you," Jack insisted, with a daring emphasis on the final pronoun.

"You may take it as such," he replied rather grumpily. "It's the feminine attitude toward everything."

Katrine was silent a moment, examining with an appearance of the greatest interest the ground at her feet.

"Am I?" he retorted. "Well, I suppose if I'm only amusing into the bargain that's all that's necessary."

Another brief interval of silence intervened, and then he remarked blunderingly:—

"I suppose it makes very little difference to you whether you see any one while you're here."

"Oh," he said savagely, "that's a nice meaning to twist out of my words! You know I don't mean that."

"You seem to have some difficulty in saying[Pg 102] what you do mean this evening," Katrine commented mockingly.

Jack laughed uneasily, with that absurdly tragic air possible only to a young man much in love.

"I'm sure I can't say, Mr. Castleport," she replied, with a touch of coolness. "I never was good at riddles. Don't you think we had better catch up with Aunt Anne and Mr. Taberman?"

And greatly to his own disgust, and perhaps, could he but have known the truth, to the secret disappointment of Katrine, Jack acted upon her suggestion without a word more.

As they were taking leave of the ladies at the hotel a little later, Jerry broke out with a clumsily worded invitation that they should on the morrow go for a sail on the Merle.

"You are really very good, Mr. Taberman," Mrs. Fairhew said, "but I 'm afraid it's only half an invitation, for Mr. Castleport doesn't second it."

"I certainly do," Jack responded. "I was hesitating only because I didn't think the yacht, just in from an ocean voyage, was exactly in trim. I wasn't sure it was fair to invite you."

"I think we can put up with anything that is[Pg 103] amiss in that line," Mrs. Fairhew answered, smiling. "What do you say, Katrine? Would you like to go?"

"Very much, Aunt Anne," her niece said, with a quick little glance at Jack, a sort of bird-twinkle of the eyes, "if we shall not be too intrusive."

"Capital!" cried Jack, whose good nature had returned, and who was anxious to make amends for his fit of pique. "I'll call for you in the morning at about noon, if that will suit you. We shall want a little time to get the yacht in trim."

"Any time after ten will do for us," Mrs. Fairhew answered. "Don't, I beg, bother too much about making things neat. I know how necessary disorder is to the real happiness of you men."

Chapter Seven LUNCHEON ABOARD

The famous promenade was deserted, and all the foreigners who were able were safe in the coolest retirement of their little pink and white villas. A warm off-shore breeze wandered through the silent streets of Nice, came to the water-front, and there, as if alarmed by the noise and bustle of the few sailors and fishermen whom the heat had not driven from the quays, grew brisker and fled away southward over the sea.

Down one of the smaller streets between the Hôtel des Anglais and the Porta Vecchia, Mrs. Fairhew and her niece, escorted by Jack, were making their way. Miss Marchfield, dressed in a simple gown of white, looked deliciously rosy under her red sunshade. Mrs. Fairhew walked in the narrow strip of shadow next the wall; Katrine was between her and Jack, who, owing to the straitness of the sidewalk, picked his way—to the [Pg 105]evident amusement of Miss Marchfield—along the kennel. As Katrine was fond of him, she paradoxically took unfailing delight in seeing him humiliated, always provided, of course, that no one other than herself was the author of the discomfort. The three were nearing the water-front when the elder lady broke a silence of some minutes' duration.

"No," Jack answered, "she's at the foot of the next street. 'Twas awfully stupid of me not to have got hold of a fiacre, but it seems so short a distance for me to walk that I didn't think."

"I wonder why a yacht is always she and her," observed Katrine. "Why not it?"

"Oh, the reason's plain enough," was Jack's answer. "Yachts have two characteristics that are thoroughly feminine,—caprice and beauty."

"It is good of you to temper the aspersion on my sex with a compliment," Katrine returned.

"It is obliging in me," Jack assented; "but politeness requires that I should stretch a point, since you are my guest."

"Do you know, I'm sorry that your uncle is not here, Mr. Castleport," said Mrs. Fairhew, as they turned the corner. "It is all very well to have an old woman for a chaperon, but it is rather hard on you and Mr. Taberman not to have some older man to talk to me."

"Ouch!" exclaimed Jack, making a fine show of stubbing the toe of his rubber-soled shoe against a projecting paving-stone.

"Nothing. I stubbed my toe on that beastly stone," answered Jack, with a feeling of satisfaction that the President was once more shelved. "Now," he added, "the boat is just here."

A small but motley crowd was scattered along the water-front: bronzed fishermen, with close-cropped hair and long earrings, carrying osier baskets of shining sardines from their boats to their little carts; fat, raucous-voiced women, with red or yellow scarves pinned across their bosoms; lean-shanked 'longshoremen, too old for the sea this many a day; brown sailors, picking their way[Pg 107] among the piles of iridescent fish,—liver-colored squid and flabby octopi; half-naked boys, outrageous and beautiful; with a miscellaneous sprinkling of human flotsam and jetsam, as if the sea had cast them up battered and damaged. Over all floated a distracting hubbub, made up of the rattling of cart-wheels on the flags, the shrill cries of the venders, the calls of the lads, the songs of the fishermen, and a medley of oaths, jests, curses, directions, questions, and all sorts of vociferous shoutings.

Both the ladies drew closer to Jack, who, masterfully making his way through the press, piloted them across the quay. At the landing-steps they found Jerry and the Merle's cutter, the object of the staring curiosity and admiration of the wharf-rats and the loungers of the docks.

"Good-morning, Mr. Taberman. Have we kept you waiting long?" asked Mrs. Fairhew.

Tab had been broiling for half an hour, but was too courteous to say so. He responded cheerily, then helped the ladies aboard, and established them in the sheets. Jack took the tiller-lines, word was given, and the men fell to pulling. The breeze was fresher and cooler on the water; it made the ripples dance and glitter in the sunshine, and kept playfully curling the ensign at the[Pg 108] stern of the cutter about Jack's head. According to previous instructions, the watch on the Merle got up anchor on seeing the cutter leave the quay, and were now holding the yacht in the wind's eye. When the boat came alongside, the ladies were handed aboard, the guest-salute was fired, the cutter was hoisted to the davits, and the yacht was paid off.

They ran out past the old battery and the lighthouse on the outer mole, and coasted along to the westward. In the bright sunlight the numerous dwellings—villas, hotels, and pensions—showing among the green foliage of the trees looked very gay and attractive. The sea was dimpled with laughter. The breeze, although it gave promise of freshening, was now only strong enough to make the schooner, which was carrying all sail, heel gracefully as she slipped along. The day was perfect for light sailing.

At one o'clock old Gonzague, his linen jacket dazzling in its whiteness and his snowy hair brushed back from his high forehead, served luncheon. Jack sat by Mrs. Fairhew on the starboard side, with Katrine and Jerry opposite. Gonzague had outdone himself for the occasion. A Provençal by birth, he knew the culinary value of all the wares—to foreign eyes so puzzlingly[Pg 109] useless and hopelessly inedible—displayed in Mediterranean markets. The dishes which appeared on the table made Jack and Tab stare: fresh sardines broiled and served with some mysterious sauce of which they tried in vain to guess the ingredients; something which Katrine pronounced delicious until she discovered it to be cuttlefish, and then could not be prevailed upon to taste further; a salad which had lettuce as its obvious foundation, but which was fragrant with a dozen strange and piquant herbs; ripe citrons and limes; figs and bullaces; and a wonderful fruity sherbet for dessert.

"Do you generally fare like this on board the Merle?" Mrs. Fairhew inquired. "If you do, I should like to come here to board while you are in harbor."

"Not much," returned Jerry bluntly. "This is all Gonzague's gallantry to you ladies. As a rule he gives us only pork and beans."

"Jerry was only speaking figuratively," explained Jack, with a laugh. "Of course we do better than that. The only time we really suffered[Pg 110] was in a bit of a shake-up we had on the way over. The second week out we had a blow, and had to live on hardtack and coffee for three days."

"Was it really so bad as that?" asked Katrine. "I mean," she explained as the others laughed, "did it really blow so hard he couldn't cook things?"

"Well," responded Taberman, "for forty hours we had it so hard we jolly well thought we'd have to cut."

From the expression on her face it was abundantly evident that the lady did not know, but she said nothing. She had but the most casual acquaintance with nautical affairs, and made no pretense of understanding the speech of mariners; and she was always willing to let a matter of this sort go, rather than to submit to a lengthy exposition.

Katrine, on the other hand, while of course not proficient in the art of handling yachts, knew enough to appreciate that when cutting away the masts had been contemplated, things must have been at a pass really dangerous. Now she made no[Pg 111] comment, but she gave a swift glance at Jack, that had in it much of the admiration which Desdemona felt at the recital of the perils through which Othello had borne himself bravely. Jack happened to catch her eye; she flushed and turned to Jerry.

"Don't you tire of it all?" she asked. "I should think that to have the monotony broken only by danger in which you can't have any rest or comfort would be dreadfully wearisome."

"Oh, it's great sport!" cried Tab heartily. "Besides, you know, there are no end of things to do."

"Such as what?" inquired Mrs. Fairhew. "I've always found the ocean voyage the most boresome thing about traveling, although I'm a perfectly good sailor."

"Oh," said Jerry, with a flourish of his cigarette,—for coffee had been served and the ladies had permitted smoking,—"there are rope-ends to be attended to, and gear changed, and all that sort of thing, besides seeing that the men go over the brasswork properly every day; and there is taking sights, and making reckonings, and all sorts of things."

"So they do," Jack said, with a smile; "but it[Pg 112] is our business to tell them what to do and to see that they do it. You must remember that we are the ship's officers."

"We have to look things over all the time," Jerry added. "Just before we went ashore to-day I saw a thing that'll have to be attended to as soon as we get back at anchor. The fore-peak halyards are 'most chafed through where they reeve through the block on the cap."

"Not in the least dangerous," Jack returned reassuringly. "Is it really bad, Tab?"

"Oh, well, I fancy it'll hold; leastways if there's no sudden strain on it. The rope's new enough; but it jammed there the other day, you remember."

"Well, let's go on deck," suggested the captain. "It's such a gorgeous day, it's a shame to miss any of it."

On coming up they found that the wind had so freshened that the fore-topsail and staysail had been struck, as well as the outer jib.

"We can run on till about four o'clock," Castleport said, "and have plenty of time to run back with this wind."

They still held to the westward, keeping about[Pg 113] a mile off shore, now and then passing fishing craft, headed for Nice, their big lateen sails shining in the sunlight. Jack, watching Katrine keenly, read her delight and enjoyment in her eyes, and could see how she responded to the beauty of the day, the picturesqueness of the shore, the exhilaration of the wind, and the sparkling sea. At eight bells they had tea au Russe on deck, and before they had finished drinking it the Merle was put about and headed for the harbor.

They had hardly gone a knot before they fell in with a large black yawl flying the English colors and the burgee of the Royal Yacht Squadron. She was sailing easily along under all lower canvas, her black hull lifting gracefully over the sloping seas at about two cable-lengths ahead. She was in cruising rig, with no boom to her mainsail, yet was so large that her spread of canvas was at half a glance much greater than that of the Merle. She crossed the schooner's bows, and then, luffing occasionally, waited until the American yacht was on her beam.

"Looks's though she wanted something of us," remarked Jerry. "Will you take another look at her, Miss Marchfield?" And he handed her the glasses.

"She is a beauty!" exclaimed Katrine, [Pg 114]regarding the yawl through the binoculars. "I can see her name now. I-s-i-s Isis, of—of Plymouth. Don't you want to look at her, Aunt Anne?"

Mrs. Fairhew took the glasses with the air of a person doing a favor, and stared at the yawl in a perfunctory manner.

"What an absurd bobtail of a sail that is set 'way back," she observed. "It looks quite like a deformity."

"That's for balance in heavy weather," said Jerry, with gusto. "Hadn't we better salute, Jack?"

"I suppose so," was the answer. "See; he's fallen off. Means to give us a run for it, I fancy."

"I say," cried Jerry, "they're setting their topsail. They want a race in earnest."

"They've an able boat, to carry all sail when it's breezed up like this," commented Jack, giving the black yawl a critical look.

"Come!" urged Tab. "Let's take a brace and give 'em a run for their money. We can beat 'em all right enough, both sides of the Atlantic."

"Mind?" cried Mrs. Fairhew, "I shouldn't mind it the least in the world—especially if we beat them."

"All right," shouted Tab, leaping boyishly out of his wicker chair. "We'll show 'em! Watch along!" he roared to the crew.

"Sway up on the main-peak halyards there," sang out Jack, who had also started up quickly. "That's good! Fore-peak now—that'll do! Set fore-topsail there—haul away! Good enough! All hands up to windward!" Then he turned to the helmsman. "I'll take her," he said. "You get up to windward with the rest."

The yawl was on the windward beam, and both she and the schooner were carrying so much sail as now and again to be heeled lee rail under. At the end of twenty minutes the American boat seemed to be drawing ahead, although the Englishman, his red flag blowing out from his maintop, was still to windward.

Katrine and her aunt had abandoned their chairs for the weather transom of the cockpit. Katrine was thoroughly alive to the excitement of this impromptu contest, while Mrs. Fairhew's well-bred face wore a smile which might be taken to signify[Pg 116] either her superiority to such a youthful means of enjoyment or confidence in the power of the Merle to outstrip her rival.

Jack, his strong, shapely hands grasping the spokes of the wheel, glanced only from the sails aloft to the yawl and back again. Katrine watched him furtively. His keen, eager pose, wholly free from self-consciousness and suggestive of power and vigilant activity, his masterful management of his craft,—she noted them all, and felt a certain pleasure in them, as if in some way she were responsible for them.

He gave a rapid succession of orders as he twirled the spokes to port. The Merle came about on the other tack, the men got to stations on the weather side, and the ladies changed their places.

"Now we'll see how much we've gained on them," said Jerry, half to the guests and half to himself.

They drove toward the shore in the roughening sea, the port runway being now covered with a thin sheet of hissing green water. Up forward an occasional wave would come slap against the yacht's shoulder with a sound like a rifle-shot. The Isis crossed their bows at a distance so little ahead of[Pg 117] them that her name and hail could be read easily without the aid of a glass.

"We're outfooting them, Jack. We'll have 'em cold in twenty minutes!" cried Tab enthusiastically.

"Oh, but we can't help doing 'em," he responded. "We'll have 'em so walloped that they'll go into dry-dock for a month."

"You'd better rap on wood, Mr. Taberman," cautioned Mrs. Fairhew, with a smile. "I don't wish to be a croaking raven, but surely they're ahead now."

Mrs. Fairhew had, as the race went on, grown more and more alert. Her eyes had in them the spark of a genuine lover of sport, and all the womanly love of contest and conquest showed in the eagerness of her pose and air.

"Of course they're ahead," Jerry answered; "but we have the wind of them by a good deal."

"I hope that means something," the lady commented, with a movement of the head half eager, half humorous, "but I confess that it is all Greek to me."

Jerry began to explain, but before he could make things clear to the lady's unnautical mind, the[Pg 118] yacht came about again to the port tack. The Merle was then so far to weather of the yawl that Jack ordered the sheets to be started a trifle.

"Now then, Jerry, here's where we overhaul them," Jack cried exultingly. "Just set the balloon-jib outside the headsails. I think she'll stand it."

The change was effected as quickly as might be, and the yacht's speed was visibly increased.

"That yawl's better on the wind than off," the captain commented. "We're picking up on 'em now like smoke."

After an hour's chase and half an hour's jockeying off the mouth of the port, the Merle was about to run in when the English yacht luffed up and crossed the schooner's bows. Both boats were close-hauled, but the American was on the starboard tack and had the right of way. The helmsman of the Isis gave Jack his choice of running the yawl down or luffing himself. Jack chose the latter alternative; although naturally angry at such an unsportsmanlike trick, he could not take risks with his uncle's yacht, least of all with the ladies on board. The Englishman did not spare him, but[Pg 119] first blanketed him, and then, putting his helm up and leaving the Merle with a small ledge frothing to leeward, forced the schooner about. Under his tan Jack grew white with indignant anger. He was not the man to lose his temper in his pastimes, but he had a strong sense of justice, a thorough contempt for trickery, and he was quick to resent a deliberate outrage of this sort. The performance was so evidently premeditated on the part of the Isis that it amounted to a most flagrant insult, a cold-blooded piece of sporting caddishness. The only remedy possible under the circumstances was a desperate one, but in his state of mind he did not hesitate.

"Stand by to jibe!" he roared. "Cast off the topsail halyards! Now aft on the sheets!"

It was blowing too hard for jibing with safety even under reduced cloth, and barring staysail and topsails, the Merle was under full canvas.

"My God!" exclaimed Jerry to the winds, as he tumbled aft to help on the sheet, "he'll pull the sticks out of her! Something's bound to go!"

Jack held the wheel hard up, and the schooner swung steadily off. The booms rushed over the decks, fetched up with a crash, and then swung out as the men payed off the sheets. The lee rail went clean under, and for a second or two [Pg 120]unpleasant and portentous creakings and groanings filled the air. The men flew about with wonderful dexterity, while the two ladies held on to each other to avoid being pitched headlong.

"Are any of your teeth shaken out, Katrine?" Mrs. Fairhew inquired, when they were able once more to sit up. "All mine were loosened by that awful jerk."

"They are all safe, Aunt Anne," Katrine cried, her voice vibrant with delighted excitement. "Isn't it splendid?"

Her hair was blowing about her face, her eyes were shining, her cheeks were flushed; and Jack, though his swift glance merely caught a view of her as it flashed up to the sails, carried the alluring picture in his mind for many a day. The thought of it was for the time being instantly crowded out of his mind as he caught sight of the rigging. As the Merle had leaped ahead, the fore-peak halyards, which had not been started before the yacht was jibed, had parted. The gaff hung nearly at right angles to the boom, and the sail was being strained out of shape. The captain was so upset that in his rage he was guilty of swearing before ladies.

"Really this grows exciting," remarked Mrs. Fairhew, as if she were at the theatre.

"Oh, what a shame! what a shame!" wailed Katrine, looking despairingly up at the drooping gaff.

"Get some half-inch on it!" shouted Jack, almost beside himself at having been bullied into this predicament. "Take it out as far as you can! Reeve it through the cap-block first. Move along there! Smartly!"

"All right!" cried Tab; and in the same moment, with a coil of new rope over his shoulder, and followed by one of the men, he ran up the weather rigging.

On reaching the cross-trees, Tab passed the end of his rope through the block on the masthead cap and fastened it to his belt. Then he swung himself down to the jaws of the gaff and lay out along the spar. The big stick threshed about wildly, threatening to snap him into the sea at every fling. Slowly and painfully he worked his way out. He clung on desperately, so that it seemed like a conscious fight between himself and the plunging spar whether he should be shaken off. It was like a man's trying to tame a bucking horse, only a hundred times more exciting, and Katrine grew pale as she watched, while even Mrs.[Pg 122] Fairhew set her lips closely. The three minutes it took Jerry to reach the peak-halyard block seemed to every person on the Merle all but interminable. Twice he nearly fell,—once at the outset when he slipped, and again when he had to crawl around the throat halyards between rolls. The second time he was actually thrown off the spar, but fortunately he held his grip on the halyards. The next lurch of the yacht playfully tossed him into the air, and he was lucky enough to regain his position on the spar.

Getting to the peak-block, he unknotted the rope from his belt, passed it about the spar, and took a "timber-hitch." He then slowly worked his way back, and eventually reached the cross-trees in safety. The nervous tension had been so strong that when the men saw him coming down the ratlines they fell to cheering lustily, Gonzague, his white hair ruffled by the wind, waving his arms and out-shouting the whole of them. They speedily got hold of the jury halyard, and even before Jerry had reached the deck, the gaff was again well raised, and the topsail set.

In the mean time the Isis had in her turn got into difficulties. It is poor business jockeying among reefs, and the yawl had been forced to come about, luff up, and drift sternwards until her[Pg 123] chances of beating the Merle were utterly gone. The fact seemed to be that the English captain had counted upon the Merle's not daring to jibe, and so had been too clever by half.

Jerry came aft, very red in the face, and with the customary twinkle in his eye. The ladies were evidently greatly impressed by his feat, and Jack, who of course understood more clearly than they how dangerous the task had been, took one hand off the wheel and wrung Jerry's.

"Awfully sorry, old man," he said. "But I was so hot at that Englishman I lost my head for a minute."

"Mr. Taberman," said that lady, "I'm an old woman,"—it was one of Mrs. Fairhew's idiosyncrasies to call attention thus whimsically to the fact that she looked hardly more than thirty,—"I'm an old woman, and consequently I disapprove of rashness; but I don't mind saying that I like your pluck."

She looked at him in a curious way, as if he were an amusing case of arrested development, but her glance was full of kindliness.

"Thank you," Tab answered, with a smile which was too confused not to be almost a grin. "It's more a sound wind than pluck, I assure you."

They all laughed, more perhaps from the nervous reaction after the strain than from any especial amusement, and Jerry blushed more than ever.

"I'm afraid you're inclined to make a mountain out of a molehill," he said. "We don't allow heroics aboard here, you know. Jack did the only"—

"Oh, but that's not fair," cried Katrine. "If Mr. Castleport played the hero too, we want to know all about it."

"I'll masthead that mate if he goes on talking about his superior officer," Jack threatened. "See, the Isis has given the whole thing up."

"She'd better," commented Jerry, "though I don't see that she had anything left to give."

The yawl was well astern now. Her [Pg 125]sailing-master had for a little time, in a vain endeavor to overtake his rival, pinched his boat unmercifully, so that with her nose in the wind's eye her sails were every now and then a-shiver. Now she had evidently accepted the inevitable, and was making quietly for an anchorage.

"Oh," returned Tab, "he stuck to the wheel over forty-eight hours when we had that blow we were talking about. It was a magnificent thing to do, and I think he saved us from everlasting smash. Of course he pooh-poohs the idea, but Jack's never willing to have anybody say he's done anything big. He's as modest as he is stunning," he ended warmly, throwing at the captain a glance of admiration and affection.

Katrine made no audible comment, but her glance followed his, and had Jack intercepted her look at that moment, he might have felt his heart beat more briskly.

The superior speed of the Merle, aided by the poor tactics of the skipper of the Isis, who seemed to lose his head when he found he was beaten, gave the American so much the lead that the schooner had dropped her anchor a minute or two before the yawl rounded the inner mole.

"I was sure you would beat that other boat, Mr. Castleport," Mrs. Fairhew told him, "and I confess I enjoyed seeing you do it."

"I couldn't be so rude as to let you ladies be beaten in a race," the captain responded, laughing.

"What an atrocious pun!" cried Katrine; "and Mr. Taberman looks actually wistful for fear we shouldn't see it."

"Well," her aunt said, moving toward the ladder, where the cutter was in waiting, "it has been a delightful day, and we are greatly obliged."

While the ladies were being pulled ashore, and before Jack and Jerry had returned, everything on the Merle was put in order. Just as they went below to dress for going ashore for dinner, a boat from the yawl came alongside with a note for the "Captain of the Merle; sch. Y't." Gonzague brought it to Castleport, who looked at it, and then read it aloud to Jerry.

He got out the President's most elaborate stationery, and after some meditation and the destruction of one or two epistles which would not go quite to suit him, he handed to Jerry the following:—

"You see," Jack explained, "we let him know what we think of that caddish trick without being in the least rude ourselves. Of course the chances are that he was responsible for the thing himself, and there we have him on the hip."

"I suppose it's all right," grumbled Jerry. "You know best; but if I 'd written it, I should have told him straight out that I thought him a damned cad!"

Chapter Eight A CHANGE OF TACTICS

As they sat that evening in the garden of the hotel drinking their after-dinner coffee, which the gentlemen accompanied with cigarettes, they discussed the news from home contained in a batch of letters Mrs. Fairhew and her niece had found awaiting them on their return from the yacht. The announcement of an engagement, rumors of flirtations which might end in others, the latest gossip about people they all knew, were mingled with chat about an extraordinary yacht race at Northeast Harbor, a Russian princess at Nahant, an automobile accident at Lenox, and a fresh divorce at Newport.

"Everything else," Mrs. Fairhew said at length, "is simply nothing at all in comparison to a piece of business news I received. Have you heard of the Tillington failure?"

"Yes. Their own notice was with the other[Pg 130] mail this afternoon," she responded. "Liabilities something like a third of a million and their assets nothing."

"How in the world did it happen?" asked Tab. "I knew they had a lot to do with mines, and of course those are always risky; but Tillington always had the name of being awfully clever."

"Clever or not," Mrs. Fairhew said, "he has come to grief, and, I am ashamed to confess, he has lost some money for me."

"I am very sorry for that," Jack responded. "I'll wager you'll have plenty of distinguished company. I'm awfully afraid Uncle Randolph got his fingers burned. He's had dealings with Tillington for ever so long. I never took kindly to the man myself, but Uncle Randolph had a great opinion of his business sagacity."

"I'll wager Mrs. Fairhew's bound to be in good company even in misfortune," Jerry declared with his usual somewhat clumsy gallantry.

Mrs. Fairhew smiled, and made a little sweeping gesture with her fan as if the subject were a disagreeable one and should be waved aside.

"Even that," she said, "doesn't soothe my wounded vanity. The money I've lost is [Pg 131]fortunately not very much, but I pride myself on my business head, and I made this investment in spite of the advice of my banker. Think how he will chuckle! I'd rather have lost three times as much on an investment he selected."

"Of course you can't understand," Katrine struck in. "I agree with Aunt Anne entirely. Of course one would rather lose money than to give a man a chance to crow over her."

The talk was thus drawn into the inexhaustible discussion of feminine and masculine characteristics, that topic about which revolves two thirds of all the small talk of the world. Then it drifted back to the personal news of the letters.

"I don't think Billy Rafton's to be congratulated," announced Tab emphatically, in reference to a recent wedding. "Edna Leighton has plenty of money of course, and is a stunning girl and all that; but she's so horribly ambitious that she won't give poor Billy a minute's peace."

"Ambitious?" queried Katrine. "How? I've known her pretty well, and to me she always seemed nice. Certainly she's clever."

"So she is clever," Jerry assented; "but of[Pg 132] course that'll make it harder for Billy to stand out against her."

"She naturally would have the instinct to get ahead in the world," commented Castleport. "Her mother was a Farquhar."

"Mr. Castleport," remonstrated Mrs. Fairhew, "that remark is too feminine to be worthy of you."

"Do you regret that I didn't leave it for you to say?" he asked saucily. "I know you entirely agree with me."

"Her father, Stephen Leighton," Mrs. Fairhew continued, making no answer but a hardly perceptible smile to his statement, "was a thoroughly charming man and of very good family. You can't deny that, Mr. Castleport."

"I haven't any wish to. I'm not trying to run down Edna Leighton—Rafton, that is."

"I always thought," began Katrine. Then she stopped, with an involuntary movement of the eyes in the direction of Taberman.

"Oh, I was hit there once," Tab said jovially, "if that's what you mean. I got over it at a boat race."

"We shall have sight of them at Florence, I[Pg 133] suppose. They are to be at the Villa Foscagni for the summer. It belongs to the Raftons."

"To-morrow afternoon," answered Katrine in a tone of which the indifference might have struck Jack as a little overdone had he not been too perturbed to notice.

"Did you fancy we were here for the summer?" queried Katrine with demure interest.

The hint of teasing in her tone brought Castleport to himself. Half his social success lay in the fact that he was not easily disconcerted.

"As Mrs. Fairhew was good enough to tell me her plans," he returned coolly, "I naturally understood that you were to leave here before long, but I admit I hadn't thought you would go so soon."

"You see," Mrs. Fairhew explained, "we really must get on. Katrine has to do museums and things, as I told you. When I was a girl it wouldn't have been thought respectable for a girl[Pg 134] to come out before she'd seen the Pitti and Uffizzi; but it's all different now."

"What nonsense, Aunt Anne! I don't believe you'd seen the galleries yourself when you came out."

"Indeed I had. I'll make you read all the finest print in the guide-books if you are impertinent. We take," she added, turning to Castleport, "the 3.08 for Genoa."

Jack was by nature quick and resolute; and before Mrs. Fairhew had got to this remark he had conceived a plan, and resolved to follow it out. Gravely regarding the thicket of oleanders behind Miss Marchfield, yet with the tail of his eye on the face of Jerry, which was alternately lighted and obscured as his cigarette glowed or waned, the captain remarked coolly:—

"It would seem so," Jack almost drawled. "You said the 3.08, didn't you? How far do you go? All the way to Genoa?"

"Why, nothing much," returned Jack in a brisker tone, throwing away the butt of his cigarette; "only—yes—that's the very train I go[Pg 135] on myself. Same destination, too, unless I decide to stop at Bordighera."

There naturally was a sensation at this unexpected announcement. Katrine drew in her breath audibly; in the very nick of time Jerry caught himself in the act of saying profanely what he would be; Mrs. Fairhew closed her fan quickly, but she was too much mistress of herself to give any indication of her feelings beyond a little quick laugh.

Evidently his feelings were too much for him, and he collapsed. So sudden a move on the part of Jack was sure to disconcert his slower-witted comrade, and the captain had fortunately been prepared by previous experiences for some mental confusion on the part of the mate.

"Nothing—I—I don't remember what I was going to say," murmured the bewildered Tab.

"Really," observed Mrs. Fairhew, "it hadn't occurred to me that you could or would leave the yacht. What becomes of her?"

Once determined upon his plan, Jack felt it best to carry matters off with a high hand. He did not in the least care whether Mrs. Fairhew and Katrine suspected that his resolution to go on by land had been taken on the spot or not; but he liked to play the game well, and to put a good face on things. He spoke as though his mind had been made up long before, although all the time his brain was working with furious energy, as he tried to shape the scheme thoroughly and to foresee all possible contingencies. To give over to Jerry the care of the President's yacht was a bold stroke, but he said to himself that he was confident his friend was entirely competent to manage her for the comparatively short run to Naples; and his thought nimbly disposed of objection after objection as they rose in his mind.

Rapid as had been his decision, it was less wild than it might seem; and by the time he spoke again Jack had all the details pretty well mastered.

Katrine, Jack noted, had said nothing, but he had heard that quick, indrawn breath, and he did not believe that her silence arose from indifference.

It was to Tab's credit that at this astounding piece of intelligence he did not make a violent demonstration; but he was not unaccustomed to the rapidity with which Jack came to a decision, and he had before been trained in accepting what his captain said. Now he only dropped his cigarette, and on picking it up put the lighted end between his lips, spluttered and smothered a profane comment, and hurled the offending butt as far as he could.

"Have another?" asked Jack, unruffled, as he pushed his case across the little table by which they were sitting.

"You've no need to touch your lips with fire, Mr. Taberman," Mrs. Fairhew observed, opening and closing her fan in a way which she had when amused; "you have been sufficiently eloquent in compliments ever since you arrived. May we hope, then," she went on, turning to Castleport, "for the pleasure of your company on the journey?"

Jack turned to look at Katrine. On her face the soft light of a Japanese lantern fell between a couple of trees, but she at once moved so that the shadows hid her expression.

"Nothing could please me more, Aunt Anne, than that you should be pleased," she responded.

"Then you had better bring Mr. Taberman and your luggage ashore, and come to luncheon to-morrow," the aunt said, rising. "In that way we can take our time and be comfortable. Does that suit your plans, Mr. Castleport?"

Jack detected the suspicion of mirth in her voice, but he felt that if she had disapproved she would not only have shown no amusement but that she was clever enough to have thwarted his scheme.

"Oh, we shall make you useful as an escort, and get enough service out of you on the journey to pay that," spoke Katrine, with the air of feeling that she had been too noticeably silent.

"We're only too delighted to come, of course," Jerry said with boyish enthusiasm. "Anybody'd be glad of a chance to lunch with you, Mrs. Fairhew."

"Your compliments are rather direct, Mr. Taberman," that lady answered with a laugh. "We'll say 1.30, then. That will give us plenty of time. I hate to be hurried; it is so undignified."

As Mrs. Fairhew had risen the others were of course on their feet, and as Jack stood aside for Katrine to pass him, the elder lady took his arm. By this she detained him an instant, until her niece and Jerry were a few yards away. When they approached the door of the hotel and it was light enough for him to see her clearly, she dropped his arm; and as he turned his face toward her at the movement, she regarded him through her lorgnette with a look quizzical though kindly.

"You are a clever boy," she said after a little, and with a peculiar faint stress on the adjective. "Do you want to marry my niece?"

Jack of course recognized that the question would never have been asked had there been any doubt of the answer, and even in the confusion of the moment he had a dim perception that Mrs. Fairhew was, with kindly whim, helping him to ask her sanction to his wooing. He felt his cheeks grow hot, but he faced his inquisitor frankly, and he spoke with a manner which though instinctively subdued was full of energy and feeling.

"You know I do," he said. "You know I'd die the worst of deaths for her. I—As God's above me," he burst out, breaking off and feeling himself strangle with his emotion, "I'll win her or die trying! I—I— Of course I want to marry her! What do you suppose I came to Europe for?"

Mrs. Fairhew's face softened, for no true woman could have heard the passion of his voice unmoved; but she laughed at the sudden change with which he ended.

"I hope you may succeed," she said softly. "I think you will." Then she took his arm again, and spoke in her ordinary voice: "Come, we must go in."

"Now, then, Jack, in the name of heaven," demanded Jerry, as soon as he and the captain were out of hearing of the ladies, "what is this awful josh of yours about leaving the yacht?"

"I'll tell you when we get aboard," his friend answered. "Don't bother me now; I'm thinking."

Tab snorted contemptuously, and in silence the pair held on until they reached the quay. The cutter awaited them, and still in silence they were pulled out to the Merle. There was not a breath[Pg 141] of wind now; the stars blazed brilliantly above them, and not a cloud-blot was to be seen. In a stillness broken only by the rhythmical oar-strokes the pair watched the myriad star-points which dotted the heavens as they had adorned it centuries before when old Nice was new Nicæa, and some brown Sicilian pilot may have gazed up at them and made haven by their faithful guidance.

"Oh, I don't know," Jack answered, still in a dream from the spell of Mrs. Fairhew's words.

"Well, I do," put in Jerry. "We'll have some caviare sandwiches, Gonzague, and a glass of sherry."

The supper was eaten almost in silence, and it was not until Gonzague had taken away the things and left them with pipes lighted that the inevitable explanation was reached.

His face wore a sober expression, full of expectancy, but not without a hint of annoyance and reproach. Jack blew a large smoke-ring at him, and laughed to see how in dodging it Jerry kept his solemnity unchanged.

"Well, Tab," he began, "I don't suppose it's necessary to say that the idea of leaving the yacht[Pg 142] never came into my head till I knew Mrs. Fairhew and Katr—Miss Marchfield were off to-morrow."

"Heave ahead," grumpily retorted Jerry. "Don't mind me. Of course I shall be delighted to be left alone on the yacht."

"Come, cheer up, old man," Jack exhorted. "Don't be grouchy. I'm awfully sorry to leave you; but of course it's only for a little while, and we shall both have compensations. I hope I shall be coming nearer to—to—well, to something definite, you know; and you'll have the Merle to do what you jolly well please with."

"That's all very well, of course," Tab responded, his face relaxing a little; "but what's your game? We've beastly little money, you know; and this shore cruise of yours is bound to sop up a lot of tin."

"We've money enough to carry us through," Jack declared. "I'll go to Genoa, of course. I know Italy pretty well, and I can make myself useful,—sort of 'guide, philosopher, and friend,' and courier all in one. When they go on to Naples,—well, from something Mrs. Fairhew said to-night, I think I shan't have any difficulty going on to Naples with them. A man's a handy article in traveling, you see, especially if he knows the language."

Jerry regarded the captain as if his slower wits found it somewhat hard to follow the swift flights of his friend's mind.

"But the Merle?" he objected. "It's bad enough for you to be skylarking about the world with the President's yacht, but when it comes to turning it over to me—Why, the old gentleman would throw five hundred fits at the bare idea."

"Oh, I'll trust you there," Jack said lightly, consciously trying to make his confidence as flattering as possible. "You can manage, and do as you please for the next month. Who ever heard of a mate that didn't jump at the chance of taking command for a while. I'd advise you to stop, say, at Elba, if you're for doing the sights. Then, if you like, while you're on the Napoleonic tack, you might run 'round to Ajaccio. It's an out-of-the-way place, rather, but it's jolly when you get there. As for Elba, I've never been ashore there, though I've passed it and know the chap that owns it. I'll give you a letter in case you want to go ashore."

"But, Jack—Damn it!" broke out Jerry, as if exasperated by the very feasibility of his friend's sudden change of tactics, "I can't speak a word of their blessed lingo!"

"Pooh! Your French will carry you about well[Pg 144] enough, and if worst comes to worst, you can fall back on Gonzague. At Naples you'll find them speaking English all over the lot."

"Jack Castleport, you're certainly the damnedest man to handle I ever came across," Jerry said in despairing tones. "A fellow might as well try to bully-rag a sea-cow as to argue you out of any of your confounded schemes."

"That's because they're so good," laughed Jack. "You see their profound wisdom carries me away so completely that objections can't touch me." Then he stretched his hand across the table corner, and caught hold of Jerry's. "I'm deuced sorry to give you the slip like this," he said, "but you know the reason."

The good-natured Tab melted at once. He returned the pressure of his friend's hand and tried to quote

but made so hopeless a mess of it that he could only break out into one of his boisterously jovial guffaws.

"Well, by George," he cried, "if she only knew how devoted you are, Jack, she'd let you wait a dog's age, just to try you."

They spent an hour or so in arranging details, going over charts, dividing their funds, and so on. Jack gave Tab addresses at Genoa, Florence, and Rome by which he might be reached, and told him that at Naples he should go to the Hôtel du Vesuve. On the twentieth of August Jerry was to inquire for him there. These and other affairs having been arranged, the pair smoked a final pipe, and turned in.

Jack was very wakeful. He lay thinking of this and of that, restlessly tossing about in his berth. Just as at last he was dropping off to sleep, he was aroused by the voice of Jerry, who called softly across the passage:—

"I say, Jacko, do you fancy the President came a cropper in that Tillington smashup?"

"Don't know," Jack answered. "He's pretty shrewd, and Mrs. Fairhew would have been likely to hear of it, I should think, if he had come seriously to grief."

"Well, you know, it struck me that perhaps that beastly letter from Tillington might have been something important, and"—

"Oh, take a liver-pill!" interrupted Jack.[Pg 146] "You've got an attack of Conscientia Novanglicana."

"Forerunner of nervous pros.," replied the captain with a chuckle. "Go to sleep or you'll get it."

Silence again reigned, but Jack, once more aroused, threshed about uneasily until far into the night. Resolutely as he might determine not to think of the possible consequences of the carrying off of that big blue letter, he could not prevent doubt from recurring constantly to his mind, and something not so far removed from remorse mingled with his thoughts of Katrine and of the delight of traveling in her company. He was so long awake that on the next afternoon Mrs. Fairhew, when he had installed her and her niece comfortably in a first-class compartment on the 3.08 train, and they were beginning to see the olive groves and the villas slip picturesquely past the windows, noted the shadows beneath his eyes, and smiled to herself discreetly and unseen.

Chapter Nine THE DOLDRUMS

For two weeks the Merle had been lying at anchor at Naples. From Nice she had run first to Elba; thence she had doubled north again and rounded Corsica; she had touched at Calvi and Ajaccio; and lastly, running through the Straits of Bonifacio, she had held on east-southeasterly to her present anchorage off the Castle.

Despite the novel pleasures of command, Taberman felt Jack's absence so much as at times to be almost unhappy, even at times a little inclined to be resentful. He was still too boyish not to feel that to leave a yacht for a girl was the height of madness, if not of idiocy; and while he was too loyal to Jack to confess this feeling even to himself, it would at times rise in his mind, especially when he felt more than usually lonely. On his arrival at any port Jerry experienced to the full the excitement which even the oldest traveler feels in some degree at entering a new town. Whenever[Pg 148] the port officer appeared in his official dignity, another sensation was added in the fear of detection and apprehension. A reaction would set in with the departure of the easily satisfied official, and Jerry would go mooning about with his hands in his pockets, whistling some spiritless tune until the time came to get up anchor and sail anew.

At Naples, however, things went somewhat better with Jerry than at any of his previous ports. In the first place even Jerry, unæsthetic as he was, could not escape the magic of the beautiful bay and the surroundings which opened up before him in the morning light as he approached the city. He said to himself, half as if in excuse for being so much pleased by mere scenery, that it looked as it should. It had, as it were, kept faith with him; and its beauty was to him an honest fulfillment of its fame. The gray cone of Vesuvius, palpably and gratifyingly like the pictures, stood at the head of the bay, crowned with an inky cloud of smoke. Away from it to the south stretched the cliffs of blue Sorrento and bluer Capri, melting magically into a background of hills or of the azure sky. On the north of the smoking cone a stretch of shadow-wrought shore, and then Naples itself, from the old Spanish fort on the water-front to the Castle of St. Elmo, long[Pg 149] and gray, crowning the summit of the ridge behind, and the stone-pines silhouetted like palms against the sapphire sky. Naples, with its great four-square houses of pink, and white, and yellow, heaped, as it were, one above another; its red-tiled roofs, its terraces tricked out with vines or fig-trees; Naples, with its church roofs of variegated tiles, its long quays yellowish gray about the shore—Jerry could well have believed himself in some enchanted picture city, a city which might almost be expected to vanish suddenly if one should close the book it graced.

Behind the Government Mole were lying five Italian battleships, their big red, white, and green flags floating over their sterns, and everywhere over the liquid blue of the bay sailed fisher-craft and small boats, gilded with the morning light.

Scarcely was the Merle's anchor down than the yacht was surrounded by a gay flotilla of boats, all laden with piles of fruit or vegetables, and manned by crews as noisy as they were picturesque. Baskets heaped with figs, great piles of green melons, lemons, citrons, plums, fresh vegetables of all sorts, were there; and each ware was extolled by the vendors with vociferous volubility, until the ears of Jerry fairly sang with the din. From the crowding boats screamed blowsy, [Pg 150]dark-eyed women with brown oval faces and raiment of reds and yellows; boys with Greek faces and slim bare arms yelled with shrill voices; doddering old men, sitting in the stern-sheets of skiffs pulled by impish youngsters, waved impotent hands and moved toothless mouths whose sounds were lost in the feverish uproar; stalwart market-men, with brown, wrinkled faces and hairy bosoms exposed, fought their way through the press, disregarding age, sex, and condition in their effort to be nearest the possible purchasers on the Merle; all around the yacht the piratical water-peddlers made a floating Pandemonium, at which the Yankee crew stared not only in surprise but with some appearance of not unnatural alarm.

As an opposing bulwark to this flood of southern vivacity, old Gonzague alone stood as the spokesman of the yacht. Requested by Jerry to make the vendors "stow their jaw," he laid about him right and left with a profane volubility which outdid even that of the assailants. The old man had not spoken Italian for so long that he might well be supposed to have forgotten it, but the occasion found him splendidly adequate to all the requirements of the situation. The Neapolitans raved and pleaded, execrated and lowered their prices, with appeals to the Madonna and all the[Pg 151] saints to witness their honesty and their liberality; but once the floodgates of Gonzague's Italian were opened, he dealt with them so eloquently and so roundly, his objurgations were so much more picturesque and more emphatic than any they could compass, that one by one they drew away baffled, calling on high Heaven and the blessed Virgin to protect them when Vesuvius should belch forth a torrent of fire to overwhelm this blasphemous and impious vecchiastro.

Gonzague was perhaps sustained under the volleys of curses which the defeated bumboat men and women threw back at him, by the admiration with which he was regarded by the crew of the Merle. They had come to idolize the old man, and to look upon him with roughly affectionate wonder. The beauty of the scenes through which they had been passing in the Mediterranean had of course impressed them very little æsthetically, and Naples with its matchless bay they saw only with the eyes of Isle au Haut fishermen. They were, however, never tired of wonders. The childlike sailor nature is always easily touched by the marvelous, and a real volcano was something worth seeing. As long as the Merle was in sight of Vesuvius they would hang over the rail and watch it for hours. If the smoke ceased they[Pg 152] would cluster together and discuss the probable causes; they would talk of the mountain as if it were a conscious monster, lying in wait for prey, whose every movement was to be watched with a view to detecting the sinister design that must lie behind it. When a great dun cloud would suddenly puff up from the cone, the men would greet it with deep exclamations half of awe and half of applause. Continually they beset Gonzague with questions, as if he were the keeper or the high priest of this fiery monster. They apparently had complete confidence that Gonzague could explain it all if he would. His knowledge of the language and such use of it as he made in dispersing the voluble rabble of vendors were exactly in the line of their understanding, and they followed his every movement with an admiration amusingly tinged with something not unlike uncouth reverence.

On the afternoon of his arrival at Naples Taberman had gone ashore. He had landed at the steamship quay, and passed half the night in an aimless ramble. There is something about Naples at night which goes to the head like wine; especially if the head is young and set on the shoulders of one who has never before known the life of southern cities. Jerry walked from the railroad station to the Public Gardens, and from the Mola[Pg 153] to the Hôtel Britannique upon the heights. He attempted no systematic exploration, but simply wandered with no other object than the simple delight of rambling. By daylight the picturesque streets; the variegated rabble, ragged, dirty, beautiful, impudent, at once repulsive and enchanting; the crooked, crowded ways that climb the hill; the awnings, the heaps of fruit, the strange wares, the familiar air of the family life which made of the streets a home, and seemed to turn all the inhabitants of the town into one huge family; the unconsciously artistic groups, the tumbling bambini, the women, bold, piquant, handsome, or ugly with a hideousness of which Jerry had never conceived,—all these things passed before him like the whirling shows of an opium dream. As night fell, and the lights appeared, the scenes through which he went half dazed and wholly delighted took on a new quality of the weird and fantastic. The flaring lamps, the mysterious shadows, the blazing colors which not even the night could subdue, the theatrical effects seen down the narrow streets as on a stage set for opera, the inexhaustible vivacity, which seemed not to diminish with the lateness of the hour, all blended in an intoxicating experience such as Taberman had never known, and indeed such as had never come into his liveliest fancy.

The next day Jerry went ashore in the morning, and set himself to more regular sight-seeing under the care of a professional guide. He went over the famous Museum, saw Vergil's Tomb, Posilipo, Sanazar's house, and Marti's pozzo. After a capital luncheon in one of the cafés in the Arcade, he rejoined his guide, who took him to the Aquarium. On the way they stopped at the Royal Palace and the Morro, Tab being duly impressed by the grandeur of royalty and the majesty of the law. Continually he wished that Jack were with him, for he had so fallen into the habit of depending on Jack for opinions that without his friend his impressions seemed to lack the clearness of sanction. When it came to the Aquarium, however, not only did the things he had seen in his day's explorations fade from his mind, but he was too delighted not to know exactly what he felt.

The Aquarium of Naples is by far the most wonderful in the world. It is smaller and less elaborate than others, as, for instance, that of the Trocadero, but it outranks all in interest and impressiveness. The virtue of the place lies in its simplicity of construction and in the rarity of its exhibits. A sense of restful shadow and coolness succeeding to outside glare and heat; a dim greenish light in broad, glass-faced tanks of sea-water;[Pg 155] an odd feeling of being fathoms deep in a tropical sea,—these are the sensations the visitor has first in this wonderful home of strange fish in exile.

Tab made the rounds half a dozen times before he could bring himself to leave. Quite unscientific, but as enthusiastic as a boy, he stood in front of each tank, and tried vainly to determine which was most fascinating. Here were spiny lobster-like crustacea, spotted with a dozen colors; there were beautiful fish with shining iridescent sides and waving filmy, vaporous tails; one tank was inhabited by repulsive, warty octopi, splotched with dull browns and plague-spots of ugly red, which melted and slimed about, so disgusting that they seemed almost obscene; from another a huge sea python, with body as large as the thigh of a man and a head like that of a bald wolf, seemed to grin with sinister, snarling face at Jerry, while all about the monster bloated globe-fish and distorted marine shapes swam and circled; in a corner tank a brood of asp-like fish, with skins that seemed of richest velvet, dusky and wonderful in hue, lay heaped like incarnate poison; and near by the angel-fish went waving and trailing their way about the sand. Jerry was perhaps most impressed, however, by the mysterious life which went on in a tank to which he came among the last. Thin, slow-waving[Pg 156] filaments of colorless jelly, crowned with diaphanous cups, not differing greatly from the poppy-flower in shape; and near them other forms, transparent, hardly more than condensed sea-water in appearance, yet with slow pulsations, continuous and wonderful, of phosphoric sparks,—as if one saw life itself throbbing rhythmically in the pellucid hairs of jelly.

Jerry had not been so completely happy since he parted from Jack. He reveled in a boyish delight, and let no wonder of the place escape him. He tipped the keeper to feed the octopi with young crabs, lowered on a string; he took a smart electric shock from a morose torpedo which lay sulkily in a small open tub with a pebbly bottom; he had the big anemones and the coral-polyps "put to sleep," in the words of his guide,—an operation consisting simply of the moving in the water of a small stick which caused them to close in alarm; he did, in a word, everything his guide could think of for him to do, and went away in the end only half content to leave.

After the Aquarium, Jerry turned a deaf ear to the alluring speeches of the guide, the burden of whose song was all of curiosities unseen and of pleasures untasted. He paid the importunate manikin, and made his way back to the Merle.[Pg 157] The truth was that he had seen something which thoroughly pleased him, and after that it was impossible to return to the perfunctory seeing of regulation sights which really did not take hold of him in the least.

Before the first week was ended, Jerry had visited Pompeii and Baiæ, and what was to be seen of Herculaneum. He had made some purchases; and then he began to wait about, ashore or aboard, for Jack. That gentleman had written no response to Tab's letter announcing the arrival of the Merle at Naples, and Jerry could only think of him as so absorbed in his wooing as to have forgotten all about his friend. Some not unnatural jealousy began to ferment in his mind, and did not add to his comfort. By the advice of Gonzague he took the market-boat, and setting out early one morning he sailed with a couple of the men across the bay to Capri, where he passed the day. The only thing which cheered him on his lonely expedition was a tarantella, which was danced for his diversion by a romantic-looking raggaza, with black eyes and short petticoats. The moonlight sail back would have pleased him more had it not been necessary to keep the men rowing for two thirds of the way. On the whole, Jerry could find nothing to please him on land or sea.

The major part of the next week he had spent stretched out in a cane chaise longue in the cockpit, drinking iced sangaree and reading Didron's Artémise. He had a fly stretched over the awning for increased coolness, and the "dusters" put up to shut out the glare from the water; there, like some melancholy monarch beneath his canopy, he read, dozed, and grumbled—without even the satisfaction of any fit audience—from morning to sundown.

In the cool of the evening he usually went ashore, and one night he was strolling along the water-front, stick in hand and his Panama set well back on his head. As he passed the Hôtel du Vesuve, wondering when Jack would arrive, a small figure moved quickly in front of him and bowed. At first he was startled, but almost instantly he saw that it was the valet de place who had gone about with him in the early days of his stay at Naples.

"Hello," said Jerry in surprise, yet not without a feeling of satisfaction at finding even this apology for a companion.

"Buon' sera, signor," responded the little man vivaciously. "How do? You tek-a de night air? É verament' un' bellissima notte. It mek-a cool, eh?"

He might have been thirty or thirty-five, and had coarse black hair, with fiery eyes. He was not ill-looking, but his clothes were hopelessly threadbare and his face pinched. He bore dark circles under his eyes, and was in no way markedly different from others of his numerous and futile class, who, with a smattering of French, German, or English, struggle desperately for a livelihood by acting, not always very virtuously, as guides for traveling forestieri.

"No—no," replied the Neapolitan, his face as eager as his tone. "What-a you like see? Eh? Some of dose oder curiosities forse?" he asked with a suggestive smile.

"Thanks, no," Jerry returned dryly; "but if you aren't busy, I wish you'd walk along with me. I'm bored—tired—'most to death, and I fancy you might tell me how I may best kill time for the next few days."

The little guide was delighted. He suggested a multitude of things which might be done,—visits to Castellmare and Sorrento or Amalfi; wonders the signor had neglected in the museum; the pasta shops; and so on for a variety of possible and impossible diversions. But still Taberman[Pg 160] shook his head. He wanted to be amused, but he was lonely and rather homesick, so that while he regretted being so difficult, nothing appealed to him. Finally, the guide, quite at his wit's end but still bland, smiling, patient, obsequious, and apparently unruffled by the careless way in which the American rejected all his suggestions one after the other, mentioned Pesto.

"Si! Pesto. It ees dere dey hav-a de gret-a temple; t'ree gret-a temple, all put een de row-a,—uno, due, tre." And he held up three fingers to make his statement at once clearer and more emphatic.

"Temples? Real ones?" asked Jerry. "I mean are they old—Roman, that is—or just churches?"

"Ma verament'," laughed the valet de place, "ci son' tre templi; bot-a dey not-a Roman; dey Gre'k. Fin-a, big-a temple; big-a like Hôtel du Vesuve!"

He waved his spread arms as if he would embrace the universe. Jerry laughed at the little man's enthusiasm, but his interest was excited.

The guide explained volubly, told the time of trains to Pæstum, declared that the trip was easily made in a day, and proffered his services as escort. This Jerry declined, quite as much from motives of economy as from any other reason; but he invited the little guide to sit down at one of the small tables on the sidewalk before Zinfoni's, where he furnished him with refreshments and made him repeat his account of the temples, the details of the journey, and whatever information he could furnish. Jerry was really lonely enough to be amused by the company of the Neapolitan, and as he sat listening and watching the people drifting past, he was soothed with the feeling of being not so entirely alone. From Zinfoni's the pair sauntered down to the quay, where they parted. The Italian was profuse in his thanks and protestations, and Jerry was considerate enough to act in such a manner as to make the little man think him the most affable of Inglesi.

When he was aboard again, Jerry got out a chart, and after some searching located Pæstum. As it was not too far from Naples to be possible in a day, he determined upon the expedition. Jack was not due for two or three days yet, and the time must be killed somehow. He summoned Gonzague, ordered an early breakfast, told him he[Pg 162] should be absent all the next day, and that he should leave him in charge. He had a sort of mild exhilaration at his boldness in thus venturing off into the midst of a land whose language he could not speak, and he went to bed that night with a great feeling of relief. The doldrums were over; he had something to do to bridge the time until Jack came.

Chapter Ten MR. WRENMARSH, THE EXTRAORDINARY

On the following morning, as, a few minutes after nine, the southbound train from Naples to Tarento drew out of the station, Taberman, winking a little at the sudden glare of the sun, began to look about him. The morning promised a hot day, and his comfort in traveling was likely to be lessened by the fact that in the second-class compartment with him were five Italians. They had already settled themselves back against the cushions, turning upward sunburnt, perspiring faces, and allowing themselves to be jolted by the train like so many dead-weights. Their ugly straw hats, high-crowned and narrow-brimmed, were set on their knees or wedged beside them on the seat; two of the travelers had gay bandannas tucked into their collars about their throats. One man—a pursy old codger in the corner—had lighted, after a mumbled "con permesso," a long Virginia, which filled the compartment with a thin blue haze and an acrid smell as of burning leather.

The train rumbled along over a dubious roadbed, flanked by its cinder-strewn berms; and Tab, looking through the window on his right, recognized the line as that by which he had gone to Pompeii. At times the train went close to where the curling ripples of the sapphirine bay were breaking gently on the shore; sometimes it ran through small hamlets, and again passed country places where the busy peasants were at work in the rich vineyards, the orchards, or the tilled fields.

At the end of half an hour, they stopped at Pompeii for a moment, and Jerry, through the opposite window, recognized the station and the paltry inn beyond. As the train drew out again, he caught brief glimpses of the ancient city, dull red-brown walls among the silver-gray of the olive-trees.

The train sped on southward. It dipped into little vales, and wound its way up and into the hills that ring themselves around the plain of Pæstum. In an hour's time they pulled up at a small town on the left of the track. Jerry made out the name of the station, enameled in big white letters on a blue field, Battapaglia. The guard came by, unlocking the compartment doors, and as the men in his compartment got out and left their luggage behind them, Jerry concluded[Pg 165] that here was to be a wait of some minutes. He therefore followed the example of his fellow travelers, and stepped down upon the sunny platform. It was very hot. Tab mopped his face with his handkerchief and turned down the brim of his Panama all around.

A small boy had singled him out, probably because he was the only forestiere on the platform, and was offering him syrupy drinks cooled with cracked ice. For a soldo Tab secured a glass of sherbet, fruit-juice and water half frozen and very delicious. It was so refreshing that he bestowed an extra soldo on the vender in sheer gratitude. The lad rewarded him with a curt "grazie," and a look half grateful and half suspicious, and then hastened on to urge his wares on other travelers. Jerry looked after him in amusement at the fringe made by the tatters of his trousers, and in lazy admiration of the sinewy brown arms left bare by the sleeveless cotton shirt and of the jaunty poise of the curly head.

Jerry lighted a cigarette and got into the shadow of the cars. Presently a big express came thundering out of the pass in the hills with a roar, and rushed away to southward on the main track.

The road was again clear, the express-mail having passed. The passengers clambered aboard, and settled themselves in their former places. The old man with the Virginia had purchased a copy of "Il Papagallo," though it was a mystery how he could have got hold of it in such a place. He clucked oilily as he read, occasionally calling the attention of his nearest neighbor to some gaudy cartoon or some political pasquinade. Jerry speculated in regard to what it might all be about, and was filled with that vague sense of baffled irritation which comes from seeing others enjoying jokes in a language one cannot understand.

Mile after mile of level track, flanked by the interminable cinder-covered berms. Once in a while the level was broken by clumps of dusty cactus, ugly and forbiddingly aggressive in the sun. To the right, beyond a flat, gorse-grown waste, relieved only by an occasional palm or oleaster, Tab could discern the blue shimmer of the sea. To the left, he could see only the same dull plain, bounded by bluish hills, which rose about it like the seats of some titanic amphitheatre. Now and again two or three buffaloes, their black hides caked with patches of yellow mud, lay in[Pg 167] their wallows or stood contemptuously indifferent to the noisy train, which beside them seemed so impertinently modern.

At last the train, with a screaming of gritty brakes on the wheels, and the inevitable clanking and banging of cars and couplings, drew up beside a tiny station on the right of the track.

The guard unlocked the compartment door, and Jerry stepped out. The station was smaller than any they had passed, and Tab smilingly reflected that the lodge at the entrance of his father's place at Dedham was bigger. He was the only passenger to alight, and no sooner was he out than the guard, like an overgrown mechanical toy, called out his "Pronto! Partenza!" blew his toy horn, and swung himself aboard again. The long train, with bitter metallic complaint at being obliged to go farther, drew past the little station, and rolled away toward a gap in the southern hills, far beyond which lies Tarento.

Taberman turned to the station master, a discouraged-looking individual who stood on the platform with his truncheon tucked under his arm, examining a batch of dispatches as if this were the first time such papers had ever come under his notice. Jerry's Italian vocabulary was limited to[Pg 168] some score of words, with a few expressions, such as dolce far niente and the like, more ornamental than useful. As, however, he could perceive no sign of any temples,—or town either, for the matter of that,—he determined to question the capo.

"Bonn giorno," he began with a painful sense of effort, but with a mild self-congratulatory thrill at having said something in Italian.

"Buon' giorno," responded the station master, turning a pair of dull eyes and an emaciated face from the dispatches to Taberman.

Jerry spoke French moderately well, and resolved to address the official in that tongue, in the hope that the Italian might understand.

"Cosa?" asked the Italian, obviously puzzled, as he stepped out of the sun into the shadow of the little station.

Conversation languished. Jerry felt himself pretty well baffled, yet he had no choice but to go on with the unpromising attempt to elicit information here, as no other human being was in sight.[Pg 169] He considered a moment, and then in an explosive tone, demanded:—

"Bruto Inglise!" murmured the capo under his breath. "Che volete?" he added aloud.

"What?" asked Jerry, again scared over the dubious boundary of his Italian into English.

"Non capisco," repeated the Italian morosely, wetting his dingy forefinger, and going over his papers for at least the third time.

"Damn it!" cried Jerry, in complete exasperation, "if you say that again I'll punch your head!"

The other started back in such obvious terror that Tab hastened to propitiate him by putting on quickly his most ingratiating smile, and nodding as if he had made a merry joke. The other seemed reassured, although he edged away a little, as if he were doubtful of the sanity of this foreign brute; and Tab fell again to the effort to rally all the words in his Italian vocabulary about one idea.

"Dove," he began in one grand final attempt to wring information out of this sullen and taciturn official, "dove"— He was so pleased with himself for having remembered the word that he came near forgetting all the rest, but with a desperate rally, he went blundering on. "Dove, I say, is—is—la via per i templi?"

The capo looked at him, apparently in mingled curiosity and disgust. Then he beckoned him to the edge of the platform on the other side of the station, whence stretched westward a ribbon of dust-heaped road.

As the capo responded to this speech not at all, Tab set out on the dusty road without more ado. The way was inches deep in loose, gray dust, and spiny cacti bristled on either hand. Jerry had not gone far before, turning a bend, he saw at no great distance ahead of him an arched gateway through which the road passed. The arch, broken and crumbled, was set in a ruined wall, which trailed away on either hand, now rising to the height of something like a dozen feet, now razed to the very ground.

Had Jerry been blessed with the education of his forefathers, instead of having brought out of school and college a hodgepodge smattering of physics and economics, he might have known and reflected that the wall he thus carelessly characterized had been standing some two thousand[Pg 171] years, and gloriously attested the puissance of old Rome. With no such thought, however, he passed beneath the crumbling gateway and continued his march. At some distance ahead he now perceived signs of life in the shape of a few dwellings.

As he looked at them he became aware of two horsemen, who were cantering toward him on the crest of the little slope made by the road just inside the old gateway. Their horses' hoofs stirred up light clouds of yellow dust. Even at first glance the riders showed themselves to be ruggedly dressed, and with something of a thrill Jerry noticed instantly that slung across their shoulders they carried carbines. Wild tales of brigands flashed confusedly through his brain, and especially a tale the Neapolitan guide had related of the capture and murder at this very place of an English gentleman and his wife. The guide had said that that was sixteen years ago, but the place seemed so lonely, so remote, Tab's ideas of rural Italy were so vague, the effect of the landscape and of these wild figures was so startling as, riding toward him, they stood out against the sky, that it was no wonder Jerry involuntarily cast a quick glance around to note the lay of the land and to see if any possible help were in sight in case of need.

The horsemen rode down to him on a lazy lope.[Pg 172] They were big, bronzed fellows, smoking cigarettes, and riding with their feet out of the stirrups. They nodded to him pleasantly and smiled, showing large white teeth. They had about them, these big fellows, a look so engaging that Tab was won at once, and the vague mist of his suspicions vanished like smoke in air. He grinned to himself at the idea of brigands.

Having found some one with whom he could talk, he at once began a lively conversation. He found the two men to be the custodians appointed by the government to look after the temples and to collect the fees of travelers. They explained that at this season it was extremely rare for a visitor to appear, and that they were therefore not particular about being exactly at their posts. They had heard some rumor of the discovery of antiques by peasants, and were setting out to investigate. They explained, however, that the chances of[Pg 173] finding out anything were very small; the peasants all held together, and would all lie for one another. Jerry inferred, moreover, that they were by no means anxious to make discoveries. It was part of their duty to investigate such a rumor, for the government claimed the right to have a hand in the disposal of any treasure-trove; but the custodians seemed to have a good deal of sympathy with the wretched peasants, who tried to conceal anything they might find, in order to sell it for a fraction of its value to any stray forestiere who might appear. Now that a visitor had come, one of the men went alone on this errand, and the custode who spoke French returned toward the temples, which were near at hand, that he might formally take Tab's lira at the gate.

The Italian walked his horse beside Taberman past the two or three ruinous and apparently deserted houses, and in a few minutes the pair came to where their road ended in a broad turnpike which ran at right angles to it. On the other side of this turnpike, a little distance to his left, Jerry saw the ruins of a couple of temples, and beyond them the sea. His guide disregarded them, and led him to the right hand, where, a hundred yards or so along the highway, they came to a square two-story building of gray rubble. On its dingy[Pg 174] front was painted in black letters the word "Osteria."

"V'là l'auberge," announced the jovial custodian. "If Michu is fatigued, he can get eggs and polenta within. The wine is rough, but not so bad as the water. This way, Michu."

And leaving his horse to crop the rank grass by the doorway, he strode into the building, Tab following.

The inn was a poor place, even for southern Italy. The floor was of trampled clay; the walls were unfinished within as without, but like the ceiling, from which hung bunches of garlic and black and dusty herbs, they were garnished with abundant cobwebs and a generous coating of soot and dirt. At the back of the room was a counter, above which a grimy sign announced the right of the proprietor to sell salt and tobacco. In the left-hand corner of the back of the place was one of the altar-like ranges of Italy, upon which glowed a minute heap of charcoal. Tab smiled to find himself recognizing its use from its resemblance to the cooking-places he had seen in the ruins of Pompeii, and reflected, with the superiority of a youth born in a young land, upon the conservatism which keeps its kitchen arrangements practically the same as they were two thousand years[Pg 175] ago. The room was lighted simply by the door through which the visitors had entered. Another doorway at the left simply yawned blackly like the mouth of a cavern. The furniture consisted of a small square table and three stools. Over the entire place was spread an appearance of squalor and neglect, depressing, but in key with the air of poverty and of deadness which had been more evident to Tab with every step he had taken in Pæstum.

The room was empty when they entered it, but after the custode had bellowed lustily once or twice for "Angelo," the innkeeper appeared suddenly. He was a little man doubled up as if with rheumatism, and with a face as yellow as a dried lemon. On seeing Taberman he croaked something to the custode, and bowed to his guest again and again, rubbing his hands and all but losing his crooked balance with each genuflection.

With the air of an archduke ordering a banquet for his retainers, Jerry's companion gave some rapid instructions to the innkeeper, told the Michu to make the place his own, and then departed to attend to his horse and other trifles, saying that he would be back in half an hour.

Tab seated himself on a stool to await his luncheon. His host puttered about the altar, [Pg 176]occasionally mumbling to himself, like the devotee of some Stygian power making sacrifice. Jerry was watching him with amusement, and wondering what would be the outcome of his incantations in the way of food, when on a sudden the doorway was darkened, and a man entered the room. At a glance Jerry saw that the newcomer was, like himself, a traveler. The stranger was of medium height, rather inclined, hardly to stoutness, but certainly to plumpness; he was well proportioned, with broad shoulders, but had a carriage curiously shuffling and insignificant. He held a stiff-brimmed straw hat in his hand, and Tab could see, where the outer light fell upon his crown, that his hair was slightly touched with gray. His face, Jerry decided, would have been handsome, had it not been marred by two deep lines from the nostrils to the corners of the mouth, which gave an appearance of sinister suspicion not without a hint of selfish cruelty. Except for a very silky mustache, he was clean-shaven.

The traveler threw Taberman a quick, almost furtive glance, and then, turning to the innkeeper, addressed that individual sharply in Italian. The crooked host bowed furiously, made apologetic and deprecatory gestures with the rapidity of a mountebank, skipped about in feverish [Pg 177]excitement, and jerked his head more and more frantically. The gentleman—for he seemed one—continued his objurgations unappeased by all these demonstrations, and ended by swearing roundly in English.

"I beg your pardon," he said in a curious sing-song voice with a markedly rising inflection, "but this brute has not prepared my luncheon. Do you mind sharing the table with me?"

"Not the least in the world," replied Jerry. "I'm sure it will give me great pleasure."

"Good," said the stranger. "I see you are an American," he flung out as an addition.

"Thank God I'm not," remarked the stranger. His voice showed no trace of truculence; it was murmured as if to himself. Before Jerry had time to explode the gentleman continued: "I'm English. What does that mean? Celt, Angle, Saxon, and ages of tradition—ages of it. By the bye, you mustn't mind the things I say, you know; your pernicious self-respect would force you to resent them if you did. May I ask your name?"

"My name is Taberman," Jerry replied, [Pg 178]struggling with a mingling of indignation, amazement, and amusement, "Jerrold Taberman. I live in Boston."

"Dedham rather," returned the other easily. "I knew a Taberman when I was in college. Curious chap. I— My name's Wrenmarsh, Gordon Wrenmarsh. Fact is, I was an American, but I couldn't stand the place. Bostonians have good manners; but New York is a vile spot. So is Boston; that is— Well, perhaps you see the difference."

The tricks this extraordinary man played with his voice were astonishing, and as he went on talking he quite dizzied Tab by the cryptic, baffling nature of his nervous speeches. He had, too, a curious and disconcerting habit of displaying great emotional intensity—opening his eyes to their greatest extent and distending his nostrils—in dealing with trifles of the slightest consequence; while whenever, as happened once or twice in the course of the luncheon, they touched even remotely on subjects of really vital importance, the extraordinary Mr. Wrenmarsh fairly oozed indifference. His conduct was so thoroughly strange that once or twice Jerry felt a puzzled doubt whether the man were entirely sane.

"I'll tell you," said Mr. Wrenmarsh, when[Pg 179] their slight repast was over, "we'll do the temples together. I've been camping in this abominable hole of an osteria for over a week, so that I know them pretty well. One of them is in my period, moreover."

Jerry looked at him as if to ask if the stranger claimed to be a contemporary of the ruins.

"Yes; you see, I'm an archæologist—collector, in fact. Hello; here's the custode."

The custodian entered as Mr. Wrenmarsh spoke, and Taberman had somehow the idea that the look he gave the Englishman was not very friendly.

"Well," responded the Italian, "if Michu is ready to see the temples, I am waiting."

"Bien," responded Jerry; and then turning to the archæologist, he asked, "Are you coming?"

"Of course," the Englishman answered. "Never mind this custode; he's only an ignorant pig."

Jerry secretly felt that, ignorant or not, the big Italian, with his merry face and open smile, would be a much more companionable guide than the eccentric collector; but without comment he paid[Pg 180] the reckoning, and they set out. They went down the road to a gate, paid a lira each to the custode, and entered upon a field of ploughed land, planted with maize. The Italian, who had more and more the air of not liking the Englishman, made some remarks to the effect that Michu l'Anglaise was a very learned man, and one much better fitted to explain the marvels of ancient architecture than he, a plain man who had had to pick up his education in the army. On these grounds he excused himself and went into a little lodge, while the others walked on to the temples which stood before them, ideal in their beauty.

The two pushed their way across the field and entered the nearest temple. Jerry's was not an impressionable nature, and in one way to him these august colonnades meant little; yet despite a certain sophomoric exuberance which he had never outgrown, his nature was fundamentally too refined to fail to respond to the silent grandeur of this solemn harmony in stone. The roofless enclosure, after all the indignities a score of centuries had been able to inflict upon it, possessed still a nobility and a beauty which seemed almost personal and conscious. One feels in seeing the ruins at Pæstum as if a certain inherent and indestructible loveliness would pervade the very stones[Pg 181] were they thrown down to the last one; and while the columns stand, the place is one to make the visitor catch his breath with admiration and almost with awe. Taberman did not analyze, and indeed he was instinctively so occupied in concealing from his companion how profoundly he was impressed as to have little attention left for introspection; but he was more deeply stirred than he could have conceived possible.

He walked about with Mr. Wrenmarsh, who talked along in his curious voice, expatiating upon styles and orders, influence and epochs, with all sorts of things of which Jerry understood at best not more than a quarter; until at last, instead of going on to the neighboring temple, the strangely assorted pair sat down on the western steps of the ruin through which they had come. Taberman looked away westward, where the rim of the sea shone like a fillet of molten silver. For some time neither spoke; but at length Mr. Wrenmarsh broke in upon Tab's train of thought with a question.

Taberman explained that he had come over from America in a yacht. It is to be feared that it was vanity which led him to make the unlucky[Pg 182] addition that he was in command of her until his friend should rejoin him at Naples.

"Ah," commented the archæologist, with a new appearance of interest; "you're cruising."

The spell of the temple was upon him, and he had no inclination to talk. He was conscious of a half-defined desire to have this stranger take himself off, and not bother him further with questions.

"And what do you suppose I am doing here?" queried the collector in a tone of almost fierce intensity.

"Why," Jerry responded rather absently, "I supposed you were studying or something."

"Why, yes, to be sure I am; haven't I told the custode so?" chuckled Mr. Wrenmarsh. His laughter was as extraordinary as his speech and manner. He would double up as if with a sort of a spasm and snigger gastrically. "But that's not all," he went on, as Jerry turned to look at him questioningly; "that's not all. I'm doing something else. I'm waiting."

"Yes, help; waiting. Collecting is nothing but[Pg 183] waiting anyway,—waiting for news, waiting for funds, waiting for auctions, waiting for old countesses to die, waiting for some fool of a peasant to discover something; waiting, waiting, waiting all along the line. It's the man who waits with his ears and eyes open and his mouth shut that gets what he wants. He's the man."

He was sympathetic by nature, and this extraordinary individual had aroused not only his curiosity, but in some mysterious manner stimulated him to a desire to be of service. He had come to Pæstum for amusement. He felt that in meeting the collector he had been amply repaid. The unwonted emotion which had been stirred by the temple melted in his boyish heart before the warmer human interest which the collector aroused, and it was perhaps with some unrealized relief at getting back to more familiar levels of feeling that he now began to enter into the affairs of his companion. It came over him that he was being appealed to, and he was ready to take the position that if any aid of his could bring relief to Mr. Wrenmarsh, that eccentric gentleman should no longer need to go on waiting for help.

"I'll tell you the whole business," said the[Pg 184] archæologist, in a sudden burst of frankness. "You look trustworthy. I've been here ten days—waiting. I've written, of course, for help; but it doesn't seem to come. Three weeks ago I was in Naples, and heard—no matter how—that somewhere down here a lot of good stuff had turned up. I kept coming down here daily until, by dint of discreet questions—discretion's the backbone of the game—I found out what had happened. A peasant here had been spading over some ground. One day the earth sunk suddenly under him, and down he went into a hole. He found, as soon as he could get his wits together, that he had broken through the roof of an ancient cella of some sort. He got out without much trouble, pulled himself together, and did what any peasant would know enough to do,—covered the place with brush and dirt so that no news of the thing should get to the custodi. Then he went on with his spading."

"Of course," he responded. "If he had let his curiosity get the better of him, or his tongue wag, he'd be a good deal poorer than he is at present. They are stupid louts, these peasants, but they do[Pg 185] learn enough not to take the government into their confidence when they find anything. They know that they'd get nothing out of it if they did. Besides, they are as stolid as buffaloes. They can wait well enough."

"But what did he find?" demanded Taberman, his interest thoroughly aroused by this tale of treasure-trove, which appealed to every boyish and every adventurous fibre in him.

"He went by night with a lantern and a couple of panniers. He filled his baskets twice, filled them with priceless things in a perfect condition—beautiful kylixes and glass bowls. There's one that measures at least half a metre across the top. Think of that! Why, it's the finest glass I've ever seen or heard of! It's the finest glass there is!"

Jerry twisted his head to look up at the tall columns and broken pediment above him, on the pinkish-gray stones of which the afternoon sun fell with loving warmth.

"I kept at him till I wormed the whole business out of him," the collector answered, "and I bought his things—damn him!"

He brought out the objurgation with amazing vigor; then stopped and stared gloomily before him.

"More!" exploded the collector, disgust and indignation in his face. "Man, I've got hold of a collection that is all but unique! More! Don't you see—I can't get away with it! Piece by piece I could run it out of the country, but I don't dare to leave anything behind me. If only my men were at hand—but they're not, they're not. One's off the track in the T road, and the other's in America."

He passed his hand before his eyes with a gesture so expressive that it was even more impassioned than his tone.

Taberman was moved, both by the enthusiasm of this man for his work and by the exciting romance of the finding of this treasure. He knew vaguely of the laws that forbade the taking of works of art out of Italy and Greece, but he had no conception that they were strictly enforced. It gave him a new sensation to be thus brought in contact[Pg 187] with the actual working of a statute which was aimed to prevent a man from removing his own possessions from one country to another. He had been too well brought up under a high protective tariff to have any moral scruples about smuggling anything. A Mugwump atmosphere had acted upon the natural inclination of youth to defy authority, and had bred in Jerry the feeling that smuggling, however little its true nature was appreciated in high places, was really in its essence a maligned virtue. In the present instance, moreover, the boyish feeling that what one owns is his to do what he chooses with despite all fiats of principalities, potentates, and powers, helped to make the idea of this especial case of an attempt to defy the laws one of particular merit. He gave himself eagerly to considering how it could be done.

"Can't you take your traps to Naples, and ship 'em from there?" he at last demanded of the archæologist.

"You don't understand, I'm afraid," replied the other. "My reputation in itself compels me to lie close. Besides that, there's the awkward problem of the octroi and the export examinations. I couldn't take the things into Naples without running into the one, or out of it without getting afoul of the other. They'd be no end sharp in[Pg 188] examining anything I tried to pass. I'm hideously notorious in Italy." His pride in this last statement was entirely evident, but Jerry was impressed by the deeds of archæological daring which were implied in such a reputation. "I simply can't get these things away without help," he continued. "I've written and telegraphed to every mortal I can count on,—there are only five or six of them,—and not one of them can help me out just now. Meanwhile I starve on eggs and polenta, under the suspicious eyes of the custodi—damn 'em! They'd have got me a week ago if they'd had any brains."

"Upon my word," cried Jerry, the idea suddenly striking him for the first time, "it's extraordinary you should tell me all this, and I a stranger."

"My helping you!" ejaculated Tab in amazement. "What in the world have I to do with the business?"

"You practically said so," returned the collector. "At least your face did." He looked at Jerry, and then turned away to the brown expanse of plain in a manner so stricken and so reproachful that Taberman could not help feeling convicted[Pg 189] of consummate wickedness. "I counted on you," he added, in a tone of profoundest pathos.

Jerry was completely nonplussed. He felt that he was being played with; he was angrily conscious that the whole affair was no concern of his, and that he had no business to be dragged into it. Yet he felt no less but rather more keenly that he could not endure the imputation of having encouraged a man in difficulties with a hope of assistance and of having then refused to fulfill them. His youthful blood, moreover, was stirred by the flavor of adventure which came alluringly to his inner sense. For a moment there was a strained silence, and then it was broken by Tab.

"You've mistaken my interest for something else, I'm afraid," he said, trying to speak lightly, and feeling that he was making a mess of it. "It never even occurred to me that I could help you out of this blessed muss; and I don't see that there's anything I can do anyway, except to keep mum about it. Of course that I'd do anyway."

"No use," retorted the archæologist. "If you can help me and won't, after my taking you into my confidence, you—you ruin me."

"Hmm," Jerry observed rather coldly, "that's too subtle for me. I fail to see it in that light. You're no worse off than you were before."

"Pardon me, Mr. Taberman; but you don't see the catena logica by which I arrive at my conclusions!" Mr. Wrenmarsh, both in speech and gestures, was momentarily growing more and more theatrical. "Suppose you should, knowing my story and the law against taking works of art out of the country, tell my case to the police. What then?"

"It would be the trick of a blackguard, of course," Jerry replied promptly, "but"—

"Momento!" interrupted the other, holding up his hand. "Now suppose things to be as they are, and you learn that the custodi are on my track"—

"There! You see!" Wrenmarsh said, with a gesture which seemed to appeal to all humanity to bear witness that in whatever he had said he had been completely right. "Suppose, now, that you have—with perfect security to yourself, mind—a chance to give me a friendly word of warning, and don't do it. What then?"

"Why," Tab answered, feeling every moment more and more as if he were being snarled up in[Pg 191] a web, "it would be, in such a case as you suppose, a pretty shabby trick, of course. At the same time"—

"Wait a bit," cried Mr. Wrenmarsh, again interrupting him, and growing visibly more excited still; "wait a bit. I want you to consider the present case. You say yourself the secret is leaking out, and of course every moment makes my danger greater. With practically no bother and with absolute safety you can help me out of the whole tangle. If you don't, I shall be caught; I shall lose this incomparable treasure and all the money I paid for it,—and that's no small sum, let me tell you,—and all because you, my forlorn hope that I've confided in in rebus angustis, won't devote twenty-four hours of your time to saving your own self-respect. By Jove!" he cried, starting to his feet, "if you don't help me you betray me as much as if you went straight to the custodi with my story."

"Sit tight!" cried Jerry, startled by the violence of the other's demonstration. "Sit tight!"

"Will you help me?" demanded Mr. Wrenmarsh, his brown eyes blazing. "Will you help—help me to dodge these Italian robbers and get my things—my antiquities that I have paid for with hard cash—out of this rotten country?[Pg 192] Will you help, or will you desert me, and take sides with those that are waiting to rob me?"

"By George, I've a mind to try!" incautiously ejaculated Jerry, for the moment carried off his balance by the enthusiasm and the persuasive personality of the other.

"Good man!" cried the antiquarian in a rapture; "good man! I knew you would. We'll beat 'em! I"—

"Hold your horses a bit!" put in Tab hastily, taken aback by the force Wrenmarsh gave to his unconsidered words. "Go slow, please. I may have"—

"Oh, that's all right," returned the collector impetuously. "We'll take a turn down the road, and plan it all out. I can think better when I'm walking—sort of peripatetic, you see. Ha, ha!—and it'll look queer if you don't go down to see the other temple. Come on."

Mr. Wrenmarsh made his way toward the road, trampling impetuously over the wild thyme and the acanthus, while Taberman followed in a mixture of amused amazement and indignation, but with a full determination to expostulate. He found, however, that he was not allowed any opportunity for remonstrance. Every sentence he began was choked off with some fresh [Pg 193]exclamation of gratitude from the collector, or by some burst of delight that out of the skies, as it were, he had fallen to be the savior of the perplexed archæologist. By the time they had walked around the third temple, which stands at some distance from the other two, Taberman had given up protesting. He merely listened to his companion's bewildering flow of talk, and felt as if he were being drawn into a whirlpool. He was helped by his own secret delight at the thought of having a share in a real adventure, and perhaps pushed on by a boyish shame at the idea of seeming to draw back and to fail another in an extremity. He had not much chance to speak,—but he soon found that what he did say was in the line of his having accepted the position into which Mr. Wrenmarsh had been endeavoring to force him.

As they returned from the third temple they found the custode beside the fountain which stood across the road from the inn. He was trying to teach his horse to shake hands.

"Ah, Michu," the Italian said as they came up to him; "I hope you were pleased with the temples."

Seeing his companion fee the man, he in turn slipped a coin into the brown hand. His conscience gave him a little twinge at the thought of plotting to outwit this frank, big creature; but he reflected instantly that the matter was entirely impersonal, and it was not in a tariff-hating youth like Jerry to have any scruples over tricking the Italian government in a matter of this sort.

"How long would it take you to sail down here from Naples?" asked Wrenmarsh, as they took the road toward the station.

Mr. Wrenmarsh wrinkled his brows and quickened his pace. Those uncomfortable lines from the nostrils to the corners of his mouth deepened, and he half shut his eyes. After a little meditation he spoke again.

"Very good," he said decisively. "This is the way we'll put the thing through. You go back to Naples now. Be off the shore here by eleven o'clock, and send a boat ashore for me and my boxes. They're rather big, and fairly heavy; and they've got to be handled tenderly. I couldn't get proper means of packing the things, and I've had to take what there was. Once we get the stuff[Pg 195] on board, we must run back so as to be in Naples by sunrise. Does that suit you?"

"You seem to be running this cruise," laughed Jerry. "I suppose it's all right; but there's one thing I must know. There's no chance of getting the yacht into a scrape, is there?"

"You're sure?" Tab insisted. "It wouldn't be exactly pleasant to get my friend's boat confiscated, you know, or into any sort of a mess of that kind."

"Bosh!" retorted Mr. Wrenmarsh brusquely. "You may make your mind easy. The worst that could happen is that I might lose my things. But we must walk a bit faster, if you're to get your train."

"It's better to say to-morrow night," Tab remarked, as they took their way down the road and beneath the old Roman arch. "You see I might be late in getting back, and"—

"Of course, of course," interrupted the collector. "You can't count on getting here to-night. To-morrow night, of course."

At the station the capo was standing almost where Jerry had left him, looking at the hills. When the two came up, he merely turned his head and nodded.

"The facchino must be doing ticket-duty," the collector remarked. "We'll go in and get your ticket."

A tall, yellow, broken-looking man was behind the little wicket in the ticket-office, puttering with some sort of repair work on a shelf. Mr. Wrenmarsh addressed him in Italian. The man took a blue and green ticket from a pigeon-hole on the wall, placed it under the stamp, on the knob of which he then brought down his fist with a nervous bang. Instantly he broke out into a violent exclamation.

"He is cursing quite well," returned the archæologist coolly. "His hand was unsteady, and he's broken the stamp. He wants to know what will become of him when the capo finds the punch is broken."

"Tell him he ought to take some quinine," suggested Taberman, genuinely sorry for the wretched-looking fellow.

Mr. Wrenmarsh interpreted, but the Italian replied in a tone of mingled despair and contempt, and went out to show the broken punch to his superior.

"Says he took twenty-four grains this noon," answered Wrenmarsh, chuckling as if it were funny.

"You say that?" returned the other. "You may remember that I'm tied to it till I can get my things out."

They went out to the platform, and at the moment the train came in. Jerry took his seat in an empty compartment, and the collector stood outside the window.

"I can't see that I should," Taberman returned; "but wind and weather permitting, I suppose I shall."

"I can't attempt to argue with you here," the other said; "but mind—you'll come."

"I show a light," the collector vociferated, running along the platform beside the now moving train, and repeating the details he had already arranged. "A white light."

"Right-o!" shouted Taberman, as the train bore him beyond the reach of further communication.

He threw himself back into the corner of the compartment, and all the way to Naples he kept wondering over and over what there was about Mr. Wrenmarsh that had induced him to promise to have a share in a scheme so mad.

Chapter Eleven A LONE-HAND GAME

On the morning after his return Jerry rose at an hour comfortably late, took a swim, shaved, and having finished his breakfast, sat down to write a short note to Jack. As the captain might put in an appearance at any moment now, Taberman did not wish to go away from Naples without leaving some explanation and a hint as to his whereabouts. He found the letter somewhat difficult to write, since to give Jack a satisfactory reason for his errand to Pæstum, especially in brief space, was no easy task. He had been more or less troubled ever since his preposterous promise to Mr. Wrenmarsh; but now that he was confronted with the difficulty of making his course appear rational to Jack, he felt himself so completely a fool that he groaned as he wrote, and then tore up the note, with a curse. On the whole, he decided to say no more than that he had gone to take a short run down the coast, as he was bored at Naples.

He went ashore with the note himself, and leaving the cutter at the quay to wait for him, he set out on foot for the Hôtel du Vesuve, where Jack was to report on his arrival. The morning was already well advanced, and the heat was becoming fervent; but Jerry, freshened by his recent swim, went blithely on his way. At the hotel he said to the porter that he wished to leave a letter for a gentleman who was soon to arrive, and produced his note. The official glanced at the superscription, and observed that the traveler was already there.

"He came on the night train from Rome," replied the porter, whose English was almost as good as that of Taberman. "He came on the train that gets in at half-past eight in the morning. He is escorting two ladies. They are now at breakfast."

Tab stood for a moment plunged in perplexity. This unexpected arrival of Jack made his scheme of aiding Wrenmarsh dreadfully difficult, and perhaps even impossible. He felt himself pledged, however, and he reflected that whatever were Jack's plans the captain would hardly hinder him from keeping a promise which he had made on the[Pg 201] strength of the supposition that the Merle was to be in his hands a full month. Jack had come back before his time, but Tab said to himself that this would surely make no difference in his fulfilling his obligations to the archæologist.

He asked for the breakfast party, and was shown into the carefully shaded dining-room where they were seated. Hearty greetings followed, and he sat and talked with them while they finished their repast.

All three looked a bit fagged. Even Mrs. Fairhew, accustomed as she was to European travel of all sorts, had dark circles under her keen eyes. She was dressed, not according to her wont in black, but in a soft gray which well set off her brilliant complexion, so that in spite of the look of fatigue she appeared much as she had when the travelers had met at Nice. Jack was clad in a suit of white linen, with a collarless jacket such as is worn by naval officers in hot climates. His hair had been recently cut, and in such a manner as to cause each separate spike along the parting to stand up in stiff defiance. Jerry politely told him he looked more like a criminal than usual, but Miss Marchfield protested rather indignantly. In Katrine Jerry seemed to detect more alteration than in the others. Her air had grown more [Pg 202]sedate, as if the widening of her mental horizon had, even in these few weeks, given her a new maturity and self-poise. The heat had perhaps told on her more than on the others, but in spite of some appearance of fatigue she had an air of joyous alertness which showed her buoyant and happy.

"How is it that you are here so soon?" Taberman asked, after a minute of general talk. "I thought you'd be late, if anything."

"There was a good deal of sickness at Rome," Jack answered, "and when a man died of typhoid fever in the very hotel we were at, it seemed time to move on."

"Only fancy," she said,—"we knew nothing about it until he had been dead an hour. They told us after breakfast yesterday morning. It was rather unpleasant, you'll grant."

"It must have been ghastly," agreed Tab, "but I hope you'll do better in Naples. It has at least the advantage of being on the sea."

"And of being one of the dirtiest places in Italy," she responded grimly. "However, I'm not one to borrow trouble, and we'll trust in the sea air."

"You're really becoming amphibious, Mr. Taberman," Katrine observed, with a smile. "I half[Pg 203] fancy that if you were blindfolded you could smell your way to the water like a turtle."

"The man that piloted the Merle from North Haven to the Island said he went by smell," responded Jerry.

He caught Jack's eye as he spoke, and cast down his glance in confusion. Mrs. Fairhew regarded him curiously.

"He didn't hear the remark," Jack put in hastily. "Uncle Randolph wouldn't have approved of that sort of work, I rather fancy."

Jerry made a grimace, and echoed the sentiment, but he added that Dave was really an excellent sailor, and that personally he'd trust the fellow's sense of smell sooner than he would the skill of most pilots. The dangerous moment passed without further allusion to the President, and the talk turned to other matters.

"Is there any one here we know?" inquired Mrs. Fairhew. "I suppose it is hardly possible at this time of year."

"I don't believe there is," answered Tab, "unless," he added, a sudden thought striking him, "you know where Pæstum is?"

"Certainly. I've been looking forward with[Pg 204] dread to dragging Katrine down there to see the temples, though really the time of year ought to excuse us."

"Well, there's a sort of Anglo-American lunatic archæologist down there, named Wrenmarsh. Have you ever heard of him? He has relatives in Boston, I understood him."

Mrs. Fairhew set down the coffee-cup she was just raising to her lips, and looked at Jerry with a keen glance in which amusement and surprise seemed to be mingled.

"Gordon Wrenmarsh at Pæstum! Well, the world is small, and he might be anywhere,—at least anywhere where he was not expected to be. Did you never hear of him? But no, you wouldn't; you're too young. He is one of my contemporaries, and he has been on this side of the water for ever so long."

"Is it possible?" Jerry cried gallantly. "I shouldn't have suspected that he was so young!"

"Nobody can mistake you when you wish to pay a compliment," she said, with a smile that had in it a tinge of satire. "But did you really see Gordon Wrenmarsh? I haven't heard of him for years. What is he doing? At one time he was a[Pg 205] friend of Mr. Fairhew; they were in the same class at Harvard."

She showed a genuine interest, Jerry thought; and at any rate this seemed to him a good time to prepare Jack for the plan evolved between him and the archæologist, so he launched forth on the narrative of his visit to Pæstum. He did not particularize, but he did not hesitate to say that the archæologist had chanced upon a rich find which he was guarding in the hope of running it safely out of the country.

"Why shouldn't he take it out of the country if he's bought it?" Katrine asked, with an air of interest.

"Why, if it's his, he has a right to do what he pleases, I should think," she responded.

"What a horrid, unjust law!" she protested. "If they were mine, I'd take them out; you may be sure of that."

Jerry was secretly so pleased at this passage that he endeavored to keep the conversation in the same line by inquiring of Mrs. Fairhew further [Pg 206]particulars about the strange creature with whom he had made tryst.

"I'm not able to tell you that," she returned, "as I have no means of knowing how much he has changed; but when I knew him he was the most extraordinary creature. He was always offended if people didn't notice his eccentricities, and if they did he jibed at their provincialism. He said he had to become an Englishman because our civilization was so crude, and he never forgave Bostonians for being so little concerned by his change of nationality."

"You seem to have picked up rather a choice acquaintance, Jerry," observed Jack good-naturedly.

"Oh, Mr. Wrenmarsh became utterly impossible," Mrs. Fairhew continued. "He really had a lot of ability, and I'm told that now he's done some remarkable things in getting antiques for the British Museum. His own people couldn't get on with him at all."

"What an extraordinary creature he must be!" commented Katrine. "Did you take him for a wild man, Mr. Taberman, when you found him wandering about among the ruins of Pæstum?"

"No," Jerry returned, rather regretting that he had continued the talk about Mr. Wrenmarsh. "He came into the little hovel of an inn there while I was trying to get something to eat."

"Well, anyway I hope he'll get his things safe," she added. "They're his, and the government has no right to interfere with him."

Breakfast being ended, the ladies betook themselves to their rooms to rest after the fatigues of their night of travel.

"If I were a billionaire," Mrs. Fairhew observed, "I would never go anywhere by night except on my own private car. All sleepers are an abomination, and I hate the thought of who may have been in the compartment when I have to sleep in it. I hope we shall see you at dinner, Mr. Taberman?"

"Thank you," Jerry answered, "but I have business to-night. I assure you I regret it tremendously."

"Well," the lady returned over her shoulder as she departed, "at least we shall expect to see you to-morrow; and I hope you'll leave us Mr. Castleport.

Jerry turned quickly to Jack the moment they were alone, with a look of earnestness and concern in his face.

"Cap'n," he said urgently, "come somewhere where we can talk, will you? We've got heaps to say, and my time's precious."

"Jerry," cried the other, catching him by the arm, "something has happened to the Merle!"

"Hurry?" echoed Jack, following him in evident disquiet; "what in the world's up? It can't be mutiny, and if the yacht's all right, I don't see"—

"I'll explain," Taberman responded. "I know a jolly little place just round the corner. Come on."

Jack suffered himself to be led to a small café which bore the rather incongruously ambitious name Albergo del Sole, and which displayed on the yellowish wall above its entrance a rising sun, blood-red and most magnificent as to its rays. At one of the little tables which covered the sidewalk before this establishment, the pair took their places. Tab produced his cigarette-case and ordered a glass of vermouth as he offered his friend a smoke. Jack, with a hardly perceptible compression of the[Pg 209] lips which showed that he was controlling his impatience and waiting for Tab to speak, rolled his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger to loosen it, tapped it on the table-top, and lighted it with great deliberation. Jerry did the same, but with evident nervousness.

"Well, you see—it's this way," Tab answered. "Of course I haven't really done anything yet, but I think I'm bound to, and if you don't think so—Well, you can see it'll be devilish hard on me as well as him."

"It must be something pretty bad, Jerry," he said, "if you don't dare tell me what it is."

"Why," he said, more at his ease, "it's that damned archæologist, that bedlamite Wrenmarsh I was talking about at the hotel. Well, not having anything else to do, I went down to Pæstum to see the temples and kill time, and I fell into his clutches. I had a lot of talk with him, or he did[Pg 210] with me. He knows a pile about the temples, and he did the showman in great shape. Incidentally he told me all about his own affairs. I didn't ask him, mind you. He just did it off his own bat. I couldn't help that, now could I?"

"I don't see how you could," Jack assented; "and no more do I see why you should want to."

"Why, a chap down there—a Dago peasant, you know—has turned up a dreadful mess of stuff Wrenmarsh has bought. I told you all that at breakfast."

"You see, Wrenmarsh turned to and bought the whole slithering lot of it, and he's just crazy over it; but as I said at the hotel, he's up against the government, and he doesn't know how under the heavens he's going to get the loot out of Italy."

"Great Scott, Tab, did you undertake to run his things out of the country for him? In the Merle, too?" cried Jack, at last showing some consternation.

"It's not quite so bad as that," Jerry protested; "but I did tell him I'd help him out of Pæstum and up here. Naples is all I agreed to. That's all he asked."

"Jack, old man," Jerry said pleadingly, "I've been an awful ass, but the way that beastly Wrenmarsh snarled me up with his talk was perfectly inconceivable. He'd have talked the tail off a brass monkey. He kept appealing to my sense of honor and heaven knows what, until I felt that I'd be a perfect cad not to help him."

"That's all right, Tab," Jack answered thoughtfully. "It's only the Merle—I should hate awfully to get her into a mess."

"Well, if that's so, there's no great harm done, old man. What are you worrying over?"

"I'm not worrying at all, Jacko, if you don't object to my keeping my word. Just continue my letters of marque until to-morrow. I promised him I'd go down this afternoon. You will be in command, of course, now you're here; but I'd hate to think of the poor wretch waiting down there in the marshes for me—it's an awful place for malaria!—and I not coming at all."

"Oh, I shan't interfere," Jack said quickly. "I had made up my mind to stay on shore one night more anyway, and I really gave you the yacht[Pg 212] till the twentieth. You shall run this thing yourself; but, by Jove, to think of Uncle Randolph's Merle in business like that!"

"We started out to be pirates anyway," laughed Jerry, "and we haven't lived up to our reputation so far. Well, I'll try it. I shall be rid of the beggar by ten o'clock to-morrow, wind and weather permitting. It's awful good of you, old man. I thought you'd think I was a bally-ass to let myself be bamboozled that way; but when he was talking to me I felt as if he was being awfully bully-ragged, and I ought to help him out."

"Of course," was Jack's response. "Didn't you notice how Katrine had exactly the same feeling, just from your telling about it?"

Tab felt like winking to himself, but he preserved a grave countenance, and only asked,—

"Oh, that 's simple enough. I'll tell her you wanted to visit Pæstum again, and you can say afterward that you ran across Wrenmarsh and brought him up to Naples. Twig it?"

He sprang from his chair with animation, greatly relieved that the captain had not prevented him from carrying out his plan. As Jack[Pg 213] rose also, Jerry laid his hand affectionately on his shoulder.

"Nonsense. It's a mighty little thing to do for you, when you came across the Atlantic for me."

They paid the reckoning, and made their way to the quay, where for an hour and a half the boat had been waiting for Jerry. The men were lolling about in the stray corners of shade available, smoking and sleepily exchanging occasional remarks; but at the sight of the captain they woke up at once.

The others followed his example with alacrity, and Jack could not but be gratified by the unmistakable pleasure they showed at seeing him again.

"How are you, boys?" he said cheerily. "Glad to see you all. You seem to be in fighting trim, the whole lot of you."

"We're bang up, sir," responded Dave, with a grin. "'Tain't the kind o' weather we left home in, sir."

"Not exactly," Jack responded laughingly, as[Pg 214] he took his place in the stern-sheets; "but I hope you don't miss the fog too much. Oars!"

Jack stayed on the Merle for an hour and a half, reading the log and exchanging with Jerry all the news that either could rake up. Gonzague made errands into the cabin evidently for the purpose of feasting his eyes on his master, and beamed with delight at every word Castleport spoke to him. When the old man found that the captain had not come to remain, he looked so doleful that Castleport rallied him about not liking Tab as a skipper.

"Eet ees not dat," Gonzague responded, with eloquent hands and shoulders; "he ees fine as de seelk, but—but Mistaire Taberman he ees not zee capataine you."

Jerry was anxious to make an early start for Pæstum, as the wind was light, so Jack took his leave with hearty wishes for a prosperous run. Jerry went with him to the steps.

"By the way, Jack," he asked in an undertone, as the captain was about to descend to take his place in the cutter, "are congratulations in order?"

Castleport looked away from his friend toward where, across the bay, in a dim haze of purple, stood Capri. Then he glanced quickly into Jerry's eyes.

He ran down the steps to the cutter. Gonzague himself had taken the boat-hook to hold the craft steady. Castleport put his hand kindly on the old man's shoulder.

"Good-by, Gonzague," he said. "I'm coming aboard for keeps to-morrow. Good-by, Jerry."

It lacked a quarter of an hour to twelve that night when the Merle hove to a cable's length off Pæstum. The wind had freshened at sundown, and was blowing a smart breeze from the west. Jerry had the cutter lowered, and, leaving Gonzague in charge, with stringent orders to keep the yacht lying where she was, had himself pulled toward the shore. The men had no notion what was going on, but they obeyed orders with a prompt alacrity which showed that they felt that something of unusual import was in this business. When the cutter was within about a hundred feet of the shore, Tab ordered the men to lie on their oars, and keep watch for a light. In silence and utter darkness, for though the stars were shining there was no moon, they tossed about in the black[Pg 216] troughs of the sea for twenty minutes. Then Dave uttered a guarded exclamation.

"Lay her head for it, and pull!" commanded Jerry, feeling as if he were in a pirate novel. "No noise, mind!"

The light had appeared for an instant some two or three hundred feet up the shore from the point off which the cutter lay rolling. They pulled quietly for the spot, the oars sounding softly, the water lapping the bows of the boat, and the wind bringing to their ears the muffled rote as of a sand beach.

For a minute they rolled in darkness as before, and then again sighted the signal, this time straight in shore. Jerry felt his heart beat as he gave the order to run in, and a consciousness of romantic adventure, lawless and wild, was like a sweet and exhilarating flavor in his mouth. Such a deed on his native shores would have had an atmosphere of secret villany about it, but here, in alien waters, on a foreign coast, under the darkness of night, the romantic side was intensified a thousand-fold. A whimsical feeling flitted through the[Pg 217] back of his head that he ought to be dressed differently for such an occasion; that he should have had a shaggy black beard, a red sash stuck full of pistols, and half a dozen cutlasses disposed promiscuously about his person. He was not without a fleeting consciousness that some time he might at home, to the old crowd of college boys, find a keen joy in telling of this night, and—But the light flashed out again, this time so near that the cutter lay full in the middle of the dark, fire-sprinkled path it illumined; and Jerry's entire mind was called back to the business in hand. He could in the light see the cheeks of the men in front of him as they swayed with their rowing, the brass rowlocks of the cutter, and the dripping blades of the oars. He strained his eyes toward the land, but was blinded by the glare into which he looked; and on the instant a voice, eager but subdued, hailed from the shore some twenty feet away.

"Here all right," answered Jerry. "Eyes in the boat!" he added sharply to the men, every one of whom except Dave had turned to look ashore. "Three good strokes now: Stroke! Stroke! Stroke!... Let her run!"

The nose of the cutter ground on a sand-beach; the bowsman sprang ashore with the painter and[Pg 218] held her, while Jerry clambered forward, steadying himself with a hand on the shoulder of the rowers. On leaping to the land, he was confronted by Mr. Wrenmarsh. That gentleman shifted the lantern he held from his right hand to his left, and shook hands with Taberman fervently.

"You're just in time," he said hurriedly. "We haven't a second to lose. The boxes are right here on the edge of the grass. Come on with your men. It'll take four of them for that biggest box."

Jerry called the four men who were nearest, and telling the rest to stand by, he hurried up the beach. In the sand, by the light of the lantern with which the archæologist came after him, he saw the print of wheels leading up to a pile of rude wooden cases. Three of them were of moderate size, but the fourth looked to Tab huge in the semi-darkness.

"Don't kick it!" Wrenmarsh responded quickly and sharply. "It's only about a metre square and half as deep. I couldn't make it any smaller."

"We may lose it overboard on the way to the Merle," he remarked cruelly. Then without heeding the dismayed exclamation of the collector, he[Pg 219] ordered the men to take that first. "Put it as far astern as you can," he said. "I'm afraid you'll have to wade in with it."

"For God's sake hurry," cried Wrenmarsh. "I know that beastly carter has put the custodi up to the job by this time. Only don't drop that case!" he added, running along by the side of the bearers with the lantern swinging wildly to and fro and bumping against his legs.

The case was evidently pretty heavy, and the men breathed deep as they carried it across the loose sand. By dint of the men's wading in beside the cutter the big box was safely deposited in the stern-sheets, and the sailors went back for a new load. A second box was stowed without trouble, but as the two others, which were fortunately the smallest, were being lifted by two men each, Wrenmarsh clutched Taberman by the arm.

Not more than a hundred yards away on the beach to the southward was an advancing lantern. Suddenly it stopped.

The men, spurred on by Wrenmarsh, were fairly running across the sand, and Tab skurried along with them toward the boat.

"Hurry! Hurry!" was the breathless response of Wrenmarsh. "It's the custodi and the police—those cursed carabinieri! I told you the carter'd sell me out."

It was only a minute before the men had reached the boat, and hurriedly stowed the boxes they carried. Taberman and Wrenmarsh scrambled in, and Jerry, sitting in a distorted and cramped position behind the big box, got hold of the lines. The men pushed off, and got into their places anyhow. Just as Tab opened his lips to order the men to give way, a peremptory voice came to them from the shore to the south. The light had not advanced from where they had seen it stop, but it had gone waving wildly up and down the beach as if the bearers had encountered some impassable obstacle and sought in vain for a place which would allow a passage.

"They're calling us to stand—in the king's name," Mr. Wrenmarsh returned with sullen nervousness.

"Head the boat 'round," cried Tab. "Why the devil don't they come down if they want us?"

"By Jove! The sands!" cried Wrenmarsh. "There's a brook there—the bottom's quicksand. They daren't try to cross."

"They must have thought we were on the other side of the stream. They've come up on the wrong bank, and now they can't get over."

Bang! There was a quick, loud report, and Jerry heard the wht of a carbine ball close astern.

Wrenmarsh seized the lantern and dipped it overboard, an effective if irregular way of quenching it.

Bang! Bang! Two more shots. One of the men, Hunter, pulling on the third thwart, afterward swore that he felt the wind of the second bullet.

A man of race and training, while in a crisis of this sort he feels more excitement than his [Pg 222]thicker-skinned fellows, displays more outward coolness. Social development means the power of self-control, especially when any sense of responsibility is involved. Taberman was inwardly wild with the stirring emotions of an experience such as he not only had never encountered but of which he had heard in a hundred ways which lent associations to heighten the effect; yet he did not lose for a moment his sense of having the men to care for. He kept his head, and called the stroke for the rowers. They showed by their tendency to pull wildly how near they were to demoralization, and Jerry urged them to steadiness with language of the most picturesque emphasis.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Three shots. At the third there was a sharp rap, as if the cutter had been hit by a pebble, and a queer little squeak of splintering wood. Tab started up, but instantly sat down again, catching at the yoke-line he had half let fall.

At the instant he had heard the sound of the ball on the wood of the boat, he had felt a sharp twinge in his left arm, as if the muscle had been suddenly tweaked off the bone by a pair of [Pg 223]white-hot pincers. The pain was exquisite, but he forced himself to keep calm, and beyond the first involuntary spring he gave no indication that he had been hit. In a sort of double consciousness he kept saying to himself that he wondered how severe the hurt was, and at the same time he seemed to be lifted by sheer will and excitement above even the physical feeling of the moment.

"Steady!" he said, and was queerly conscious of a sort of exultation that his voice was so strong and natural. "We're 'most out of range."

Other shots followed, but they splashed harmlessly astern. The darkness was a shelter, and although the carbines flashed again and again from the shore, no more damage was done on board the cutter. Ahead of them Tab, holding himself together grimly, saw the red and green sailing-lights of the Merle, and realized that at the sound of the firing Gonzague must have run the yacht in shore.

Tears of pain suffused his eyes in spite of him, and made the colored lights big and blurry, as if they were the glaring orbs of some huge dragon.

"Hollá!" came Gonzague's voice. "A'right, sair!" and with a deafening boom of canvas the schooner luffed up.

Jerry put his right arm behind him, his left hanging limply, and getting hold of the rudder-yoke he laid the cutter alongside the yacht. He and Wrenmarsh got up to the deck, a davit was turned out-board as a crane and the boxes hoisted, and then the boat slung up.

Faint and savage with pain, Jerry still fought with himself to keep up, and to fulfill his duties as commander. He remembered that his order for the Merle to lie to where she was had been disregarded; and though he was inwardly glad that the yacht had been brought to meet the cutter, he felt that discipline was discipline, and he was in no mood to let any infringement of orders go unnoted. He called Gonzague.

"What's the meaning of this?" he demanded fiercely. "Didn't I give orders to keep the yacht hove to till I came out?"

"Yes, sair," Gonzague answered contritely, stroking his stiff white mustache with nervous fingers, "bot I heer de shotin' ashore, an'"—

"That made no difference. I'm ashamed that an old seaman like you should disobey orders simply because he heard a row ashore. Go forward. I shall mark you in the log."

The old man took himself off without a word. However much he was likely to feel the sting of[Pg 225] this reproof, he was not the man to fail to respect the mate for it, and of this Tab might be assured when he had the calmness to think things over.

Jerry gave the helmsman the course for Naples, and the Merle swung off on her return. Then he started to go below, but now that the need of immediate action was over he suddenly turned sick and dizzy. He put out his uninjured arm with a quick clutch at Mr. Wrenmarsh.

"Give me—your arm," he said weakly. "I'm—I'm hit, you know, and things go round."

The archæologist supported Jerry to the companion, and then almost carried him down the steps. He tried to place him on the transom, but Taberman stubbornly walked half the length of the cabin, and sank into a chair by the table. His lips seemed to him queerly stiff as he twisted them into a wry smile.

Wrenmarsh shouted the name explosively, hovering solicitously over Jerry, and in a moment the Provençal appeared. Jerry made a mighty effort to pull himself together.

"Here, Gonzague," he said, "get the medicine-chest, and strip my coat off. I've got to be fixed. I want some hot water and a b. and s. Beg your—pardon," he added, turning slowly to Mr. Wrenmarsh, and confusedly wishing that the cabin would not turn so much faster than he could. "I'm forgetting. This gentleman's to have Jack's—the captain's stateroom. Will you have anything to drink? 'Fraid I'm poor host, but"—

"No, no," cried the archæologist. "That's all right. The brandy, Gonzague, quick!"

A brandy and soda put fresh life into Jerry, who still tried to be polite, and protested that the collector should not bother.

"You'll find me a first-class chirurgeon," responded the other. "Where's the medicine-chest, Gonzague?"

He proved remarkably ready and efficient and kindly withal. He stripped off Jerry's jacket and cut away the shirt-sleeve, to discover a two-inch sliver of African oak from the gunwale of the cutter stabbed into a jagged hole in the forearm. He probed and cut and trimmed with the skill of a trained surgeon, while Jerry, pale and with set teeth, bore it all with Spartan firmness until everything was over, and then, as he tried to rise when the last bandage was in place, fainted dead away.

When the plucky mate had been brought round and stowed away in his berth, Gonzague again took charge of the Merle, and dropped her anchor once more in the harbor of Naples at about eight o'clock in the morning.

Just before Mr. Wrenmarsh turned in for the night, he put his head into the door of Jerry's stateroom to ask if he could do anything for him.

"No, thank you," Jerry returned. "Much obliged; but the man by my door will hear if I want anything. I'm all right now. I'm jolly much obliged to you for fixing me up."

"'Pon my word, Table—Taberman, you're the most extraordinary man for a Bostonian I ever saw. Good-night."

"Good-night," Jerry responded. Then he chuckled, and added, "But Boston's full of better men than I am, if you'd only stayed there to see 'em."

Chapter Twelve AT VERGIL'S TOMB

"I never could touch it," Katrine said, with an emphatic shake of her head. "I should think a baby brought up on goat's milk would run round and bleat. Why, I think the idea of it is horrid!"

Her eyes sparkled and her whole air was full of a delicious animation, so that it was no wonder Jack threw back his head and laughed, as much in sheer admiration as from amusement. He was in high spirits this morning, the excitement of a mighty resolve stirring in his blood.

"How do you know that you haven't been having goat's milk at the hotel?" he demanded. "Aren't you afraid you'll begin to break out in a baa yourself all of a sudden?"

"Why, how rude you are!" she cried, her dimples deepening and shoaling. "Of course they wouldn't dare to give it to us, and we should know it if they did!"

The young people were being driven in a [Pg 229]Neapolitan vettura to the tomb of Vergil. Jack had mentioned the spot that morning at breakfast as being well worth a visit, if only for the view, and said that the ladies ought to see it. Mrs. Fairhew had, for reasons perhaps not wholly unconnected with remembrances of her own youth and the late Mr. Fairhew, declined to make the jaunt, on the score that it was too hot and that she had a thousand trifles to attend to. She had refused her niece's prompt offer of assistance, and so left that young woman free to accept Jack's invitation that she take the drive with him.

Their talk was light enough, the lighter because Jack at least hardly dared to venture to be serious lest he betray how terribly in earnest he was. The sight of a little flock of goats, which had scattered at the pistol-like crack of their driver's whip, had given them a theme for a moment. The agile brown animals skipped along the gutters, assailed by the effervescent profanity of their conductor, a half-naked, slim-limbed lad browner than the beasts themselves; and with more detonations of the whiplash the carriage whirled up the hill with hardly diminished speed as the grade grew steeper. Through picturesque, squalid streets, braver in their poverty than many a splendid thoroughfare, through nooks that seemed to be private [Pg 230]courtyards with entire families disposed about them, the carriage took its way noisily; it turned now to the left, now to the right, continually ascending; it brought them to the top of narrow ways down which they looked as through a kaleidoscope gleaming with a confusion of gay colors; it seemed about to land them on the roof of some building which lay directly before them, and then at the last moment whisked around some unseen corner and carried them still higher.

"Isn't it wonderful," Katrine said. "I never saw such a city. I feel almost as if we were in a flying-machine,—we keep going up so and see such wonderful sights all the time. Oh, do look down that street! Did you ever see such colors?"

"You didn't look at it at all," she said half pouting, as the carriage whirled them past.

"Oh, I could see it all in your eyes," he returned. "You don't know what excellent mirrors they are."

Her color deepened, however, and Jack did not feel that his remark had missed fire. He smiled to himself, and just then the carriage brought up[Pg 231] with a jerk on the left side of the way, in front of a small green door in a gray retaining-wall. Over the door was printed in black letters: Tomba di Virgilio.

He got out with the field-glasses he had brought, and extended his hand to assist Katrine. She hardly touched his arm with her finger-tips, but the air was electric, and he felt the thrill like a pulse of warm blood from head to foot. He did not speak to the driver, but with a manner that made that piratical Neapolitan regard him with a new respect simply ordered him in the sign-language of the town to remain in waiting. A soldier came slouching out of a shop near by wherein he was evidently lounging, took the prescribed gate-fees, and then opened the narrow door. This disclosed a staircase, strait and steep, cut from the living rock, which led upward and to the right.

They climbed the stone stairs without speaking, but at the top the wonderful beauty of the view which burst upon them called from Katrine an involuntary exclamation of surprise and delight. Below them, red-roofed and multi-colored, Naples lay bathed in the strong white light of the southern sun; beyond, marvelously blue and ruffled by a gentle breeze, the waters of the bay flashed and[Pg 232] sparkled; and beyond again, farther yet, stood purple Capri and the piled-up southern shore, luminous and mistily azure. To the eastward, brooding and tragic, yet with a thrilling beauty of its own in softly flowing curves and wavering outline, showed Vesuvius, and stupendous as it was, seemed crouching sinister and awful, the incarnation of pitiless power.

Jack focused the glasses, and handed them to Katrine. Then he began to point here and there, showing her the different things of interest visible from the spur of the hill on which they were standing. As she was looking toward the Mole and the New Harbor, suddenly she uttered a little cry of surprise.

"There's the Merle," she said. "I'm sure it is. At least she's flying the American flag."

"Doesn't it seem like a bit of home to see her down there?" Katrine went on. "I think it was perfectly wonderful that Mr. Drake let you take her this summer."

Jack gave a quick movement of the shoulders, and then set his lips together more firmly.

"I shall have to tell her the whole thing," he thought to himself. Aloud he said, "I shouldn't[Pg 233] have been here when you were if it hadn't been for having the Merle."

"I suppose not," she answered, and the change in her tone showed most clearly that she understood in the words more than met the ear.

After they had stood for a time in admiration of the magnificent view before them, they turned to go to the tomb, twenty yards away. The uneven path, bordered by beautiful wild poppies and violets, was shaded by gnarled fig and plum trees. A splendid stone-pine rose superb on the left, crowned by its dome-shaped cluster of branches.

"Oh," Katrine cried, "it's perfectly beautiful, isn't it? It makes you feel solemn, it's so lovely."

"Just look at those flowers," she went on. "What a pity it is that we don't have them like that at home."

"It's a fitting place for Vergil to be buried in, isn't it?" Jack said. "I thought you would like it."

"It is a place I shall remember all my life," she replied. Her eyes met his as she spoke, and her glance fell with quick consciousness. Before he could speak, she added hurriedly, "Is this the tomb?"

"Yes," he answered, entirely undisturbed by any chilling scholastic doubts on the subject, "this is the tomb."

Before them was a lowly structure of old rubble, four square, and a narrow door, at which the path, with a sudden dip, came to an end.

Katrine entered, and he followed. The place was as simple within as without. The floor seemed to be of beaten earth; the single room, or cella, was lighted by a small window, and it contained only two or three cinerary urns of dark red clay, which leaned against the wall opposite the door. Above these, in brown letters on a tablet of white marble, was an inscription set there by the Academy of France.

The pair stood silent for a minute, Katrine reading the tablet, and Jack, his head bared, standing beside her. As she turned her head she caught for a second time his glance. She colored, and moved quickly to the small window.

"Isn't the view wonderful!" she said, as if she had caught at the first words that came into her mind.

She looked a moment out of the window, and then, avoiding his eyes, she turned back to the[Pg 235] Latin distich cut in the tablet, and by tradition assigned to Vergil himself:—

"You'll think I am unspeakably stupid," she said, "but I confess I cannot make it out. 'Mantua gave me birth,' I can read that."

"Good! You shall have an A in the examination in spite of Parthenope," he assured her. "Perhaps 'heroes' is a better word for duces, though."

"I'm afraid I don't deserve an A," she laughed, "but I am satisfied if I pass at all."

As they came out of the tomb Jack picked a spray from the beautiful laurel growing beside the entrance, and held it out to her. She took it with a murmured word of thanks, and put it in her gown. Not far away on the right of the path was a rude seat or bench, shaded by fig and olive[Pg 236] trees, and partially screened from the path by dwarf plums. It was slightly higher than the way by which they had come.

They turned to the seat and took their places in silence. The view was not perceptibly different from that which they had on the path, but as Jack looked at Katrine and Katrine cast down her eyes, this was not a matter which they were likely to notice.

"Katrine," the captain began,—for they had come, almost by insensible degrees, to call each other by their Christian names,—"I've got to tell you something. It isn't altogether pleasant for me, but it's only fair that you should know."

"I—er—Well, to be honest, I don't know exactly how to tell you so you won't be too hard on me," he answered frankly.

"Is it so bad?" she queried in a tone which showed some concern under its assumed lightness.

"What in the world have you been doing? You haven't been murdering anybody, I hope."

"What would you say," asked Jack, "what would you think of a man that acted like this? Suppose a case. Suppose the chap was, in the first place, in America. Suppose he had a friend, a friend he cared a lot about, one he thought more of than anybody else in the world, and that friend was on this side. Suppose the man's property was all tied up,—in trust, you know,—and he'd promised not to borrow, so he couldn't honorably raise the money to come over unless his trustee would let him. The trustee, we'll say, is a nice old fellow,—really nice, you know, only rather crotchety,—who wouldn't hear a word of the chap's going."

He stopped as if for encouragement, and Katrine, with evident appreciation of this, murmured, "Yes, I understand."

"And suppose," Castleport went on, a new hesitancy coming into his voice, "that this trustee—of course the chap is his nearest relative, you know—has an able schooner yacht. Now if the chap simply couldn't stand it, but captured that yacht—not violently, of course, but by stratagem,—and came over to see his friend, and to ask her"—

"Why, Jack Castleport!" cried Katrine, with eyes open to their widest. "You don't mean that you ran away with the Merle! I never can believe it!"

"Oh," Jack cried. "I had to see her! You know I had to come, Katrine! I had to tell you I love you, and I stole Uncle Randolph's yacht because he wouldn't let me come any other way. I had to come."

He sprang up in his excitement, and stood before her, his hands twisting each other in a way odd enough for one of so much self-control.

"You must have known how I cared for you, Katrine. I couldn't tell you without making a clean breast of this, but don't be too hard on me. I had to come."

She flashed up at him the merest hair's-breadth of a glance, and with her hands pressed to her [Pg 239]bosom, said softly, "I never could have forgiven you if you hadn't come."

He simply stooped over and took her unceremoniously in his arms, and it was several moments before she had breath and presence of mind to protest.

"Heavens!" she cried with mock terror. "Am I in the arms of a pirate? Jack, I never knew anything so shocking in my life! How could you do it?"

"I had to get across the Atlantic to you," he answered, as if that were an excuse all-sufficient.

And the sun shone down on the sea and on Vesuvius and on Vergil's tomb, and on that which is more enduring than all these,—the sweetness of young love.

Chapter Thirteen A BID FOR THE ODD TRICK

While the captain was looking with Katrine down on the Merle, as the yacht lay quietly at anchor in the harbor, a notable conversation was taking place on board. At no very early hour Tab had risen, tubbed with difficulty, and, with some aid, got into his clothes. His left arm was stiff and very sore, but beyond that he felt no discomfort. His magnificent physique, improved by the hardy life he had been leading, saved him from any consequences more serious; so that the archæologist, who was in capital spirits, rallied him on the prodigious appetite he displayed at breakfast.

"I have to eat double to make up for the blood I lost last night," Jerry said, with a grin. "I find there's nothing for the appetite like a regular brush with the police. I've found it so before, when I was in college."

After breakfast the two went on deck, and seated under the awning, with the beautiful bay before[Pg 241] them and a soft air to bring a delicious coolness, they talked over the adventure of the previous night. Then from this they branched off to more general matters. Mr. Wrenmarsh was a man of wide experience and of good observation, and was well informed on almost every topic the talk touched upon. His tricks and eccentricities had been for the time being laid aside, or showed only as a flavor of personality piquant and attractive. Jerry found himself soothed and entertained, although, remembering his previous experience with the collector, he was not without a feeling that Wrenmarsh had a propensity to use speech as a squid does his ink, to conceal his course, and so wondered what the collector had still to gain. Wrenmarsh suddenly took to intricate and unintelligible sentences without warning and equally without apparent excuse, when Jerry brought him back to earth with a question what he intended to do next.

"Do?" exclaimed Wrenmarsh, as if shocked and astonished by such an inquiry. "Of course I shan't think of setting foot on shore again till I get to England."

Jerry hardly suppressed an instinctive whistle, and for a brief instant he had nothing to say; but after all he was not without a shrewdness of[Pg 242] his own. He was still chagrined to remember that the archæologist had played upon him once for his own purposes, and he had at least learned that in dealing with this man it was necessary to be cautious.

"To England?" he repeated in a voice so casual as to rouse Wrenmarsh and to tickle himself inwardly. "How do you go?"

"Are we really?" was Jerry's comment. A refrain from a song in a Pudding play popped into his head, and he hummed it in derision hardly disguised,—

"Oh, quite unnecessary," Tab returned, not to be trapped into an apology. "It was only a bit of a song."

He was filled with a pleasant feeling that he was bothering the collector, astute as that person was, and he determined, as the circumstances certainly[Pg 243] were in his favor, to hold his own with him this time at least.

"I don't think you have a very clear view of the case," Wrenmarsh said, after a moment of silent musing with contracted brow. "If you had, you'd see that it isn't possible for me to go ashore now, after that beastly business of last night. I assure you, I'm awfully sorry for that mess. There's another thing,—I couldn't get those boxes ashore from the yacht without their being examined, and then there'd be the devil of a row."

"That must have occurred to you before you left Pæstum," Jerry remarked with coolness.

"So it did," he said blandly; "but of course I knew it must have been evident to you also."

"Even if it wasn't," the other went on, as smoothly as ever, "I never for an instant supposed that when once you'd started out to help me, you'd funk. That is a contingency, I confess, never occurred to my mind. I thought you were made of different stuff. You were clear game last night."

"Well, for clean cheek!" he cried. "Do you think I'm going to tote you about in a yacht I don't own for the rest of my life?"

"Would you like to?" asked the collector, with a fresh aspect of interest. "Because in the Ægean Sea I've a"—

"Whatever it is, please keep it to yourself, or you'll insist that I promised to help you with it," interrupted Tab grimly. "As for going to England in the present case, that's quite out of the question. What are you going to do? If you stay on board, you'll land in Boston."

Mr. Wrenmarsh's face took on for an instant a look distinctly ugly. It suddenly occurred to Taberman that the collector was in rather an evil plight,—worse, indeed, than that from which the Merle had rescued him.

"Damn!" the other broke out explosively, lying back in his chair and running his fingers through his gray-sprinkled locks.

Jerry was too soft-hearted not to be touched[Pg 245] by the other's perplexity, but an involuntary movement of sympathy which he made happened to give him a painful twinge in the arm, and he hardened his heart. There was a silence of some minutes, during which he tried to make out from the face of his companion what thoughts were passing behind that mask. Suddenly the cloud lifted from the face of Wrenmarsh, and he flashed a bright glance on Jerry.

"Bless me," he cried gayly. "I might have thought! Plutus—Mammon—filthy lucre! But how extraordinary in an American—not to ask for it, you know! What'll you take for it?"

He had a dreadful feeling that by becoming incomprehensible, the other might be getting the better of him.

"Oh, of course not, my dear fellow; but as every man has his price, I suppose a yacht has too."

Common-sense and indignation worked together now to keep Taberman from an angry retort. It[Pg 246] flashed upon him that here was a chance, one in a thousand, to pay off the hands of the Merle without troubling the President; it was a chance, too, to score off this cheeky archæologist. Taberman had already noted that Wrenmarsh was a penurious soul who hated to part with money, and he felt something of the godly joy of the departing Israelites when Moses announced the project for the spoiling of the Egyptians. England was not such an impossible distance off. They might take the Great Circle track home. Surely if Jack—

"Don't you see my position, Mr. Wrenmarsh?" he asked. "I haven't the power to dispose of the Merle. I'm simply in charge of her while the captain's ashore, don't you see? Still"—

"Well?" ejaculated Wrenmarsh, apparently keeping his gaze fixed in the closest interest on the red sails of a big felucca that was standing in toward the Mole.

"Well, I think I might be right in making a sort of conditional—a purely conditional"—he repeated the word for caution, wondering if he ought to make it any stronger—"arrangement. It wouldn't be valid without the sanction of the captain. You see that, of course."

"I might make a sort of conditional arrangement, then, to go to Plymouth, or perhaps to any other English port not too much out of the way, for a consideration of"—He paused again.

He could have hugged himself with joy at the sound of his own voice naming the sum in such a matter-of-fact fashion. He knew well enough that but for the enormous handicap which circumstances had put upon the archæologist he would have had no chance whatever to outmanœuvre him, but this he did not bother to reflect on at the moment and might have had scruples about if he had. He gave himself up to the delight of feeling that he had distinctly the better of the man who had so carried him off his feet at Pæstum, and who had involved him in an affair of the seriousness of which Jerry had had good reason to meditate in the times in the night when his arm kept him awake. It was certainly something to have the upper hand now; and two hundred pounds, which[Pg 248] he had named almost at random, multiplied itself in his head into a most satisfactory number of dollars.

"Two hundred pounds!" cried out the archæologist, nearly jumping out of his chair.

His affected surprise was dramatic, but unfortunately for its effect it was overdone, so that even Jerry felt it to be theatrical.

"Shall we call it two hundred and fifty?" the mate asked, enjoying himself more every minute.

"Two hundred and fifty devils!" shouted Wrenmarsh, who appeared more irritated, it seemed to Jerry, on account of being outmanœuvred than because the price was so high.

"The agreement is only conditional anyway," Jerry said, with something of an air, "but if it seems to you fairer, we'll leave off the fifty, and call it an even two hundred—one for you and one for those precious boxes, to be paid on arrival. I'm not a Neapolitan. Will you go ashore here or wait for the captain?"

"I'll wait for the captain, Mr. Taberman," Wrenmarsh replied. He glowered across the bay[Pg 249] for a moment, and then added, "He may not be so infernally exorbitant as you are."

Jerry smiled secretly to himself, and resolved that at least Jack should be persuaded to make no easier terms. Then he went to write a note to summon the captain to come aboard to consider this proposition of taking a passenger.

Chapter Fourteen CLEARING THE DECKS

When Jack appeared on the Merle, rather late that afternoon, Jerry met him by the steps, his arm in a sling.

"Good heavens, Tab," cried the captain, "what's the matter? What have you done to your arm, boy?"

"Nothing much," Jerry answered. "Just got a little piece of the cutter in it in a night engagement. What the deuce kept you so long?"

"The devil you did! What sort of a trap did your infernal Englishman lead you into?"

"That's just what I want to tell you before you see him. What in the world made you so late? I've been waiting all the afternoon."

"Well, you see," he returned, with a little laugh in his throat, "time passed so quickly, and Katrine and I had so much to talk about"—

"Jacko! You've done it!" shouted Tab, loud enough to be heard from one end of the yacht to the other.

"Oh, good man!" cried Tab, wringing his hand. "Good old Jack! Long life and all happiness to you, you dear old pirate!"

His words tumbled out helter-skelter, and his honest blue eyes were moist with pure joy at his friend's happiness. He admired Miss Marchfield from the bottom of his heart, and Jack was the dearest friend he could ever have. He rejoiced as sincerely and as warmly as if the good fortune of the captain had been his own.

"Thank you, old man," laughed Jack, bubbling over with good spirits; "but if it hadn't been for you, I—I'd never have done it."

"Tush!" flouted Jerry. "Don't talk bosh! It was only a matter of time anyway. But I'm glad it's all right."

They had been standing at the head of the steps, and now the captain moved along the deck.

"Hurry!" ejaculated Jerry. "Do you call this coming out in a hurry? If it hadn't been that you left a born diplomat in charge, you might have lost two hundred pounds by being so slow."

"Come into the cabin before you go aft," was Jerry's answer. "I want to tell you about that."

"That's part of it," Tab returned, as they went below together. "I'm trying among other things to recover damages."

When some little time later the two friends came on deck and went aft to where the guest was sitting, Jack was in full possession of the whole situation.

"Jack, Mr. Gordon Wrenmarsh; Mr. Wrenmarsh, Captain John Castleport," Jerry said.

He was evidently in the best of humor. His spirits on that day could hardly be other than at their highest, and he had been vastly amused by Jerry's plan of raising funds to pay off the men.

"Thanks," responded the archæologist. "I was afraid the pleasure was largely mine. I've been expecting you all day."

"Well," Jack said, seating himself comfortably, "I am here at last. I am sorry if I kept you waiting. You might have arranged anything with Mr. Taberman, though."

"I tried to," Mr. Wrenmarsh responded dryly, "but he seemed to me so unpractical in his ideas that I thought it better to wait for you."

"I hope you won't find me unsatisfactory in the same way," Jack returned. "At least I am practical enough to know that in this weather it will be more comfortable if we have something."

He summoned Gonzague, and the trio were soon furnished with tall glasses of sangaree, which they sipped with relish.

"Mr. Taberman has suggested,—though I fancy he's half in jest," began the collector, when these preliminaries had been attended to, "that two hundred pounds is a fair price for such a trivial service as running up to England and landing me and my boxes."

"I am glad you think the matter trivial," observed Jack, with a smile; "it makes it so much easier for me to say that I do not find it convenient to go to England at all."

"Oh, I say now," Wrenmarsh responded, with a sudden keen glance at Jack as if he were surprised at the quickness with which his remark had been met and turned against him; "of course you'll go to England. That was settled long ago, you know."

"Was it? I supposed that I, as captain of the Merle, had some voice in such a matter."

"Of course nothing was settled," broke in Jerry. "I made a conditional arrangement—entirely conditional, mind you—with Mr. Wrenmarsh that you would take him to England."

"Yes; that is what I said," the collector asserted imperturbably. "Only the price that you named"—

"Not seriously?" Wrenmarsh said, evidently determined not to show that he was at all ruffled. "Only consider, if I go ashore here, I may get—I might become a national complication. And you wouldn't want to be mixed up in that sort of a thing," he added, with a chuckle. "An international complication," he murmured to himself, as if the idea appealed so strongly to his vanity that he was half tempted to be put on land at once to take up the part. Then he recalled his wandering[Pg 255] thoughts, and looked Captain Castleport in the eye. "If you land me in any country except England, I am quite done for, as you Americans would say. It stands to reason if there is any paying to be done, you should pay me for keeping you out of a scrape; for of course if I go ashore it will be known that the Merle ran away from the carabinieri at Pæstum, and"—

"Rubbish!" interrupted Jack brusquely. "Don't talk that kind of poppy-cock! Even if there were any truth in it, it wouldn't be decent for you to say so after getting the Merle into the scrape."

"And giving me your word that the yacht was in no possible danger," put in Jerry indignantly.

"Oh, no real danger, of course," Wrenmarsh said hurriedly, "only it might be unpleasant for you, and you might not like to be detained."

"Why must you go to England?" asked Castleport. "Why not to Malta or Cyprus or Korfu even? They're protectorates and English ground."

"The sun never sets, you know," responded Wrenmarsh, with his extraordinary ventral chuckle. "The truth is they won't do. Korfu and Cyprus would be as bad for me as Naples, on account of my reputation. I'm known to have run out a lot[Pg 256] of things, you see. Gibraltar or Malta would suit me well enough—if it weren't for the same reason. There isn't a hotel on the entire shores of the Mediterranean that I could put up at with those boxes in safety."

"I hardly suppose I'm expected to take that too literally," Jack said, with a smile.

He reflected a moment. He could see that the collector certainly had good reason for wishing to remain on the yacht, and that it could not but be of very great convenience to him to be taken to England. He was no less convinced from what Jerry had told him that the antiquities which the archæologist had on board must be worth thousands of pounds, and that their possessor could afford to pay well for their safety. He was thoroughly stirred up, moreover, by the thought of the episode of the night before. That Jerry should have been put in actual peril of his life by Wrenmarsh for his own purposes was to Jack so outrageous that he was half tempted to order the collector and his boxes off the Merle at once to take his chances with the officials on the quays of Naples. As Jerry had planned reprisals along another line, however, and as after all Jack could not have brought himself to desert a man in extremity, the captain determined to go on as they had begun.

"I'm sorry; I can't do that," the collector said, with a great show of decision. "You'll have to take me to Malta. What'll you do that for?"

"Three hundred," Jack returned quietly, although he could not refrain from a secret exchange of glances with Jerry.

"What!" the other cried, in an exaggerated shriek. "A run like that? Three hundred pounds! It's not a twentieth the distance to England."

"That's so," was the captain's answer, "but you see we should have a good deal less value in your company. Besides, you'd get your boxes ex territorio a great deal quicker."

He had by this time become so interested in the game he was playing that the beating of the collector seemed in itself a thing worth straining every nerve to gain.

"They're ex territorio now," Mr. Wrenmarsh said, "as they're on a foreign yacht. But no matter about that. What'll you take to set me over to Gibraltar?"

"Oh, that would cost you three hundred and fifty, because there you're so much nearer England than you'd be at Malta."

He glanced again at Jerry, with an inward chuckle at the utter balderdash he was talking and a consciousness how closely it resembled the nature of the arguments with which Wrenmarsh had beguiled Tab. For a minute there was silence, and then the archæologist spoke angrily.

"You're too commercial," he said, with an unconcealed sneer. "I see no way in which we can come to an agreement. I never was equal to trading with a dollar-getting Yankee."

Tab started and looked to hear Jack break out at an insult so gross, but the captain merely smiled.

"As you are our guest," he said, "there's no chance for me to answer you properly, but you must remember we're not looking for a job. Shall I send you ashore now, or would it suit you to take a boat with me in half an hour? Or perhaps," he added, his manner most elaborately courteous, "on account of your boxes, it would suit you better to be set ashore after dark."

"Give you one hundred pounds," the collector said, still fighting, and ignoring the captain's words entirely.

"We need not go on with the wrangle," Jack[Pg 259] said, rising. "I'm not bargaining with you. If it's worth two hundred pounds to you, all right. If it isn't, we'll part here, and hope you have the gratitude to appreciate what has already been done for you at the risk of Mr. Taberman's life. Come, we've wasted too much time over this already."

"Do you think my time isn't worth anything?" cried the other,—apparently losing all control of his temper. "I've wasted too much already. Get up your damned anchor, you mercenary Yankee"—

"Come, sir!" broke in Jack sharply, "apologize at once! At once! You have been insulting us this half hour like an utter cad, and I've made all the allowances I'm equal to."

The collector regarded him with furious eyes, but seemed struggling with himself until he could command his manner and his voice.

"I—I beg your pardon," he said in a hard tone. Then he added, in a voice softer and more grave, "Indeed, I beg your pardon most sincerely. My cursed temper got the better of me. Does your offer still hold?"

"Then—two hundred pounds—I accept it. Two hundred pounds sterling, to be paid on our safe arrival in port at Plymouth." He sighed, and[Pg 260] put out his hand to the captain. "Will you pardon my tongue?" he asked.

There was more ingenuousness in this trifling act than in anything Tab or Jack had yet seen in him. The real man seemed for a moment to show; and as Jack accepted the collector's apology and took his hand, Jerry had a fleeting glimpse—short as a flash of changing light—of another and franker Wrenmarsh, accustomed to hide under a veil of shams and mockeries made necessary by his difficult vocation.

Wrenmarsh then asked if he might have some letters mailed ashore, and Jack offered to take them himself in half an hour's time. While the collector was below writing these, the captain and the mate talked things over on deck. Tab had to congratulate Jack again, and over and over, fairly beaming with delight whenever he thought of the happy stage to which affairs had been brought. When he discovered that the captain had confessed the lifting of the Merle, he was for a moment disconcerted.

"I had to be honest," Jack replied, and added, with a little shade of unconscious patronage, "You'll see how it is yourself, old man, when it[Pg 261] comes your turn. You have to make a square deal, of course."

"Yes, I s'pose so," assented the mate humbly. "I hope she won't tell Mrs. Fairhew."

"Oh, we told her together," Jack stated cheerfully. "Katrine thought we'd better. I'm glad I did, too; for she's written home about meeting us, and it's sure to get round to Uncle Randolph sooner or later."

"Oh, do you know," returned Jack, laughing at the remembrance of his talk with Mrs. Fairhew, "I think she was more bothered that she hadn't guessed it than she was shocked at us. She couldn't help letting me see that she thought it an awfully good joke on Uncle Randolph. She said she should write to him to-day and remind him that she'd often told him he tried to keep me in leading strings. She said she did have a suspicion from your jocoseness when we first came over that there was some joke about our coming, but we parried her questions so well she forgot all about it. She said nobody could have dreamed of anything so preposterous, so of course she didn't guess it."

"Didn't she say it was on account of her age she didn't see through us?" queried Jerry, with a grin.

"By Jove, she did; and then turned it off by saying she never supposed a Marchfield would be engaged to a pirate. She says, though, that I've got to cut back at once. She won't have me going about with Katrine in a stolen yacht."

"It's time to start anyway. It'll be getting late by the time we're across, and if she's written home, the sooner the Merle is in Boston harbor the better. I suppose we can get off in a week?"

"To-morrow! Great Scott! What are we sitting here for? There are oceans of things to be done."

"Of course we can get stores at Plymouth if we need to, and I've already ordered a lot of things to come out to-night. We have to get Wrenmarsh safe, of course, and that'll take some time."

"And like most windfalls, not entirely sound? Tell Gonzague to fix up the stateroom Bardale had, the one next mine. I must get ashore now; she'll be waiting. You're to come to dinner."

Chapter Fifteen IN THE CATTEWATER

By the round brass ship's clock placed over the passageway door, in the saloon, Jerry could see that it was a little after ten o'clock. The yacht had come to anchor in the small hours, and the gentlemen had in consequence slept late. The dull light of an English morning in September came through the big skylight, and showed the captain, the mate, and Mr. Wrenmarsh lingering over their breakfast.

"On my word, Mr. Wrenmarsh," said Tab, "we'll be sorry to lose you. You've been aboard so long and your"—he almost blurted out "eccentricities," but fortunately had the unusual luck to stop in time to substitute a better word—"your—er—conversation has such—er—has been so very entertaining, that is, that we're sure to miss you."

"Ah, well," said the collector, "I'm in hopes[Pg 264] that you've improved so much by contact with me that you'll be able to entertain each other."

"Your rates are too high," the other rejoined grimly. "Gonzague, 'n' altro bicchier' d' aqua fresca."

The old steward, who had come in while Jerry was speaking, served the archæologist with the ready alacrity which marked all he did, and then departed with a handful of dishes.

"Why do you always speak to Gonzague in Italian?" inquired Jerry. "You said yesterday that you always had a reason for everything you do."

"Oh," the guest returned, fixing his eyes not on the questioner but on the ceiling above him, "I speak to him in Italian because he understands it."

"But he understands English, French, and Spanish, for the matter of that," Jerry persisted.

Whenever Wrenmarsh began to talk in this whimsical fashion, Taberman had always a teasing desire to push him into a corner.

"Ah, but, my dear fellow," Wrenmarsh replied, unaccountably addressing Jack, and making his[Pg 265] words seem more distraught by one of his most earnest, almost burning glances, "I do not speak Spanish, you see."

"Why, what rot!" Jerry burst out rudely; then as usual he added apologetically, "I beg your pardon, but I'm afraid I don't follow you."

"Oh, no; I suppose not," Mr. Wrenmarsh rejoined with much sweetness. He rose, and with an entire change of manner, added briskly, "Well, I'm ready. As I wish to catch the eleven thirty-four for London, we must make haste; otherwise I shouldn't have time to take Mr. Castleport to the bank, and settle my financial obligations. Can we get ashore?"

"Yes," answered Jack, rising also. "The cutter's ready, and your boxes are on board. By the by, you said you'd tell me how you dodge—pardon the word, we use it on the other side—the customs."

"Simplest thing in the world," returned Wrenmarsh, lighting a cigarette. "Address my boxes to a good friend of mine in the British Museum. They go through the customhouse as things for the museum, you know."

"Does your friend do that sort of thing as a business?" inquired Jerry with a laugh. "I wish you'd give me his name, so I could come that game."

"His name is Gordon Wrenmarsh," said the collector quietly; "but his charges are high. Shall we go?"

"Yes," Jack responded. "It is high time we were off. I'm not anxious to speed the parting guest, but a good send-off means an early start."

Jerry left his place, and the three went on deck. The cutter, already manned, was by the steps. The bleak English air struck chill and raw to these men fresh from the warm sunshine of the Mediterranean. The harbor and sound, crowded with shipping as they were, seemed flat and dull; the Citadel, the Battery, the various docks and buildings were depressing. A great volume of dun coal-smoke overhanging the "Three Towns," from the Hamoaze to Sutton Pool, added to the general air of gloom. To cap all this, the fog was coming in from seaward, and already its ghostly echelons had floated past the north end of Drake Island. As the three men came on deck the cutter was bobbing up and down in the wash of the ferry which plies to and fro across the Cattewater, and which had just gone heavily past.

"Dear England!" ejaculated Mr. Wrenmarsh fervently under his breath in the face of all this. Then turning to Taberman, "You're not coming ashore with us?"

"No?" the collector said. "Well, we'll say good-by here, then. Lucky we met, wasn't it? Those combinations—they make the world go round; stop it sometimes. Good-by. Pity, great pity, you weren't at Oxford, Mr. Taberman. It would have done you good, made a man of you."

"Not if Harvard's failed to," retorted Jerry loyally. "Good-by, and good luck. Hope we'll meet again some day."

"Adio, Signor'," called out old Gonzague, who was standing by the main-rigging.

"A riverderla forse" returned the collector from the stern-sheets of the cutter.

"Oars!" cried Jack. "Bear away,—let fall,—ready,—pull." And the cutter bore away the strange collector toward the shore of his adopted country.

Jerry watched the boat for a moment, his big heart not untouched by a sympathetic friendliness for the lonely man, whose life seemed to him so warped and melancholy. He half expected Wrenmarsh to look back to nod or to wave his hand, but the collector's eyes were turned steadily to the shore. It was chill on deck, and Tab went below.

Gonzague was just taking away the last of the breakfast things. He set his tray on the table, and approached the mate deferentially.

"Mistaire Taberman, sair," he said, putting his hand in his pocket, and drawing out a small square blue box and a note, "Mistaire Wrainmairsh he geeve me de box and de lettair—also a crown in extrair dat I geeve dem to you when he have leef."

He sat down on the port transom, and opened the box. It contained a small object carefully wrapped in tissue paper. He unfolded the paper, and between his fingers a gold finger-ring slipped on to the green corduroy cushion of the transom.

In a thin band of red gold was set a carnelian[Pg 269] of beautiful tone, the color of a red hyacinth blossom. The stone was oval, cut with an exquisite design in intaglio. It represented a god holding a trident in his left hand, and on his right a small winged figure. His right foot rested on a stone, and he was gazing at the figure he held. The gem was inscribed with the Greek letters ΛΙΛ [Greek: LIL].

"By Jove!" cried Jerry to himself, gloating over the ring, "what a calf I was to that—that white man! By Gad, though, he was a stunner, and no mistake!"

He slipped the gold band on his finger. After a time of admiration he took a book from the shelf, and tried to read; but every minute or two he stopped to look again at the jewel.

He had not turned many pages when he heard a boat alongside, and a strange voice hailing.

"Hallo," he thought. "I wonder what that is. It can't be the port officer; we satisfied him at daybreak."

He tossed aside his book, and went on deck. A shabby jolly-boat was lying alongside. Jerry noted instantly and with consternation that she was manned by six men in uniform, in charge of a burly old fellow liberally adorned with brass buttons and gold braid, who looked to be every inch a sea-dog. At a second glance Tab decided that these men were not government employees, such as coast-guards, but belonged to some sort of a [Pg 271]company. With one stunning blow, sudden as the bursting of a waterspout, the truth flashed over him; at the last, at the very last, when they had escaped so long that they had practically ceased to think of the danger, the agent of Lloyd's was upon them.

"I want to see the officer in charge, my spruce little sea-cook," returned the big man genially; and the grating of the steps being handy, without further ceremony he came aboard.

The sailor keeping the deck, although of a slow and plodding disposition, might have resented the coolness of the stranger, had Jerry given him time; but with a commendable promptness and a sinking heart the mate advanced. He told Jack afterward that he felt as if he were leading a forlorn hope, and had not the remotest idea of what he had better do or say.

"I am in charge here," he said in a perfectly neutral voice. "What do you want?"

"You are Captain Castleport?" inquired the[Pg 272] big man, giving Jerry a keen glance not without a suspicion of kindly humor.

He was a fine, strapping creature of perhaps forty-five or fifty, with fair hair, and a large bushy beard tawny as a lion's mane.

"Mr. Taberman, eh?" asked the other. "May I see you in private for a minute or two, sir? I'm Lloyd's deputy inspector for Plymouth. I've been hunting about in the fog for you these thirty minutes past. I thought you were nigh out o' the Cattewater, over toward the Hoe."

Inwardly he groaned for the arrival of Jack. This was a task he felt himself unable to deal with. Had the emergency called simply for physical powers or for manual dexterity, the chances were large that he could rise to the occasion; but in a pass where the demand was for mental adroitness and nimble wits, Jerry knew the captain to be infinitely his superior. He determined to devote himself to gaining time, and to refrain from committing himself until his comrade should come aboard.

Jerry escorted the burly guest to the cabin without further speech, and turned to ask him to be seated. The visitor at once drew over his jovial[Pg 273] face like a veil a serious expression, and regarded Taberman with the greatest gravity. Unbuttoning the top of his serge jacket, he thrust his hand into an inner pocket as if it were a dip-net, and brought it up again full of dismally official-looking documents.

"This is bad business, sir," he remarked, eyeing the mate as if to be sure he was producing a proper impression.

"P'haps you'll be so good's to look these through, sir," the Englishman went on, proffering his batch of papers.

"Why, as to that," the official replied, "I expect what they contain's ekally to your int'rest and 'is."

"Sit down, please," Jerry said, with a confused wave of the hand, which seemed to invite the visitor to occupy all the seats in the cabin at once. "You may be right, but I shouldn't want to look any important papers over until the captain'd seen them."

"Oh, that don't matter," the other said easily, as he settled himself in a chair. "I don't think[Pg 274] you 'ave any cause to mind, sir. You represent 'im aboard."

"Yes," Jerry returned, obstinately determined that nothing should make him go through the papers without Jack; "but if you're not too much pressed for time, I'd much rather wait for the captain. He'll be here presently."

"Why, sir, for the matter o' that, I dunno's I've much to 'urry me this mornin'; an' I must say I'd rather like a look at 'im. 'E must be a rare one."

He rang, and Gonzague appeared. The old Provençal stood stroking his mustache and watching the Englishman furtively out of the corners of his eyes, as if he appreciated the situation and hoped to have orders to assist in throwing him overboard. The glance of the bluff Briton at the same time lighted up in evident anticipation that the appearance of the steward meant refreshments.

"Gonzague, I'll have a little Scotch and soda. Will you take a glass of anything, sir?"

"Why, sir, seein' 's I 'ave to wait a bit, I'm not strong agin a finger or two."

"What will you have?" asked Jerry, [Pg 275]enormously relieved to get on ground so safe as that of playing the host.

"I like red rum 's well 's most, sir," replied the other, his jolly eyes twinkling. "It's sort o' oilin' to the in'ards."

They were soon served, and Gonzague, on leaving the cabin, placed the spirits and a siphon in most engaging proximity to the guest. Time passed in the exchange of more or less nautical chit-chat for half an hour or so; when, to the great comfort of Jerry, who had been listening with one ear to the talk of his companion and with the other for the coming of the captain, Jack's hail sounded outside. Jerry, listening acutely, heard Castleport pause on deck, and at the companion-way caught a syllable or two in the unmistakable tones of Gonzague, so that he apprehended that the captain would come to the interview forewarned.

The captain came briskly into the cabin, his blue pea-jacket beaded with little globules of moisture from the fog, his hair damp and clinging to his temples.

The exclamation cleverly conveyed the impression that he perceived the guest for the first time, and apologized for not being prepared to meet him.

"Jack, this is Lloyd's deputy inspector, Mr. ——?" Jerry began, and stopped with an interrogative inflection.

"Mr. Thomas Mainbrace," Jerry concluded his presentation. "Mr. Mainbrace, Captain Castleport."

"Pleased to know ye, cap'n," the Englishman said cheerfully, as Jack bowed. "Yes, sir; I'm Lloyd's deputy inspector."

"I saw your boat alongside," Jack returned pleasantly. "We haven't any deputies aboard that need inspecting, though."

"'Aven't ye?" the visitor asked, his eyes twinkling so that the laugh with which he followed his words seemed a sort of overflow of their merriment. "I kind o' thought there might be a deputy owner or som'thin' o' the sort 'ere."

Jack apparently tried to look grave, but ended by grinning in spite of himself. He put out his hand and laid his fingers on the papers.

"Yes, sir. The mate 'ere, 'e said 'e 'd rather not begin on it till you come aboard, sir."

"Yes, if ye'll be so good, sir," Mr. [Pg 277]Mainbrace said seriously, and not without a trace of regret in his jovial, weather-beaten face.

The captain seated himself with deliberation, and began to read; the Englishman applied himself afresh to his glass, and Taberman watched closely for a lead. Jerry was not clear what line was to be taken in this difficult situation, and was keenly anxious to back up the captain in any way possible. To his surprise Jack began first to smile, then to grin; from that to chuckle gleefully, and at last he broke out into full-throated laughter.

"By Jove!" he cried, striking his knee with the hand that held the papers. "But that is one on Uncle Randolph, and no mistake!"

The deputy inspector looked up with an expression of bewilderment, and Jerry felt that he was no more enlightened as to what Jack had in mind than was the guest.

"Oh, we're run down at last! Think of our being nabbed at the last moment, when we've done all we wanted to with the yacht!" And he fell to laughing again, as if being caught red-handed in a pirated yacht were the merriest jest in the world.

Taberman was still completely bewildered, but he at least perceived that Jack was bound to carry off the matter with laughter; and by way of [Pg 278]assisting as well as he could, he began also to laugh. He took the papers, and glanced at them enough to see that one was a letter from Lloyd's, containing a notification of the Merle's disappearance, with a description of the yacht and a specification of her captors; the other a warrant for search and apprehension. He followed Jack's lead, and if his efforts did not ring as true, he at least made more noise.

He thrust the papers back to the captain, who tossed them on the table, and both together they broke out afresh.

"Excuse our laughing," Jack said, turning to the inspector, who gazed from one to the other as if he thought they had gone mad; "but really it's too ripping!"

"Oh, we're the parties all fast enough; but—Well, now, look here. This yacht belongs to my uncle, you see."

"Yes, sir," replied the honest Mainbrace, evidently puzzled, as he would have put it, to make out the other's numbers, but still Britannically deferential to the nephew of a man who was able to own a yacht such as the Merle.

"Well, you see, I ran away with her because he wouldn't let me come across, and he's had no good of her the whole summer. From your papers I judge he looked for me on the other side six weeks before he notified you at all. You see how much of the summer that leaves him; and now, just as I'm starting to carry her back as fast as the wind will take her, you step in and stop us."

"Why, ye see, sir," began the inspector, evidently endeavoring to accommodate himself to the new light thrown by the captain on the situation, "the fact is 'e says 'e wants 'er in a 'urry."

"He won't get her, then," Jack said with a grin. "By the time you've red-taped her, and charged for her, and negotiated her, and sent her over with a hired crew, it'll be December at the very earliest—to say nothing of the twenty or thirty pounds he'll have to pay you and the cost of the crew you send her over by. It is hard lines for Uncle Randolph."

"It is so," Jerry agreed, fervently glad to be at last in possession of the way Jack meant to work.

"I'm really sorry for Uncle Randolph," Jack continued, sobering down. "But then, he might have trusted me to bring the Merle back."

"Ye ain't takin' it too much to 'eart, are ye, sir?" queried the big Englishman, with a look so[Pg 280] humorous and quizzical that Jerry was seized by a dreadful suspicion that the twinkling eyes saw through the whole scheme of bluff.

"Not I," Jack assented blithely; "though of course I'd rather have taken the yacht home myself. What's the next move? Do you put us in irons, or hang us to the crosstree-ends?"

"Why, they sent word from Lloyd's," replied Mainbrace, with the unmistakable grin of a man who regards himself as a humorist, "that the owner said not to be too 'ard on ye. I expect 't'll be no worse nor transportation for life." Then he put on a graver and more professional look, and added, "I'm afraid we'll 'ave to be more serious, sir. Will ye kindly show me your papers and the log? I suppose you 'ave 'em 'andy."

"Certainly," the captain said, also assuming an official air. "Jerry, will you give the inspector the papers? I'll get the log."

The examination of the papers was a short matter, and then they took up the log. It was at once evident that the Englishman had a keen curiosity to discover what the young men had been doing with the Merle, and that he was no less eager in his interest in all things nautical. Jerry sat by in almost open-mouthed admiration[Pg 281] to see how the captain took advantage of both these characteristics. Jack could be most attractive, and from the start it was evident that he was doing his best to please Mr. Mainbrace. He explained all the manœuvres of that memorable night when the Merle had been spirited away in the fog, while the jolly face of the deputy inspector became more and more radiant with each new development of the story. The charts were produced, each detail of seamanship carefully brought out, and the whole episode lived over again. Jack warmed to his subject as he went on; Jerry threw in a word now and then when the captain in his eagerness seemed in danger of forgetting to mention some detail; the Englishman listened with chuckles and with laughter which soon came to be devoid of the slightest pretense of official dignity; and, in a word, the three became as merry and companionable over the log as if they were all pirates together. Mainbrace had been a sailor and a mate in his day, and showed the keenest zest for every nautical experience. There is no surer bond of comradeship than mutual love of the sea; and despite differences of race, age, and social position, Jack, Jerry, and the deputy inspector fraternized over the Merle's log as only sailors can.

The log-book was read to the last entry. Over the account of the gale the yacht had encountered on her way across the Atlantic Mainbrace became as excited as if he had had a personal stake in the safety of the Merle. His ejaculations became more and more emphatic and more and more picturesque, and his rejoicing over the safe weathering of the storm almost as fervid as if he had been in it himself. The race at Nice Jack told of with as little reflection on the unsportsmanlike conduct of Lord Merryfield as was possible; but the jovial countenance of Mainbrace darkened, and he expressed an opinion of the absent nobleman which was sufficiently tonic to satisfy even Taberman. Jack said afterward that by the time they got through the log a quotation from "Horatius" popped into his head, and he came very near breaking out with it:—

To which Jerry replied that he couldn't think of quotations, he was so carried away by the enthusiastic delight of the jolly old inspector and the quaint ways in which it was expressed.

When at last the record was closed, the conversation still at first ran on the cruise, but soon it began to take a turn which made Jerry prick up[Pg 283] his ears anew. The inspector remarked, with an exceedingly droll twinkle of his eyes, that duty was duty, but that he would be summarily dealt with if he wouldn't feel bad to have to bear on hard on a couple of fellows that had played the biggest joke he ever heard of in his life, and had carried the whole thing through with so much cleverness and grit. To this Jack responded that he was most appreciative of the kindness of Mr. Mainbrace, but that of course duty was duty—although it would really have been luck for the owner of the Merle, quite as much as for himself and his mate, if the yacht could have gone on her way uninterrupted. To this in turn Mainbrace gave his assent, and went on to say that he must, of course, carry out instructions, and that he was legally empowered to leave a keeper on board until he could come out again to-morrow with directions he expected to receive from London.

"Though I dunno," he added drolly, "'s it's safe to trust a man with ye. Ye're cap'ble o' runnin' off with 'im."

"Or we might throw him overboard," suggested Jerry, with the broadest possible grin.

"Most o' my men kin swim some," Mainbrace retorted. "I should 'ave to tell 'im 'f 'e got overboard to tow the yacht in shore."

The jest was not of the first water, but they had got to a merry mood, and it was properly laughed over. Then Mainbrace, in high good humor, went on to say that he'd been so well treated, and he had so enjoyed the log, that he thought on the whole he would not put a man in charge. He added that it was late, and he must be on his way ashore now, but that they might expect him out again to-morrow.

"I'm sorry I 'ave to bother ye, gentlemen," he added, as they went on deck. "I've been to sea myself too many years not to 'ate this bloody red-tape business,—an' they do reel it off by the cable-length when they 'ave 'arf a chance."

The inspector's jolly-boat, the most appropriate of conveyances for the jovial sea-dog, was still alongside. The fog had lightened somewhat, and watery beams of the sun leaked through it overhead. As Mr. Mainbrace was about to descend the steps to the boat, he paused a moment and pulled at his thick beard as if meditating profoundly.

"I'm 'most afraid if you gentlemen took it into your 'eads to give us the slip we shouldn't[Pg 285] know it on shore in this 'ere fog," he observed, casting a queer, sidling glance at Jack.

"It is trusting somewhat to luck to leave us," the captain responded coolly, "and I want to say now that I appreciate your kindness in not forcing a keeper on us."

"Well, cap'n," continued the inspector, gazing out over the water with the look of one who has no personal interest in the matter under discussion, "I was goin' to say, if you get a good chance, you'd better shift your berth. You'll find it kind o' snugger ridin' some ways along to the west'ard, I expect. But you know best, o' course. All is, you're in a tightish place here. I alers liked more sea-room myself. Good-day, sir."

"Good-day. Maybe you'll find we've shifted by to-morrow. If we have, it'll be to westward."

"I'll come out to-morrow," said the old sailor in his most official manner. Then he looked from one to the other with his merriest twinkle and an emphatic nod. "Duty is duty," he remarked. "Good-day, sirs."

The captain dashed into the cabin, and reappeared with a silver-mounted briarwood, colored just enough to suggest a comfortable chimney-corner and a mind at ease.

The other took it with an expression queerly compounded of surprise, awkwardness, amusement, and delight.

"Thank ye, sir," he said. "It's 'ansome of you to fetch it up ye'self,—most 'ansome. I'm mortal fond o' that pipe."

He regarded it affectionately a moment, and then stowed it away inside his jacket. Then he turned again to go down to the waiting jolly-boat.

"I'll come out to-morrow," he called up to them. "Duty is duty. Good-day, sirs."

"Good-day," they called in concert; and off went the deputy inspector toward the hardly perceptible shore through the fog.

"Atrocious! If you're going to pun like that you must be taken home to your family at once. 'Duty is duty'! Did you see the solemn wink[Pg 287] the old fellow tipped me when he spoke of shifting to westward? I thought I should burst out laughing on the spot, and give the whole thing away. How's the water?"

"Tanks chock-a-block. Gonzague had them filled from the water-boat this morning. Did you get your money?"

"Every pound of it. Wrenmarsh took me to the bank and identified me, and was mighty nice about the whole thing. Provisions are O.K. Off we go. Call the watch."

Chapter Sixteen STORM!

A gray sea, a gray sky, and the Mid-Atlantic Ocean in September. Over the heaving waters the Merle, under reduced canvas, was staggering westward on the port-tack with a stiff southerly breeze. Jack, clad in his yellow oil-skins like the rest of the hands, was standing just outside the cockpit on the windward side of the yacht. Jerry was asleep below. Having had the early morning watch, he had turned in directly after breakfast. The captain glanced aloft uneasily, and wondered if they were going to encounter on their return such a gale as they had weathered while going over. He reluctantly admitted to himself that there was every appearance of dirty weather, and thought he had better step below to take a look at the glass.

He pushed back the companion, and descended. The cabin was stuffy and no warmer than the air without. The racks were on the table, and the lamps swung in erratic circles in their gimbals. The[Pg 289] barometer, a beautifully finished instrument of the columnar type, was placed against the after-bulkhead of the saloon on the starboard beside a closet door, its slender length enclosed in bronze. It gyrated wildly, in unison with the Thom's list-indicator above it. Jack steadied the tube with his hand, and looked anxiously to see if the mercury had fallen.

At eight bells that morning the vernier of the glass had been set at 29.32. With staring eyes, Jack saw that now, little more than two hours later, the mercury had sunk to 27.09,—a drop portentous of a furious gale. For one brief moment, in the face of approaching danger, and filled with a quick sense of his great responsibility, he stood appalled. He put his hand to his forehead as if he were dizzy and found it hard to think.

"How's the glass, Jack?" asked a voice beside him. He turned with troubled eyes to see Tab in his pajamas, a freshly lighted cigarette between his fingers. "What's the trouble?" the mate demanded instantly, seeming bewildered at the captain's appearance.

"What brought you out here?" the captain retorted, though why he should have asked he could not have told.

"Get your togs on," was the only reply Jack offered. "Be quick, and come on deck."

Jerrold left him without a word, and padded off to his cabin. Jack reset the vernier, and went out. To his disturbed mind it seemed as if in the brief interval during which he had been below the whole appearance of nature had grown more ominous. In five minutes Jerry was with him.

"I've made up my mind what to do," the captain announced. "It's going to blow fit to take your hair out by the roots: that much is sure."

"We'll have to lay-to before we see the end of this, and I'd rather do so at sea-anchor 'n any other way. What do you think?"

"We sha'n't have much time when it does come. We must get a mess of things together up for'ard fit to hold a liner. We'll need it."

Jack got the hands together around the winch forward, and set them at once, under his direction,[Pg 291] to the making of the "sea-anchor." The spinnaker-boom and the two shorter boat-booms were first lashed firmly together with inch rope in a rough isosceles triangle.

"How are you going to ballast the thing?" asked Tab. "It'll float flat if you don't give it a sinker."

"I fancy the market-boat's killock would be about the right thing if we could get at it," Jack answered. "Do you know where"—

"Yes, yes," interrupted Jerry hastily. "It's with the rest of her gear. I'll get it." And he went aft.

Although the wind had not as yet increased in violence, Jack, standing as he did almost at the peak of the vessel, felt the motion much more than he had farther aft. The great gray-green seas heaved hard about the plunging yacht, and every now and then she ran bowsprit under. She was a rather dry boat, fortunately, of the "hollow bow" model, and in the fifteen or twenty minutes that the men had been working on the anchor, she had not taken any waves aboard. The spindrift, it is true, flew across her by the bucketful, but the men, dressed in their oilers, blinked the[Pg 292] cold water out of their eyes and went on with their work. Before Jerry returned, however, as the crew were bending the old staysail to the triangular frame, the captain, to his consternation, saw that the Merle was just working her way up the breast of a mighty hill of water with all likelihood of burying herself in the rising wall of a wave ahead.

The men dropped their work and caught at whatever was nearest at hand. Some threw an arm about the bollard by the knighthead; some jumped for the winch; two men got a tight grip on the large ring-bolts by the port cat-heads; Jack himself leaped for the winch and put his right arm around the drum.

The Merle labored to the crest of the hill of water. It sank away beneath her instantly, and she shot down the slope of the wave into the trough of the sea with a headlong, staggering rush. Towering above her was the roughened, foam-blotched face of the succeeding wave. She tried bravely to climb it, but she was too near, the angle was too sharp; she could not so quickly recover from the impetus of her downward plunge. She seemed to tremble—to hesitate—for an instant, and then as if in the courage of despair, to[Pg 293] leap forward with a jerk into the very midst of the flood as if she would force her way through its tons of swinging sea-water.

Jack went to the deck under the tremendous blow of the on-rushing wave as if he had been struck down by a thunderbolt. He felt the shock, the biting cold of the water, and then it seemed as if a giant had gripped him with hands of ice and were trying to wrench him from his hold. He clung on, drenched, bewildered, desperate, until he wondered if his arm would be pulled out of its socket. He had a stifling sensation of having been for hours without air; he felt as if he were being dragged by some terrible power swiftly through the sea miles below the surface. On a sudden he again felt the deck under him, and opened his eyes. The Merle had forced her way through the wave, and they were again free. He gasped, spluttered, and rose to his feet, the water streaming from him. Inside the bulwarks to starboard the green, foam-mixed brine washed about knee-deep, and was pouring with a hoarse gurgling out of the scuppers forward. The "anchor" had been swept bodily aft as far as the foremast, and there was jammed between the mast itself and the weather-shrouds. Drenched and cursing, the men squelched their way aft, dislodged the structure, and dragged it[Pg 294] forward again. Luckily the mishap, really a slight one of twenty seconds' duration, had wrought no damage which could not be easily repaired, and so the crew took up their work where they had left it.

Jerry reappeared with the killock of the market-boat just as they got into place once more.

"Did you get wet?" he asked cheerily, with a broad grin which showed that he saw what had happened.

Jack paid this boyish jest with a word that was sharp and a look that was too near a grin not to take the sting from it. He took the killock that Jerry had brought, and had the men make it fast to the lower point of the kite-like frame where the short boat-booms met. To the ends of the long spinnaker-boom he fastened lengths of strong inch Manilla, and a piece somewhat shorter to the point where the killock was attached. The captain meant that the "sea-anchor," when in the water, should ride not exactly vertical, but that by the shorter line the weighted point should be lifted a little toward the yacht as the Merle dragged[Pg 295] back on it. In the end of each of these lines a bow-line was bent, and through the bights of them he had the rode bent and made fast. The whole contrivance was then like a triangular kite weighted at the point made by the shorter sides, and held by lines from the three corners joined on the rode, which corresponded to the string. When the work was finished Jack inspected it all carefully, and examined the fastenings.

"It's a rough enough concern," he said to Jerry; "but it's stanch, and if we have to use it, it'll do good service. Make it fast," he added to the men. "Put on a couple of strong gaskets for stoppers. Come on, Tab; I don't want another ducking."

"Look!" cried Jerry suddenly, seizing him by the arm, and pointing away to the southward.

Jack's eyes followed the mate's arm. Afar off on the gloomy horizon, the black sea below and the gray sky above were in one place welded together by a wall of impenetrable haze. It was not much more than a spot, but Jack at a glance took in its full significance, and knew that before the Merle was a struggle that would try her strength and his[Pg 296] seamanship to the very utmost. He opened his mouth to speak, and closed his lips firmly without a word. He looked a moment at the inky mist, and then dashed below. In a couple of minutes he reappeared with a grim look on his usually genial face.

"Jerry," he said hurriedly, "I've been down and tried the storm-card on the chart. If we keep on as she's going, we'll fetch up plumb in the centre of this mess. The Merle wouldn't live there half an hour."

"Well?" questioned Jerry. His face was sober, and had about it a suggestion of a big, serious dog that watches its troubled master. "What can we do?"

"There is only one thing to do," Jack responded quickly, but with absolute decision. "The centre bears southwesterly,—that's why our wind's hauled 'round. We've got to put about and run into the heart of that greasy streak yonder. It'll be a tough job, but not so bad as if we were farther westward. When we get the wind westerly, we'll lay to. If we do anything else, we'll be swept into the centre, sure's fate."

"Can't we run it out?" Jerry asked desperately. "It'll be tremendous! That blow we had coming over'll be pale beside it. Think, man!"

The men sprang to their places, although Jack could see that they threw swift glances of surprise at him as they did so. The evidence, slight as it was, that he was acting alone, and that he must see farther and more wisely than the men under him, accustomed as they were to the sea, imparted a new ring of command to his voice as he gave the necessary orders. With some difficulty and with much uproar of booming canvas and slatting ropes, the schooner came about, and Jack had her headed straight for the black spot on the horizon.

Jack hurried on preparations for the storm before them. He had sail taken in and double-reefed; the "spitfire" jib set in place of the larger forestaysail, and tarpaulins battened over the skylights. He put the yacht as completely as possible in heavy-weather trim, to meet the gale scudding along over the black sea toward them.

He was none too soon, for the storm was not long in coming. The gray sky above the yacht grew darker and darker, the sea about her more and more "cobbly." The wind freshened rapidly, and veered more toward the west. The Merle sailed on gallantly, the green waves breaking against her weather shoulder, and the spindrift flying down[Pg 298] the decks as she slashed her way to windward. The tops of the great seas, as they heaved themselves skyward, were snatched off by the gale, and sped in white sheets down the wind.

Jack was standing in the cockpit with Jerry. He was watching the weather narrowly, and now and then, with a brief word or two, gave the steersmen—for the wheel needed two of them—a command or a warning. The force of the gale so increased that at the end of an hour and a half the mainsail, though triple-reefed, was got down and furled, and the forestaysail, which had been unbent to give place to the spitfire, was set on the boom as a trysail.

It had come on to rain, and the big drops were driven along almost in horizontal lines. When they struck the face Jack felt as if he had been pelted with hailstones. Mixed with the flying spindrift they filled the air as if with a mist, blinding and fierce.

Suddenly, as the yacht was dipping into the trough of a long sea, a strong gust listed her over so that aft the green water rose on the decks to within a fathom of the cockpit combings. A sharp report burst out above all the roaring of the wind and the multitudinous clamor of the waters. Jack looked up to see the trysail streaming out in[Pg 299] tattered ribbons, writhing and twisting like pale snakes in mad fury. The sight inflamed him like a personal insult flung at him by the storm. He broke out with a cry, and with a great oath swore he would see the Merle through in spite of everything.

"Tab," he shouted in the mate's ear, "get along forward on that sea-anchor! Stand by to launch it. We don't want any more of this!"

He saw Jerry gather the port watch,—for all the men had been on deck for two hours past, clinging to whatever was nearest and alternately watching the storm and the captain,—and with them scrabble forward, making way by the help of whatever could be grasped. Their difficulty in getting forward was to Jack like a sudden realization of the danger they were in, and made him for the moment think of the men, whereas he had before been conscious of nothing but of the yacht herself. He saw the men gather about the "sea-anchor," swaying and pitching with the motion of the bow, and Jerry turn to look for his signal. The yacht was carrying such a strong lee-helm that the steersmen could not keep her head to the wind, and Jack shouted and gesticulated frantically to Jerry to get down the storm-jib, while at the same time he ordered the starboard watch to[Pg 300] unstop the mainsail. He was in deadly fear lest the vessel should get clean broadside to the wind and that the decks would be swept.

Again he motioned to Jerry, knowing that his voice would not be heard forward. He saw Tab pause a moment, and then wave his arm in reply. To his utter dismay, however, he saw the mate and the men with him stoop, get hold of the "sea-anchor," and, tugging and stumbling, begin to haul it up to the weather side. It flashed on Jack that his gestures had been misunderstood, and his order to get down the jib mistaken for a command to launch the "anchor." With a sickening plunge the Merle at that moment coasted down a mighty wave, fell off, and lay broadside to the seas. For a second he felt as if everything was lost.

"Smartly!" he roared to the starboard watch, who were working for their lives upon the main-boom.

He gave them one glance, and started to rush forward, running recklessly along, and feeling for his sheath-knife as he went. A quick lurch of the yacht to port flung him off his feet, and shot him forward and to his right. He instinctively flung out his hand, and clutched something metallic.

A green shadow curled over him. There was a crashing roar to leeward. He felt the yacht stagger and tremble, and suddenly and with an odd mental twist he remembered vividly an earthquake shock he had once felt at Patras. The shadow disappeared, a little water came slap! on his oilskin jacket between the shoulders. The rest of the wave—tons and tons of green water—had curled itself over him, and crashed on the decks to leeward.

He got to his feet unsteadily, and with a queer singing in his ears ran forward. He threw a quick look to port as he ran. The force of the sea had evidently been heaviest amidships, for he saw that for thirty feet on the lee beam the rail had been burst out between the fore and main rigging; two boats were gone, and the skylights, broken, yawned blackly. Jack groaned inwardly, but did not stop. Pitching and staggering, he made his way to the foremast. A sudden fling of the yacht threatened to make him, as he afterward put it, "overshoot the mark" and tumble past the halyards. Fortunately, however, he checked himself by catching at the foretopsail-clewline as he was being pitched by, and he clung to it desperately. He laid hold of the spitfire halyard. One quick[Pg 302] glance at the turns about the pin in the rack told him how much time he should save by cutting the rope, and with a swift backdrawing of the sharp sheath-knife he severed it. The fall of the halyard flew up aloft, playfully dealing him a smart rap on the chin as it went; the sail ran down in thunder, and blew away in shreds. The Merle began to rise, and Jack felt a thrill of joyful relief to see that she was coming up into the wind. The men aft had showed the peak of the mainsail, and the schooner was feeling its effects.

A few yards forward, Jerry and the port watch were still toiling over the "sea-anchor." Twice they had tried to set it in position for launching, and each time wind and sea had overmastered them. Jack, in an agony lest the structure should be launched before the yacht was laid about on the other tack, or at least so near the wind that the awkward contrivance could be got over the bows to port, stumbled forward shouting.

"The wrong tack!" he bellowed in the mate's ear. "Run it over to leeward, and put it over when I wave my arm. Watch sharp!"

Castleport stumbled aft much as he had gone forward, now climbing laboriously up hill, now leaning back and struggling to keep himself from rushing headlong down the sloping deck with an impetus that would have carried him overboard. When he reached the cockpit, he dropped inside almost spent.

"Back the helm every time she rises!" he called to the men at the wheel. "We want her to fall over!"

At the risk of their lives, the two helmsmen held her as the schooner slid down the big slope of the wave, shivering as she went. As she rose, the captain, with a laughing heart, saw that she would make it. He tore off his "sou'-wester," and waved it frantically to Tab forward. Jerry threw up his arm in reply; the big "sea-anchor" rose from the deck, and went out on the port side.

The starboard watch began to wrestle with the heavy canvas which they had partially freed from its bonds so short a time before. The sail was made snug, and the Merle dragged back on her "anchor," and though she plunged and tugged, pitched and rolled, still kept her sharp nose to the wind. Through the mist of the stinging brine which the wind drove down the decks in sheets, the captain saw the hands forward pay out some forty fathoms of scope, and then, man by man, work their way aft.

"I'm awfully sorry I—I made such a mess," Tab shouted in the captain's ear as he reached him.

"It's all right," returned Jack, aglow with a wild exultation. "It's all right! No matter."

The ominous belt of opaque mist which they had so shortly before seen on the horizon was now all about them. The Merle and her crew were enveloped in a shroud of rushing rain. It drove before the blast in incredible torrents, and with a force that made them catch their breaths chokingly whenever they faced it. The seas increased to frightful size. Even to the sailors, bred[Pg 305] on the sea, it seemed hardly possible that the schooner could live in such surges. The cockpit, although self-bailing, was kept flooded; in it the water, sloshing about with the motion of the schooner, was as high as the transoms. The uproar of the wind, singing on the ropes strung by its own force to tautness, was like the shrieking of an immense and untuned harp. The crash of the waves sounded like a continuous cannonade all about the yacht. The mingling of sea and air produced a vertigo, as if everything was resolving again into its original chaos. Yet in the midst of it all Jack felt his blood sing in his veins with pure joy of the battle.

Suddenly the captain remembered the broken skylights. He splashed out of the cockpit, where he stood almost waist-deep in the jumping water, steadied himself by the combings, and started forward.

He waved his arm to the men, and the yellow-clad figures detached themselves in the mist and blurring rain from the points of vantage to which they had clung, and dumb, obedient, followed him.

The pumps were just abaft the foremast, and were of the semi-rotary sort. The bars were fitted,[Pg 306] and two of the men, swinging themselves back and forth, back and forth, with a dull and dreary monotony, began pumping as if they had become parts of a machine. A steady flow of water came from the waste-pipe in a continuous stream. It spread out over the deck to port and to starboard as the yacht swayed. It was full of bubbles and flecks of froth, and was a sickly yellow in hue.

Jack set the rest of the men to stretch new tarpaulins over the gaping skylights, and then he went below to look at the glass. Drenched, bruised, cold from his long fight with the storm and the hours which had gone by without his having had food, he found himself, now that for the moment action was not imperative, seized with a sort of terror at the perils he had gone through. The instant reflection that worse might be yet to come restored his courage. He could face whatever might befall as long as he might act.

The sight which met him in the once trig cabin was sufficiently dispiriting. A thin sheet of water swashed softly about over the Turkish carpet. It chuckled in dark places as if sentient and fully aware of the impropriety of its being there. A locker door had burst open, and was banging maddeningly. Farther forward, in the dark staterooms, similar noises could be heard, with sounds[Pg 307] which suggested that all sorts of small things were being flung about. Everything was sopped with sea-water and drenched by the beating rain: the transom-cushions, two of which were skating about the cabin with the wicker deck-chairs; the books on their shelves; the lockers, the mirrors, the sheathing, down which large drops ran in dizzying zigzags,—in short, everything. The sight gave Jack a feeling of discouragement worse than anything on deck—even the tearing away of the bulwarks—had been able to produce. He felt as if the cruel old ocean were mouthing the schooner as a beast breaks the bones of its prey before devouring it. He drew in his breath with fierce resolution, all his combative spirit aroused to fight to the last gasp, and made his stumbling way to the barometer. He steadied it with his hand, and read it. It stood at 27.04. This was a drop of only .05 since his last observation, and the captain's face cleared a little. If the glass had practically stopped falling, as apparently it had, the hardest part of the gale would come soon, and be speedily over. The old weather saw came into his head,—

The relief, slight as it was, affected him so strongly[Pg 308] that he almost smiled. He reflected that the Merle was as well prepared to meet it as under the circumstances she could be, and he had no real doubt of her ability to ride it out, unless some unexpected accident disabled the "sea-anchor."

When he came on deck he was greeted by Tab, who had taken charge in his absence, and who asked eagerly the state of the glass. Jack told him, and drawing him into the companionway, where they could escape the wind enough to talk, he added his reasons for thinking that a short time might see them through the worst.

"Precisely—but it might be worse," returned Jack; "but by George, Tab!" he burst out with sudden vehemence, "I—I'm glad I haven't got all this to do over again. You don't know—can't imagine the strain of this sort of thing."

"No, Tab," Jack answered soberly, "but the men, you know, and thinking I took them into[Pg 309] this when I'd no right to. Oh, rot! No matter, only I'm jolly glad I ran off with the Merle before I realized all this. I couldn't bring myself to do it again for"—

"Come on deck, Jacko," Tab said, after a brief silence in which with eyes cast down awkwardly he had waited for the captain to continue. "I know how you feel, but thank the Lord there's work to be done, and we'll fight through all right. Besides, Gonzague's forward getting a ration of some sort. We can't afford to miss that."

He put out his hand, and Jack grasped it appreciatively, with a half-conscious thanksgiving for the comfort of a friend.

"Right you are!" the captain said heartily. "We're both of us ready for a feed, I fancy."

Chapter Seventeen FACING THE MUSIC

"Well," Tab said, "I'll see you as far as the door for fear you'll bolt. You're a sight nearer funking than I ever saw you, Jacko. You must have your nerve with you if you don't want to come out of the little end of the horn."

"Humph!" snorted the captain. "It's all well enough for you to snoozle round and give me advice, but if you had to face Uncle Randolph yourself, you wouldn't be so chipper, let me tell you!"

The young men were crossing Atlantic Avenue not far from the East Boston Ferry. They had at last, sea-weary and glad of land, made harbor on the previous evening. Jack had hardly waited for the anchor to be down before he had sent off in haste for his European letters, intrusting the [Pg 311]messenger to post a voluminous epistle on which he had written industriously at intervals all the way over; and for half the night he had read and reread Katrine's missives, giving Jerry tantalizing bits now and then, with messages from Mrs. Fairhew enjoining him not again to aid and abet Jack in any nefarious schemes. In the morning the crew had been paid off generously, and given passages on the City of Rockland. Then Gonzague had been left in charge of the yacht, and now, with feelings curiously mixed, the captain was bound for the office of his uncle for the inevitable reckoning with the owner of the stolen Merle.

It was a bright, sharp morning, without a cloud in the sky. The air had a clean crispness which went to the head like wine. The streets were thronged and noisy. Heavy trucks rolled past the pair like batteries moving into action; the Elevated thundered overhead with its rumbling screech. The teamsters shouted profanely at their straining horses; a fat policeman at the crowded crossing waved his arms like semaphores, now holding up the traffic and again with commanding gesture sweeping it along. The shrill voices of the newsboys rang out in mechanical iteration of the leading sensations of the morning journals.

"Oh," cried Tab, as they walked briskly up State Street, "how good it is, isn't it, Jacko?"

Jack was too much absorbed in the interview before him to do more than nod mechanically. He could not at the moment bring himself up to the gay mood of his friend.

"There's no place like it after all," Jerry ran on, his honest, homely face aglow with delight. "My word, you may talk about Italy and all the rest of it till the crack of doom, but they can't hold a candle to good old Boston! Blest if this isn't the best part of the whole cruise!"

"Think so, do you?" asked Jack dryly. "It's funny, but the very reverse was in my head. What the deuce," he burst out, "what the deuce am I going to tell the President anyway?"

"Oh, just give him the yarn off the reel," returned Tab, as if it were all the simplest thing in the world. "You've got the log with you, and—I say, do look at those pigeons! Aren't they jolly! Come, brace up!"

"Oh, yes," said Jack. "Brace up, of course—in the very mouth of the lion's lair. Here's the building,—we're just about seventy feet under Uncle Randolph's den. Brace up! The very thing, of course! So glad you suggested it!"

"Now, Jacko," protested Jerry, "you mustn't[Pg 313] take things this way. Do put some spirit into it. I'll leave you here; but if you want, I'll face the music with you."

"Well, that's what we decided last night when we threshed things out. Go ahead. Bring the remains round to lunch, though. The Roundheads at one. It's eleven now, and you've got two hours for the job of placating the president. Come sure; for I shall be in a stew till I know how you two get on together."

"One o'clock," Jerry repeated; and with a buoyant wave of the hand, he went on his way up State Street.

"Suppose he'll weep when he sees the Frog Pond," muttered Jack to himself with a wan smile. "Wish I felt half as chipper."

He went to the elevator, and pressed the electric button. The big cage came down, the boy clashed the door, and Jack went in as he might have mounted the steps to a scaffold.

"Mr. Drake's," he said briefly, moistening his lips, and wondering why they seemed so stiff and dry.

Deposited on the proper floor, he tucked the brown log-book more tightly under his arm, and approached his uncle's office.

"I must have time," he said to himself. "I haven't thought this business out for a cent."

He turned on his heel, and walked slowly down the marble-flagged corridor past the glazed doors of half a dozen offices. Then he stopped with sudden resolution.

He walked resolutely up to the door, and entered his uncle's outer office. A typewriter was clicking busily at one desk, and various clerks were scratching away assiduously. Several people were seated about, evidently waiting to speak with Mr. Drake. Even as Jack entered, the door opened, and a man came out from the inner room. The head clerk nodded to Jack, but regarded him curiously.

"Can I see my uncle?" Jack asked, returning his salutation, and he added to himself, "He knows all about the Merle. I can tell by his looks."

"He's pretty busy this morning," the clerk answered, "but I'll tell him you're here. Of course he'll see you as soon as he can."

Jack took a seat and waited until the next man came out of the inner office. Then the head clerk went in, and in a moment returned with a queer look on his face. "Mr. Drake says these men are here by appointment," he reported, "and he cannot see you till they are gone."

"All right," Jack answered, reflecting ruefully that he was not accustomed to be thus kept waiting in his uncle's office. "I am in no hurry."

He settled himself in his chair, feeling that he could have borne anything better than this delay, and half tempted now to give it up, and beat a retreat. He saw one man after another go into the inner room, and after a time return and go away. He crossed and recrossed his legs with an impatient feeling that he had never sat in so uncomfortable a chair. He tried to beguile the time by reading the log, but first he opened to the account of the lifting of the Merle, and then to the story of how her bulwarks were torn away by the storm. He fell to thinking how good Uncle Randolph had always been to him, and every minute felt more and more like a wretch for having left the old gentleman stranded at North[Pg 316] Haven. The time grew longer and longer, and every moment more intolerable as the second hour began to drag its slow length after the first. Then he noticed that only one man remained to delay his interview, and so completely was he demoralized that he felt that he would have given anything in the world to be excused from the trial before him. It seemed to him that the last man but one did his business, whatever it was, in an amazingly short time; and he all but bolted when the last went to his appointment. If he could get away and think things over once more, he might perhaps be able to devise some sort of excuse more plausible than anything he had to offer; and he all but started to his feet to fly when the door opened to let out the only visitor who had stood between him and the dreaded encounter with the president.

Jack got to his feet as if by automatic action, and felt them drag him forward against his will. Another instant, and the door had closed behind him; he stood in the inner office. With a tremendous effort—an effort which was almost physical—to pull himself together, he looked up at his uncle.

He saw a slight gentleman, dressed in a well-fitting suit of gray, looking out of one of the windows with his back to the door. The office was high enough to command a view of the harbor, shining blue in the sun beyond the clusters of roofs and chimneys. Mr. Drake stood for a moment as if examining the view for the first time, while Jack wondered whether this unconsciousness of his presence was real, or was of a piece with the infliction of the long wait. Then the President turned to him, and bowed formally, as if to a stranger. His face wore a curious look of weariness and patience which somehow reminded Jack of his father. The high forehead was wrinkled with a line or two that Jack did not remember, and the curly hair was surely more thickly streaked with gray.

Jack felt that the interview promised to be even worse than he had feared. He shuffled his feet uncomfortably, and studied the figures in the rug. Then he looked up at the face of the elder man, and something in it smote him to the heart.

"Uncle Randolph," he said suddenly, "I suppose it's pretty late to say anything of the sort, but—but something that happened on the way over made me see that—made me see what a blackguard I'd been to steal the Merle as I did. I don't think apologies are much good, anyway, especially after you've had all the fun. It's a good deal like trying to sneak out of consequences, but I—I really mean most sincerely that I'm beastly sorry."

Mr. Drake did not move a muscle of his keen, well-bred face, but into his eyes came some faint glint of humor which made Jack stop in confusion.

"I'm not quite through, sir," Jack said in a sort of desperate humility. "I—I—that is"—He floundered for a moment, and then went on with a rush, "I may as well explain that I'm not sorry one way; that is—I can't honestly say I wish I hadn't taken the Merle, for I—you know I'm engaged to Miss Marchfield, and I never could have been except—that is, unless I'd got over there. I can't be sorry for that."

"No?" queried Mr. Drake, raising his brows. "You are not thinking, perhaps, what is the price I have paid for the privilege of congratulating you on this engagement. I have no son, and from the[Pg 319] day your father died I have made one of you. You deceive me, humiliate me in the eyes of my guests, make me the joke of my club, leave me high and dry at North Haven"—

Sad and sorry as Jack really was, he could not help the impulse that made him see the chance, and murmur under his breath,—

"I didn't think anything could be high and dry in the sort of fog we went off in."

His uncle gave a slight cough, as if he were strangling an inclination to laugh, and then went on in the same even voice as before.

"Of course I can't expect you to have any feeling about the way I felt about your tricking me, any more than of the anxiety I went through when the Merle disappeared, and I didn't know whether you were on top of the sea or under it."

"No, I suppose not. Nor how I enjoyed the storm you must have been in on the way home. Lloyd's people sent me word of your giving them the slip at Plymouth."

"But they let us," Jack put in eagerly, seizing with avidity at any point which seemed to afford him a chance to defend himself. "I didn't think, Uncle Randolph, and I'm afraid I've been a[Pg 320] beastly cad to you. I am sorry to the very bottom of my heart."

The President took a quick stride forward and clapped one hand on his nephew's shoulder, while with the other he grasped warmly the hand Jack put out swiftly to meet him.

"There, Jack," he said, "that's all I want. You don't know what we old fools go through worrying over you young ones. Perhaps it's just as well you don't."

He gave Jack's hand a vigorous shake, and then turned away to blow his own nose with equal violence. Jack himself felt hot in the eyes, but he had no words which seemed adequate to the situation.

"Sit down," his uncle said, waving him to a chair, and then going to his desk. He took from a pigeon-hole some letters and papers. "I have several things to say to you. Mrs. Fairhew writes a very spicy letter when she wants to."

Jack blushed at the remembrance, vivid and sharp, of his declaration to Jerry that he would make his uncle realize that he had come to man's estate.

"Oh, ho," said Mr. Drake, regarding him keenly, but with humorous eyes, "you thought so too, did you? Of course you did! Well, I know it now, and I've been an old fool. I congratulate you, Jack, with all my heart. If Miss Marchfield is like her mother"—He broke off as if his thought had got the better of his speech. "If she is all that Mrs. Fairhew says she is, you have a treasure, my boy. Don't ever run off with her yacht."

"I never mean to repeat that performance with anybody," Jack declared stoutly, again shaking hands fervently. "You've always been awfully good to me, Uncle Randolph, and I've never done anything for you."

"Hum, perhaps not that you know of," the other replied, with a humorous lift of his eyebrows; "but we sometimes do good when we think we're doing harm. Read this."

He held out a long blue envelope, much stamped and written upon, and provided with both American and English postage-stamps. Jack knew it at a glance as the one he had taken from the messenger that foggy night at North Haven, had found in the pocket of his coat at Nice, and had after much cogitation remailed at Plymouth. In the upper left-hand corner was the notice to[Pg 322] return to R. B. Tillington, if not delivered in five days, and the Boston address written in his own hand. He drew out the letter and read:—

"Good heavens!" he said. "Did I make you lose the chance? Did you get the telegrams?"

"I got them, but they referred me to the letter, and I was too upset about the Merle to pay much attention. Then I went over to the island, and stayed there three or four days; so that by the time I did get a letter—a second one—the whole thing was over."

"Was that what broke Tillington?" Jack asked, feeling as if his escapade had destroyed half the financial world.

"It saved me from going with him," Mr. Drake returned, with a smile. "See here." He extended[Pg 324] a lot of newspaper cuttings, and then drew them back. "Never mind, though," he went on. "There's no need of going into the particulars. The whole thing was a trap from beginning to end. If you made a fool of me, Jack, by running off with the Merle, it isn't a circumstance to the fool I'd have made of myself if I'd got that letter. If it hadn't been for that perfectly heartless and entirely inexcusable performance of yours, we'd both of us be beggars at this blessed moment. We came so near it that I can't read that sign downstairs, 'Beggars and Peddlers not Allowed,' without thinking how near I was to having it forbid me my own office."

"I do mean it, my boy, though I'm afraid the moral of it all's pretty crooked. I had been led in with a cleverness that gives me cold shivers. That talk at the club that I'd heard as if by accident had all been planned out, and so on for a lot more things I won't go into. Mellington's blown his brains out, and poor old Foster isn't up to anything but cadging for drinks at the club, and telling how he was roped in when he was drunk, poor old fellow! I was so sure of Orion that I'd have put in the last dollar of yours or mine I could[Pg 325] have laid hands on! I feel like a humbug when men congratulate me on knowing enough to keep out of the mess."

Jack sent the log up into the air, and, bounding to his feet, caught it as it fell.

"Whoop!" he shouted. "Oh, how glad I am old Tillington wrote that letter and I carried it off!"

The President laughed with responsive joyousness, but reminded his ebullient nephew that there were clerks in the other room. He began to ask questions about the voyage, but the clock struck one and Jack recalled the fact that Taberman was waiting for him at the Roundheads, and probably was on tenterhooks for his news.

"That'll look well," retorted his uncle with humorous derision. "Everybody knows about your running off with the Merle—Bardale couldn't hold his tongue—and I shall be accused of condoning a felony."

Nevertheless they set out arm in arm for the[Pg 326] club, and as they went the President informed his secretary that he should not be back at the office that afternoon.

"We shall want to run over the log," he explained to Jack as they waited for the elevator. "I've no doubt it will make you blush to have me read it, but I'm going to."

"I brought it for you," Jack answered, with a grin of pure joy. "Do you mind waiting a minute, while I send a cable to Katrine? She was awfully anxious to know how hard you'd be on me."

"Now she'll think I've no backbone at all. Well, when you played me that trick, Jack, I felt terribly old and alone; but I think I am a little bit younger now you're back, and prepared to behave yourself."

"Wait till you've read the log," laughed Jack, "and you'll think you're in your teens!"

Chapter Eighteen EPILUDE

Jack, who had been dining at Mrs. Fairhew's, was taking leave of Katrine one evening a few weeks before the day set for the wedding. The farewell had all the characteristic deliberateness which has marked the unwilling separation of engaged couples from time immemorial, and was to-night prolonged more than usual by his teasing refusal to answer a question.

"Do tell me what the great secret is between you and Mr. Drake, Jack," she begged. "I think you are perfectly horrid!"

"Of course I am," she retorted, laughing and pouting; "but you can't put me off with a compliment. If you hadn't meant to tell me, you wouldn't have spoken about it at all; and I think[Pg 328] you've teased me enough. What is it about the President and you?"

She touched the tips of her fingers to his cravat, as if she were straightening it, whereas she was probably only exerting instinctively her privilege of proprietorship in Jack and his belongings.

"Well," he laughed, "you have borne it beautifully, and I've had you crazy with curiosity till I don't dare put off telling you. But you'll probably lie awake half the night thinking about it."

"I expect to be paid for telling you," he declared with a look that made her flush.

"I should think you might be generous enough to tell me for nothing," she responded; but her dimples deepened.

He stooped forward quickly, and kissed her. Then he took both her hands in his, and stood caressing them while he went on.

"The news is this," he said. "We've got to change our plans for the wedding journey from stem to stern."

"It's a fact, dear," he went on, assuming an expression of profound regret which was too obviously artificial to be depressing.

"Because—Are you ready for a great shock? Wouldn't you like me to support you in case you couldn't bear it?"

"Because Uncle Randolph has given us the Merle as a wedding present. He told me this afternoon, so that we should have time to shape our plans accordingly."

"Splendid of him, isn't it? How would it strike you to have the Merle sent over and to take a whole year in her on the Mediterranean?"

She clasped her hands, and looked up at him with loving brave eyes. Her first thought was of his pleasure, and instantly followed the reflection that she was making her first sacrifice; for her quick mind foresaw that Jack on a yacht, with duties in which he delighted, would probably be less wholly hers than in the travel by land which they had arranged. She smiled wonderfully, and for the first time in their engagement she bent forward of her own accord, and offered him her lips.

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Chapter		Page
I.	The Cardinal Points	1
II.	The Fog comes in	19
III.	It blows Southeast	36
IV.	It blows Northwest	50
V.	Land Ho!	64
VI.	Dinner Ashore	81
VII.	Luncheon Aboard	104
VIII.	A Change of Tactics	129
IX.	The Doldrums	147
X.	Mr. Wrenmarsh, the Extraordinary	163
XI.	A Lone-Hand Game	199
XII.	At Vergil's Tomb	228
XIII.	A Bid for the Odd Trick	240
XIV.	Clearing the Decks	250
XV.	In the Cattewater	263
XVI.	Storm!	288
XVII.	Facing the Music	310
XVIII.	Epilude	327