coming down from aloft, where he had gone immediately after dinner to reef and furl the topgallant sails as best he could, emily met paul with the news that the derelict seemed to be recovering a glimmer of consciousness.
"when i carried a cup of beef extract to him just now he was awake," she told paul. "he seemed not at all surprised to find a woman attending him. he thinks he is in a hospital somewhere—that i am a nurse. when i asked him his name he answered: 'number 19—cot 19, nurse.'"
"did you ask him anything about the daphne?"
"yes; but neither the vessel's name nor captain mcgavock's nor any of those you told me were in the log book meant anything to him. his only answer to all my questions was, 'nurse, if the captain comes in before "lights out" tell him i'd like to see him.' he's an irishman, i should say—a kind sort of an old soul, with a rare, musical brogue."
"a very broth of a bhoy, eh?" laughed paul.
"if he is one of the daphne's crew, i am sure—i am certain that he had nothing to do with the mutiny."
"and that is the woman of it. come. i'll go in to see him. let me get a lantern out of the engine room."
"there is a lamp in his room. i filled it the way i saw you filling the sidelights."
"you'd make a great pioneer, emily. come."
thus praise always came from him quickly for the doing of a helpful thing. she could imagine men working their fingers to the bone under his mastership.
together they went aft, emily preceding paul through the alleyway to the derelict's door. the light in the lamp, which hung in gimbals against the forward bulkhead of the room, was low. emily went in and turned it up.
"are you feeling better?" she asked cheerily.
"yes, nurse, easier—much easier," came his answer rather thickly. his face was toward the inside of the berth. he turned over painfully, his eyelids fluttering. "has the cap—the ould man——"
his lips froze as he discovered paul lavelle in the doorway. he started up on his right elbow. his eyes bulged wildly. his jaw went loose. he made a vain effort to lift his left hand to his brow in a salute. he tried to speak, but his tongue clicked in his throat like a twig crackling. with a weird, eery cry he fell back in the berth senseless.
the time of a breath embraced the strange scene.
"oh, paul, paul, he knows you!" exclaimed emily in a tense whisper.
"i never saw him to my knowledge until we pulled him aboard this afternoon," said paul, recovering from his surprise. "he has mistaken me for somebody else. poor devil is out of his head."
"are you sure you have never seen him?"
"i'm quite sure. but it's uncanny. please bring the lamp over here so that i can take a good look at him."
emily carried the light to the side of the berth and paul bent over the stranger. he searched every feature of the weather-beaten face and his own memory at the same time. he was positive he had never seen the derelict before.
"just out of his head, little woman—that's all. i never saw him—i don't know him, although his own mother wouldn't recognize him now."
as he spoke paul timed the unconscious man's pulse and laid an ear to his breast. emily caught an uncertain shake in paul's head as he straightened.
"is—is he going to get better?" she whispered.
paul answered her with a shrug of doubt.
"we can't do any more for him than we are doing now."
he added this as he saw her wince and the glint of pitying tears come into her eyes.
"his heart is very weak," he went on, after a slight pause. "he seems to be in a bad mooring ground. he's burnt up as if he had been through a fiery furnace. it may sound strange to hear one speak of the sea as a fiery furnace, but it is. it can burn a man's soul out of him just as it can freeze it out. and—mock him with bitter waters he cannot drink."
there was a world of bitterness in his tone as he finished speaking and left the room to go aft to the medicine chest. he returned with some spirits of nitre to find emily placing a wet pack across the derelict's forehead. he mixed a dose of the tincture in a tumbler of water and dropped some of the fluid between the cracked lips.
"this will help to pull the fever down," he explained. "it's all i could find back there—this nitre. he will need watching and attention to-night. if this calm holds i will slip in here now and again."
a low moan escaped from the stranger.
"come, little woman. let us leave him now."
paul put up a hand to turn down the light.
"no, i am going to stay and do what i can for him, paul."
"but, emily, this—this is no work for you. you——"
"paul lavelle, it is my work," the gold woman said firmly. "i've been a loafer—an idling nothing—a leaner all my life. i've never helped until now. you've taught me how. you can't unteach me. if my hands can aid this poor old man to keep a hold upon life they are going to do it. if they can make his going out any easier they are going to do it. my god, the thought—that it might be you—and a woman would turn away from—from you——"
her voice broke. tears choked her. she put an arm against the bulkhead and buried her face in it, away from paul's sight. her nobility of soul chastened his spirit. it exalted him. in silence he went out into the night. strangely there lingered in his brain as he went about the ship two sentences emily had uttered with unwonted fire: "you've taught me how. you can't unteach me."
there was much for the daphne's new skipper to do. while the calm gave no sign of breaking and the lounge barometer held steady for fair weather, still the longer he contemplated the task of handling the daphne the bigger it grew in his sight. he could not afford to let any precaution which suggested itself pass unembraced. so he turned to work on the theory that it is easier to let out a reef in a breeze than it is to furl a sail in a gale. he cut his coat according to the cloth he had. he double-reefed the foresail and the topsails and, with the donkey engine's aid, found it not such a hard task as he had imagined it might be. steam hauled the blocks of the reef tackles closer together than sailor hands could ever have brought them. the best he could do with the mainsail was stopper it with gaskets. it would have been vain and futile to have tried to roll the heavy canvas up on its yard. he knew if it should come on to blow that the wind would take care of it as he left it, but he could not help it.
the last thing he did forward was to put the hatch covers on and bar them down. the tarpaulin had been burned or thrown overboard by the mutineers, but paul felt certain that little water could enter the daphne there.
as he went aft he was surprised to see a light in elston's room. peering through the port under the gangway ladder leading to the poop he saw emily writing at the dead boy's desk. she stirred slightly as his eyes rested on her and as if conscious of another presence. a sense of guilt startled paul and he hastened aft to reef down the spanker.
with the finishing of that task the skipper leaned wearily against the wheel and surveyed the things he had done alow and aloft. the moon, which, twenty-four hours gone, he had never expected to see rise again, presently caught him in its spell. it was now nearly two hours high over the bark's starboard quarter. in its beams the daphne seemed but the delicate tracery of a ship o' dreams. it powdered the vessel with a silvery dust; enveloped her in a mystic, spiritual splendor. the gilded trucks gleamed like true gold. masts and spars, shrouds and stays and running gear were invested with a fairy grace. the coarse, heavy sails had become gossamer in their fineness—butterfly wings at rest. the night, as if for the very beauty of the scene, wept upon the fabric in dewy tears of pearl and opal and sparkling diamond.
emerging from the lounge emily was caught in the moonlight's enhancement. for a second it swept from her mind what had brought her seeking lavelle. paul, staring aloft, did not see her nor did he hear her footfall. a hiss of steam from the donkey boiler's safety escape, which had been set at a very low pressure, broke the spell.
"it seems helpless—weak to say that words fail one in expressing a thought—an impression," said the gold woman. "but all i can say—i must say the trite thing: how wondrously beautiful!"
her words but expressed the thought that had leaped into paul's mind at discovering her and which he had bravely denied utterance.
"the sea has no fairer sight to give men than this—unless it is a square-rigged vessel like the daphne, 'a towering cloud of canvas,' driving along over the deep in such a light. but how is the stranger?"
the question brought a serious eagerness into emily's face.
"are you positive, paul, that you have never seen this man before?"
"i have searched my memory to place him. he is not in it. why?"
"he was quiet for perhaps an half-hour after you left. i went into the room next door—the mate's—to—to write something. suddenly i heard him call your name, 'lavelle.'"
"impossible!"
"no; i heard the name, 'lavelle'; just as distinctly as that. i was shocked. i stole in very softly and stood beside him. his eyes were closed, but he kept mumbling, 'that night at apia——'"
"apia? apia?" paul repeated with interest. "yes, go on. what else did he say?"
"that was as far as he seemed able to get. i thought he was trying to go over some oft-told story. at last he sank back in exhaustion. i did not dare to speak to him. he has slept ever since and his fever is down. what is apia? where is it? what do you think he meant?"
"apia—in the samoan islands. my father was lost there twenty-five years ago in a hurricane which trapped three naval squadrons. he was about my age at the time. only a little while ago mother wrote me that a photograph i sent her might have been father's. this old fellow must have served under him. he mistook me for him when he saw me so unexpectedly in the doorway. this explains it. the way he attempted to salute when he saw me made me think he was a man-o'-war's man."
a strange, unreasonable hope which had sprung into emily's heart died.
"the sea plays strange pranks, doesn't it, my friend?" paul asked after a pause. the question drew emily's gaze back from the satiny blue deep. his manner of address chilled her. "'my friend! my friend'?" her brain echoed. he averted his gaze sadly.
"yes," she assented. "it does play strange pranks."
in the words a meaning was veiled that did not reach him. she was thinking of the barrier that had been building itself between them all day. no sooner did one wall go down than another rose in its place. strangely, as she watched him staring over the deep to the southward, a feeling of contrition filled her. with the truest sympathy she said:
"i am sorry. perhaps i shouldn't have told you what this man said. it has stirred unpleasant memories—sad ones."
"no. the finest memory i have is my father—the finest memory any son ever had."
as he spoke he seemed to go still further away from her. in silence she watched him enter the lounge and return to the deck with his sextant. he took an observation of polaris and then went in to the chart table to work it out. with a feeling akin to shame emily sensed that he did not wish her near him and she started below.
"we should try to get as much sleep as possible while this calm lasts."
he said this coldly and without looking up from the book from which he was taking a set of logarithms.
"i know—i understand," she answered, fighting for control of herself.
"a breeze may come at any time and we'll need every bit of strength we can muster to work the ship."
the gold woman could stand the uncertainty no longer.
"paul, tell me frankly—have i done or said anything to hurt you? what is it? what i said down there in the stranger's room—is it that?"
the words were no sooner away from her lips than anger at herself swept her. where was her pride?
"no, no. of course you have not said anything. of course not. all's well, little woman." his answer came quickly, but not without an embarrassment that she failed to understand. he bent his head over his work again. "don't forget you are to call me at the first sign of a breeze; anyway not later than 11:30."
they had planned at dinner that she was to keep the watch for the first part of the night.
"no; i shan't forget," she answered bravely and groped down the companionway from his sight. nor could she dream what pain it cost the lonely man at the chart table to let her go from him.
