Captain Calamity Part 6

"I've had twa pairs o' socks washed sin' we started, and that's no' a month ago," grumbled the engineer, when his publicity proposition was opposed.

"You've got to remember you're a--bloomin' gentleman nah," answered Smith.

"It's awfu' expenseeve," murmured McPhulach plaintively.

Although Miss Fletcher was the last person to encourage familiarity, she was capable of a certain _camaraderie_ through having lived so much among men. She had, it seemed, lost her mother at an early age, and since then had accompanied her father on nearly all his voyages.

Therefore she exhibited neither the coy timidity nor coquettish lure which might have been expected from a girl of her age under circ.u.mstances like the present. Her manner towards the three men who had, as it were, appointed themselves her hosts was disarmingly frank; as a woman she kept them at arm's length, as a companion she was as free and easy as a man. Smith, when discussing her one day with the mate, remarked that she only remembered she was a woman when something was said which any decent man would resent. Mr. d.y.k.es alone occasionally a.s.sumed a patronisingly masculine att.i.tude, towards which, so far, the girl had shown no resentment. This, he sometimes tried to believe, was a tacit admission that she regarded him with special favour, if not with some degree of awe, though at other times common sense prevailed and he realised that it was due to sheer indifference.

But Mr. d.y.k.es was becoming very dissatisfied with things as they were.

For no particular reason, unless it was that he had given up his cabin to her, the mate somehow felt that he had a prior claim to Miss Fletcher's respect and esteem. He was, therefore, secretly aggrieved to think that Smith and McPhulach, whose sacrifices on her behalf had not exceeded a little extra personal cleanliness, were as much in favour as himself. In short, Mr. d.y.k.es was in danger of falling a victim to the tender pa.s.sion--if, indeed he had not already done so--hence the jealous feelings that were beginning to ferment in his bosom. He suffered most, however, when it happened that he was taking the second dog-watch, and, from his post on the bridge, could see Miss Fletcher, Smith, and McPhulach, laughing and chatting on the after-hatch as though he, Ephraim d.y.k.es, had never existed.

It was during one of these "free and easys," as Smith called them, that the girl suddenly began to discuss the Captain of the _Hawk_. Hitherto she had ignored him as completely as he had ignored her, though a keen observer might have noticed that she frequently cast a curious glance towards the bridge when he happened to be on it.

"Bless you, he's a bloomin' bag of mystery, he is; a reg'lar perambulatin' paradox," replied the second-mate in answer to a question which the girl had put regarding the skipper. "There ain't no gettin'

the lat.i.tude nor longitude of him."

"He's a michty quare mon," corroborated the engineer.

"But is his name really Calamity?" asked the girl.

"Meybe it is and meybe it isna," answered McPhulach cautiously. "Some say he's a mon o' guid family, and others declare the revairse is the truth; but which is right I dinna ken."

"Well, I've never sailed with him before," put in Smith, "but from the little I've see'd of his gentle habits I should say he'd die of throat trouble all of a sudden."

"Throat trouble?" queried the girl.

"Yes; the throat trouble that comes of wearin' a rope collar too tight.

Why, we'd only been out a few days when he starts to half murder the whole bloomin' crew. A roarin', ravin', rampin' lunatic he was," and Smith proceeded to relate, in pungent, picturesque language, the manner in which Calamity had quelled the mutiny single-handed.

"I wish I'd been here to see it," murmured the girl almost fervently, while a light leapt to her grey eyes which made Smith think of firelight seen through a closed window in winter time.

"Blimey! I don't admire your taste, Miss," he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "The decks were like a blood--yes, they were--like a b.l.o.o.d.y slaughter-house.

There's no other way of puttin' it."

"At any rate, he's a man," retorted Miss Fletcher with a queer note of defiance in her voice, "and I admire him for it."

Smith gazed at her for a moment in utter perplexity. He had confidently expected that, after the way in which the Captain had treated her, the girl would be only too ready to accept anything that could be said to his disadvantage. Yet she was actually expressing admiration for him and his bloodthirsty methods! Her att.i.tude not only amazed him, but struck him as being shockingly unfeminine. As a woman she ought to have expressed the strongest disgust at the skipper's brutality, and not gloried in it.

"Lummy! You're a queer'n and no error," he murmured.

He rose to his feet, and, going to the taffrail, expectorated over the side with unnecessary violence. Like most men whose lives have been spent in rough places and whose knowledge of women is limited, he cherished a pathetic belief in their legendary gentleness and timidity.

It was true that this particular young woman had not displayed these qualities in any marked degree, but he had never doubted their existence even so. He felt now that, in being a woman, she was living under false pretences, so to speak. It was a very real grievance in his eyes, more especially when he reflected on the n.o.ble restraint he had exercised over his speech and manners out of regard for her s.e.x.

He returned moodily to the hatch and sat down. The girl was still discussing Calamity with McPhulach, her voice defiantly enthusiastic.

"If I were a man I'd ask for no better Captain to sail under," she was saying.

"It's a pity you ain't, then," growled Smith, who had returned just in time to overhear this remark.

"I've often thought so myself," she retorted. "Men are getting too soft nowadays."

"Meybe so," put in the engineer soothingly. "But ye'll hae no cause to complain o' the saftness aboord this packet, I'm thinkin'. And gin it's devilry ye're so muckle fond of, ye've no need to fash yersel' aboot missin' any here."

"Not half you needn't," added Smith with a grim chuckle. "When the old man----" he broke off abruptly as the s.h.i.+p's bell struck. "Holy Moses!

eight bells already!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, and, rising to his feet, went off to relieve Mr. d.y.k.es.

As the latter descended the companion-ladder after handing over the watch to the second-mate, he paused suddenly before reaching the deck.

He was not an imaginative man and had never made a study of beauty except as represented by the female crimps and spongers who infested the various ports he had visited. But for a moment the sight of the girl sitting on the hatch, her beautiful hair softly radiant in the moonlight, and her figure in its close-fitting jersey so strangely alluring in the half-concealment of the shadows, held him spellbound.

The splendour of the night, with its star-powdered sky of deepest, limpid blue; the brilliant moon whose beams made an ever-widening track of molten silver with s.h.i.+mmering tints of bronze, across the blue-black waters; the wake of foaming, sparkling iridescence in the steamer's track,--all these things moved him not one jot for he had witnessed them times without number. He saw nothing, in fact, but the girl, sitting with her face resting on her hands, gazing pensively out to sea. Never before had he realised that she was beautiful and intensely feminine despite all her affected masculinity.

"Durned if she don't look like a picture postcard," he murmured ecstatically.

He walked up to the hatch and sat down near her, but she did not turn her head nor show any sign of being aware of his presence. He coughed to attract her attention, but without result; she continued gazing with sad, thoughtful eyes into the distant mingling of crystal blue and glistening silver-grey which marked the junction of sea and sky.

"Say, ain't it a dandy night?" he observed, unable to keep silence any longer.

The girl made no answer, but the remark aroused McPhulach from the reverie into which he, also, had fallen. Rising to his feet, he knocked the ashes out of his pipe and yawned.

"Gin I bide here any langer, I'll be consooming anither pipe o' bacca; so I'll wish ye a verra guid nicht, Miss Fletcher," he said.

"Good-night, McPhulach," answered the girl, who rarely used the prefix "Mr." when addressing her companions.

The engineer strolled off towards his cabin and the mate, to his great satisfaction, was left alone with her. For some time he sat fidgeting, anxious to speak, yet unable to think of anything to say. He watched her furtively out of the corner of his eye, secretly gloating over the outlines of her shapely figure, the delicate poise of her head, and the fascinating profusion of her wonderful hair.

Suddenly the girl rose to her feet, and, seeing the mate, started.

"I didn't know you were there," she said.

The mate made as if to speak, but uttered no sound. He rose unsteadily, and as the girl was about to move away, strode to her side.

"I want you," he said in a hoa.r.s.e, quivering voice.

He made a movement as if to encircle her waist with his arm, but, before he could do so, her left fist shot out and, catching him unexpectedly squarely between the eyes, sent him reeling into the scuppers.

When he recovered himself and sat up he was a different man. All the pa.s.sionate ardour, all the irresistible desire had left him, and he was conscious only of a singing in the head.

"No," he remarked thoughtfully, addressing himself to an iron stanchion, "she ain't no dime novel heroine, she ain't."

CHAPTER VII

THE AGITATOR

It was Sunday morning and those of the crew who were not on watch lay upon the foc'sle head, sat on the for'ad hatch, or still lay snoring in their bunks. A favoured few were lounging round the galley, some peeling potatoes--for which they would receive their reward in due course--and others helping them with good advice. From within the galley came the voice of "Slushy," the cook, bellowing out s.n.a.t.c.hes of hymns intermingled with pungent profanities, each equally sincere.

"There is a fountain filled with blood, Drawn from Emmanuel's veins,"