Part 5 (1/2)
”Oh!”
By this time a few dexterous twists and turns had restrained those wandering tresses within bounds. She held a hair-pin between her lips, and a woman can always say exactly what she means when a hairpin prevents discursiveness.
”I am all right now,” she announced. ”Will you please leave me, and tell the steward to bring me a cup of tea? If there is a cabin at liberty, he might put that portmanteau in it which I brought on board at Liverpool.”
Hozier fulfilled her requests, and rejoined c.o.ke on the bridge.
”Miss Yorke is quite well again, sir,” he reported. ”She wants a cabin--to change her clothes, I imagine. That bag you saw----”
”Pretty foxy, wasn't it?” broke in c.o.ke, with a glee that was puzzling to his hearer.
”The whole affair seems to have been carefully planned,” agreed Philip.
”But, as I was saying, she asked for the use of a cabin, so I told the steward to give her mine until we put into Queenstown.”
c.o.ke, who had lighted another black and stumpy cigar, removed it in order to speak with due emphasis.
”Put into h--l!” he said.
”But surely you will not take this young lady to the River Plate?”
cried the astounded second officer.
”She knew where she was bound w'en she kem aboard the _Andromeda_,”
said the skipper, frowning now like a man who argues with himself.
”There's her portmanter to prove it, with a label, an' all, in her own 'and-writin'. It's some game played on me by 'er an' 'er uncle.
Any'ow, the fust time she sees land again it'll be the lovely 'arbor of Pernambuco--an' that's straight. 'Ere she is, an' 'ere she'll stop, an' the best thing you can do is spread the notion among the crew that she's runnin' away to avoid marryin' a man she doesn't like. That sounds reasonable, an' it 'appens to be true. Verity an' me talked it over last Sunday, p.m.”
”To avoid a marriage?” repeated Hozier, who discovered a bluff honesty, not to say candor, in the statement, not perceptible hitherto in his commander's utterances.
”Yes, that's it,” said c.o.ke, waving the cigar across an arc of the horizon as he warmed to the subject. ”But look 'ere, me boy, this gal sails under my flag. I'm, wot d'ye call it, in locomotive parentibus, or something of the sort, while she's on the s.h.i.+p's books. You keep your mouth shut, an' wink the other eye, an' leave it to me to give you the chanst of your life--eh, wot?”
Philip Hozier did not strive to extract the precise meaning of the skipper's words. The process would have been difficult, since c.o.ke himself could not have supplied any reasonable a.n.a.lysis. Somehow, to the commander's thinking, the presence of the girl seemed to make easier the casting away of the s.h.i.+p--exactly how, or what bearing her strangely-begun voyage might have on subsequent events, he was not yet in a position to say. But when the second officer left him, and he was steeped once more in the fresh breeze and the suns.h.i.+ne, with his shoulders braced against the chart-house, he looked at a smoke trail on the horizon far away to the west.
”Queenstown!” he chuckled. ”Not this journey--not if my name's Jimmie c.o.ke, the man 'oo is stannin' on all that is left of 'is 'ard-earned savin's. No, sir, I've got me orders an' I've got me letter, an' the pore old _Andromeda_ gets ripped to pieces in the Recife, or I'll know the reason why. Wot a card to play at the inquiry! Owner's niece on board--bound to South America for the good of 'er health. 'Oo even 'eard of a man sendin' 'is pretty niece on a s.h.i.+p 'e meant to throw away? It's Providential, that's wot it is, reel Providential! I do believe ole Verity 'ad a 'and in it.”
Which shows that Captain c.o.ke confused Providence with David Verity, and goes far to prove how ill-fitted he was to theorize on the ways of Providence.
CHAPTER III
WHEREIN THE ”ANDROMEDA” NEARS THE END OF HER VOYAGE
”Five bells, miss! It'll soon be daylight. If you wants to see the Cross, now's your time!”
Iris had been called from dreamless sleep by a thundering rat-tat on her cabin door. In reply to her half-awaked cry of ”All right,” the hoa.r.s.e voice of a sailor told her that the Southern Cross had just risen above the horizon. She had a drowsy recollection of someone saying that the famous constellation would make its appearance at seven bells, not at five, and the difference of an hour, when the time happens to be 2:30 instead of 8:30 a.m. is a matter of some importance.
But, perhaps that was a mistake; at any rate, here was the messenger, and she resolutely screwed her knuckles into her eyes and began to dress. In a few minutes she was on deck. A long coat, a Tam o'
Shanter, and a pair of list slippers will go far in the way of costume at night in the tropics, and the _Andromeda's_ seventeenth day at sea had brought the equator very near. At dinner on the previous evening--in honor of the owner's niece fas.h.i.+onable hours were observed for meals--Mr. Watts mentioned, by chance, that the Cross had been very distinct during the middle watch, or, in other words, between midnight and 4 a.m. Iris at once expressed a wish to see it, and Captain c.o.ke offered a suggestion.