Part 3 (1/2)

Now and then, through those days, Priscilla's enthusiasm would send her skittering up the companion to fetch Joel to see some new wonder--a window set in the stern, or a bench completed, or a door hung. And Joel, looking far oftener at Priscilla than at the object she wished him to consider, would chuckle, and touch her shoulder affectionately, and go back to his post.

In the sixth week, the last nail had been driven, and the last lick of paint was dry. In the result, Priscilla was as happy as a bride has a right to be.

Across the very stern of the s.h.i.+p, with windows looking out upon the wake, ran what might have been called a sitting room. It was perhaps twenty feet wide and eight feet deep; and its rear wall--formed by the overhanging stern--sloped outward toward the ceiling. Against this slope, beneath the three windows, a broad, cus.h.i.+oned bench was built, to serve as couch or seat. The bench was broken in one place to make room for Joel's desk, and the cabinet wherein he kept his records and his instruments. Priss had put curtains on the windows; and she had a lily, in a pot, at one of them, and a clump of pansies at another. Joel's cabin opened off this compartment, on the starboard side; hers was opposite.

The main cabin, with its folding table built about the thick b.u.t.t of the mizzenmast, had been extended forward to make room for the enlargement of this stern apartment; and the mates were quartered off this main cabin.

The galley and the store rooms were on the main deck, in the after house, on either side of the awkward ”walking wheel” by which the s.h.i.+p was steered; and the cabin companion was just forward of this wheel.

There were aboard the _Nathan Ross_ about thirty men, all told; but the most of them were not of Priscilla's world. The foremast hands never came aft of the try works, save on tasks a.s.signed; and the secondary officers--boat-steerers and the like--slept in the steerage and kept forward of the boathouse. Thus the after deck was shared only by Priscilla and Joel, the mates, the cook, and old Aaron, who was a man of many privileges.

This world, Priscilla ruled. Joel adored her; Jim Finch gave her the clumsy homage of a puppy--and was at times just as oppressively amiable.

Old Aaron talked to her by the hour, while he went about his work. And the other mates--Varde, the sullen; and Hooper, who was old and losing his grip; and d.i.c.k Morrell, who was young and finding his--paid her the respect that was her due. Young Morrell--he was not even as old as she was--helped her on her first climb to the mast head. He was only a boy.... The girl, when the first homesick pangs were past, was happy.

Until the day they killed their whale, a seventy-barrel cachalot cow who died as peaceably as a chicken, with only a convulsive flop or two when the lances found the life. Priscilla took a single glimpse of the shuddering, b.l.o.o.d.y, oily work of cutting in the carca.s.s, and then she fled to her cabin and remained there steadfastly until the long task was done. The smoke from the bubbling try pots, and the persistent smell of boiling blubber sickened her; and the grime that descended over everything appalled her dainty soul. Not until the men had cleaned s.h.i.+p did she go on deck again; and even then she scolded Joel for the affair as though it were a matter for which he was wholly to blame.

”There just isn't any sense in making so much dirt,” she told him. ”I've had to wash out every one of my curtains; and I can't ever get rid of that smell.”

Joel chuckled. ”Aye, the smell sticks,” he agreed. ”But you'll be used to it soon, Priss. You'll come to like it, I'm thinking. Any case, we'll not be rid of it while the cruise is on.”

She was so angry that she wanted to cry. ”Do you actually mean, Joel Sh.o.r.e, that I've got to live with that sickening, hot-oil smell for th-three years?”

He nodded slowly. ”Yes, Priss. No way out of it. It's part of the work.

Come another month, and you'll not mind at all.”

She said positively: ”I may not say anything, but I shall always hate that smell.”

His eyes twinkled slowly; and she stamped her foot. ”If I'd known it was going to be like this, I wouldn't have come, Joel. Now don't you laugh at me. If there was any way to go back, I'd go. I hate it. I hate it all.

You ought not to have brought me....”

They were on the broad bench across the stern, in their cabin; and he put his big arm about her shoulders and laughed at her till she could do no less than laugh back at him. But--she a.s.sured herself of this--she was angry, just the same. Nevertheless, she laughed....

Joel had put the _Nathan Ross_ on the most direct southward course, touching neither Azores nor Cape Verdes. For it was in his mind, as he had told Asa Worthen, to make direct for the Gilbert Islands and seek some trace of his brother there. That had been his plan before he left port; but the plan had become determination after a word with Aaron Burnham, one day. Joel, resting in the cabin while old Aaron worked there, fell to thinking of his brother, and so asked:

”Aaron, what is your belief about my brother, Mark Sh.o.r.e? Is he dead?”

Aaron was building, that day, the forward part.i.tion of the new cabin, fitting his boards meticulously, and driving home each nail with hammer strokes that seemed smooth and effortless, yet sank the nail to the head in an instant. He looked up over his shoulder at Joel, between nails.

”Dead, d'ye say?” he countered quizzically.

Joel nodded. ”The Islanders? Did they do it, do you believe?”

Old Aaron chuckled asthmatically. He had lost a fore tooth, and the effect of his mirth was not rea.s.suring. ”There's a brew i' the Islands,”

he said. ”More like 'twas the island brew nor the island men.”

Joel, for a moment, sat very still and considered. He knew Mark Sh.o.r.e had never scrupled to take strong drink when he chose; but Mark had always been a strong man to match his drink, and conquer it. Said Joel, therefore, after a s.p.a.ce of thought:

”Why do you think that, Aaron? Drink was never like to carry Mark away.”

Aaron squinted up at him. ”Have ye sampled that island brew? 'Tis made of pineapples, or sago, or the like outlandish stuff, I've heard. And one sip is deviltry, and two is madness, and three is corruption. Some stomachs are used to it; they can handle it. But a raw man....”