Captain Calamity Part 31

"Yes. Have you finally decided what to do?"

"I shall see the British Consul, lay before him my father's papers, and ask him to advance me sufficient money to----"

"There's no need to ask him that," interrupted Calamity. "I could let you have whatever you wanted, even if there wasn't----"

"Still, if you don't mind, I should prefer to borrow it from the Consul," she broke in without looking at him.

"As you please. Then I take it that you have made up your mind to go to California?"

"Yes; I will take your advice and try fruit-farming."

"H'm," grunted Calamity.

"You told me it was the best--in fact, the only thing I could do," she said with a faint touch of sarcasm in her voice.

"Yes--yes, I suppose I did."

"The profession I know best and which I love best--that of the sea--I cannot follow, being a woman. You pointed that out yourself."

"It is self-evident!"

Calamity turned away as if to leave the bridge, hesitated on the top step of the companion-ladder, and then came back again. Seemingly he did so only to glance at the compa.s.s, but, having done this, he came up to the bridge-rail and leant over it.

"You are a strange young woman," he said abruptly.

"Am I?"

He lapsed into silence again and Dora Fletcher, looking at him surrept.i.tiously out of the corner of her eye, marvelled exceedingly.

Once more this extraordinary man was revealing himself to her in a new light. Usually so self-confident and determined in manner and speech, he exhibited a curious hesitancy this evening that puzzled the girl. He was like a man who wished to say something yet, for some reason or other, feared to say it. This so impressed her that she grew uneasy, and, moving a little farther away from him, leant against the starboard rail and gazed fixedly across the darkening waters.

Presently the Captain straightened his back, walked to the port rail, and, after standing there a moment or two, crossed to where the girl was standing. He did not speak, and, although her back was towards him, she knew that he was very close. Involuntarily she clutched the rail tightly as if to support herself, her heart began to beat faster and her breath came in little catches. And yet, she told herself, there was no reason for this; it made her angry, angry with herself for being unreasonably agitated, and angry with him for being the cause of it. He remained standing close behind her, saying nothing, till at last she could bear it no longer.

"Won't you miss your watch below, sir?" she asked.

"That is my affair," he answered in his old curt way, and she felt a sense of relief at the familiar tone.

He remained where he was, however, regarding her intently and with an expression that would have startled the girl had she seen it. There was every excuse for that look on the Captain's face, for she made as comely a picture as any man might wish to gaze upon, with her slim, supple figure and the great braid of red-brown hair coiled round her shapely head. Masculine as she was in her fearlessness, her strength, and her power of command, she was withal intensely feminine, possessing besides all the lure of blossoming womanhood.

All this Calamity recognised clearly enough now, if he had never done so before. He was very far from being a sentimentalist, but, as he stood so near to her, the memory of that day when she had frankly avowed her love for him came back with poignant vividness. He knew now that he had been a blind fool and a brutal fool as well. The greatest treasure that life can give had been his for the taking, and he had spurned it. But now he had awakened to a sense of what he had lost.

Such were the thoughts which pa.s.sed through Calamity's mind as he lingered irresolutely on the bridge. It was an altogether new sensation to him, this self-condemnation and timid hesitancy. For the first time in his life, perhaps, Calamity was afraid. It was, if nothing else, a chastening experience.

As for Dora Fletcher, her whole being was in a tumult of warring emotions. Instinctively she felt something of what was pa.s.sing through the Captain's mind. She could not but guess that this sudden and remarkable change in his manner was due to herself, that it meant the beginning of a new relations.h.i.+p between them--at least, so far as he was concerned. Already their relations had pa.s.sed through several different phases: first she had been a mere nonent.i.ty in his eyes; then an individual to be tolerated, a nurse later on, then a trusted and efficient officer, and finally--finally, she supposed, a memory ever growing more indistinct as the years pa.s.sed.

Just as his near presence was becoming intolerable to the girl because of the complex emotions it occasioned, he moved away and strolled towards the other end of the bridge. She wished fervently that he would go below, for while he remained near her she was in a fever of apprehension.

Presently, however, he turned again and walked slowly back to where she was standing on the lee side of the bridge.

"Miss Fletcher," he said abruptly.

"Yes, sir," she answered, turning and facing him.

"Will you marry me?"

It had come at last, the inevitable climax she had felt approaching ever since his recovery from that illness. For a moment she was conscious of a thrill of exquisite joy, and her carefully nursed resolution wavered.

Then, remembering the communication Smith had made to her, she pulled herself together.

"No," she answered in a low voice.

The Captain turned on his heel and walked in a leisurely manner to the other end of the bridge, where he lingered for a moment. Then he came back, glanced at the compa.s.s, and turned towards the girl.

"Keep her west by north," he said, and slowly descended the companion-ladder.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE MACHINATIONS OF MR. SOLOMON

"Land ahead!"

At that cry the men came tumbling out of the foc'sle on to the for'ad deck of the _Hawk_, for it meant they were in sight of port at last.

With luck, they would be paid off before many more hours had pa.s.sed, the prize-money would be distributed--and then for a flare-up; a riotous, drunken orgy which would probably lead to three-fourths of their number finis.h.i.+ng up in the police-cells. It would be a great night for the drink-shops of Singapore when Calamity's men, free from the iron discipline they had endured throughout the voyage, let themselves go.

So the men crowded against the bulwarks watching, with hungry eyes, the indistinct coast-line far away on the starboard bow. Even the most sullen and discontented among them dwelt in cheerful antic.i.p.ation upon the glorious debauch in store. However, they were not permitted to dwell upon these delights undisturbed. In common with most captains, Calamity was accustomed to bring a s.h.i.+p into port looking like a new pin, with not so much as a smudge on the bra.s.swork or a blemish on the white paint. So all hands were turned-to for the purpose of scouring, cleaning, and polis.h.i.+ng. They worked with a will, for this would be practically their last day on board, even if the _Hawk_ did not take up her moorings till the next morning. One of the men, a grizzled old sh.e.l.lback whose memories reached to the days of clippers and square-rigged s.h.i.+ps, started to drone a chanty, popular enough in its day but now consigned to the limbo of masts and sails and salt junk. And this was the burden of his song:

"A Yankee s.h.i.+p's gone down the river, Her masts and yards they s.h.i.+ne like silver.

How d'you know she's a Yankee clipper?

By the Stars and Stripes that fly above her.

And who d'you think is captain of her?

One-eyed Kelly, the Bowery runner.

And what d'you think they had for dinner?

Belaying-pin soup and monkey's liver."

There was a chorus between each line of "Blow boys, bully boys blow,"

which the others took up and yelled at the tops of their voices. In fact, the men were in such high spirits that, on the smallest provocation, they would have raised three cheers for the skipper--but the provocation was not given.

Calamity paced up and down the bridge, grim and taciturn as ever, his hands buried in the pockets of his monkey jacket. About a cable's length astern was the _Satellite_, with Mr. d.y.k.es lolling on the bridge and making mental calculations as to the number of dollars that would fall to his share when the final settlement was made. Like their comrades on the _Hawk_, the crew was busy making the s.h.i.+p spick and span, nor were their antic.i.p.ations less cheerful. Even the prisoners on both vessels were perking up at the prospect of being released from the hot and stifling quarters where they had spent so many weary days.

Perhaps the only gloomy members of the expedition were the Captain himself and Dora Fletcher. The latter was sitting in her cabin gazing thoughtfully out of the open port. Since that evening when Calamity had asked her to marry him and she had refused, he had not mentioned the subject again; his manner, indeed, seemed to indicate that he had dismissed the matter from his mind. With feminine inconsistency she now fervently wished that Smith had never told her the secret of the Captain's ident.i.ty, for then everything would have been quite simple.

Yet she tried to comfort herself with the thought that it was better as it was, better that she should know the truth before it was too late and she found herself faced by a situation with which, she a.s.sured herself, she was totally unfitted to grapple. Involuntarily the girl sighed. So this was to be the end of her one and only romance. Rightly or wrongly, she had rejected the love she desired above all else and the one man with whom she would have gladly mated.

Meanwhile the _Hawk_ and her consort were drawing nearer to Singapore, and presently, in answer to a signal, a pilot-boat approached, and, standing off, lowered a boat which quickly came alongside the yacht. The pilot, a grizzled, weather-beaten man, scrambled out of the stern-sheets and climbed on board.

"Well I'm jiggered!" he exclaimed as the Captain stepped forward to greet him, "if it ain't Calamity."