The Pagan Madonna

“If you will write the order I will execute it at once.The consulate closes early.”

“I’ll write it, but how will I get it to you?The door closes below the sill.”

“When you are ready, call, and I will open the door a little.”

“It would be better if you opened it full wide.This is China—I understand that.But we are both Americans, and there’s a good sound law covering an act like this.”

“But it does not reach as far as China.Besides, I have an asset back in the States.It is my word.I have never broken it to any man or woman, and I expect I never shall.You have, or have had, what I consider my property.You have hedged the question; you haven’t been frank.”

The son listened intently.

“I bought that string of glass beads in good faith of a Chinaman—Ling Foo. I consider them mine—that is, if they are still in my possession. Between the hour I met you last night and the moment of Captain Dennison’s entrance to my room considerable time had elapsed.” 102

“Sufficient for a rogue like Cunningham to make good use of,” supplemented the prisoner in Cabin Two.“There’s a way of finding out the facts.”

“Indeed?”

“Yes.You used to carry a planchette that once belonged to the actress Rachel.Why not give it a whirl?Everybody’s doing it.”

Cleigh eyed Cabin Four, then Cabin Two, and shook his head slightly, dubiously.He was not getting on well.To come into contact with a strong will was always acceptable; and a strong will in a woman was a novelty.All at once it struck him forcibly that he stood on the edge of boredom; that the lure which had brought him fully sixteen thousand miles was losing its bite.Was he growing old, drying up?

“Will you tell me what it is about these beads that makes you offer ten thousand for them?Glass—anybody could see that.What makes them as valuable as pearls?”

“They are love beads,” answered Cleigh, mockingly.“They are far more potent than powdered pearls.You have worn them about your throat, Miss Norman, and the sequence is inevitable.”

“Nonsense!”cried Jane.

Dennison added his mite to the confusion:

“I thought that scoundrel Cunningham was 103 lying.He said the string was a code key belonging to the British Intelligence Office.”

“Rot!”Cleigh exploded.

“So I thought.”

“But hurry, Miss Norman.The sooner I have that written order on the consulate the sooner you’ll have your belongings.”

“Very well.”

Five minutes later she announced that the order was completed, and Cleigh opened the door slightly.

“The key will be given you the moment we weigh anchor.”

“I say,” called the son, “you might drop into the Palace and get my truck, too.I’m particular about my toothbrushes.”A pause.“I’d like a drink, too—if you’ve got the time.”

Cleigh did not answer, but he presently entered Cabin Two, filled a glass with water, raised his son’s head to a proper angle, and gave him drink.

“Thanks.This business strikes me as the funniest thing I ever heard of!You would have done that for a dog.”

Cleigh replaced the water carafe in the rack above the wash bowl and went out, locking the door.In the salon he called for Dodge:

“I am going into town. I’ll be back round five. Don’t stir from this cabin.” 104

“Yes, sir.”

“You remember that fellow who was here night before last?”

“The good-looking chap that limped?”

“Yes.”

“And I’m to crease him if he pokes his noodle down the stairs?”

“Exactly!No talk, no palaver!If he starts talking he’ll talk you out of your boots.Shoot!”

“In the leg?All right.”

His employer having gone, Dodge sat in a corner from which he could see the companionway and all the passages.He lit a long black cigar, laid his formidable revolver on a knee, and began his vigil.A queer job for an old cow-punch, for a fact.

To guard an old carpet that didn’t have “welcome” on it anywhere—he couldn’t get that, none whatever.But there was a hundred a week, the best grub pile in the world, and the old man’s Havanas as often as he pleased.Pretty soft!

And he had learned a new trick—shooting target in a rolling sea. He had wasted a hundred rounds before getting the hang of it. Maybe these sailors hadn’t gone pop-eyed when they saw him pumping lead into the bull’s-eye six times running? Tin cans and raw potatoes in the water, too. Something to brag about if he ever got back home. 105

He broke the gun and inspected the cylinder.There wasn’t as much grease on the cartridges as he would have liked.

---

“Miss Norman?”called Dennison.

“What is it?”

“Are you comfortable?”

“Oh, I’m all right.I’m only furious with rage, that’s all.You are still tied?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I really don’t understand your father.”

“I have never understood him.Yet he was very kind to me when I was little.I don’t suppose there is anything in heaven or on earth that he’s afraid of.”

“He is afraid of me.”

“Do you believe that?”

“I know it.He would give anything to be rid of me.But go on.”

“With what?”

“Your past.”

“Well, I’m something like him physically. We are both so strong that we generally burst through rather than take the trouble to go round. I’m honestly sorry for him. Not a human being to love or be loved by. He never had a dog. I don’t recollect my mother; she died when I was three; and that death had something to do with the iron 106 in his soul.Our old butler used to tell me that Father cursed horribly, I mean blasphemously, when they took the mother out of the house.There are some men like that, who love terribly, away and beyond the average human ability.After the mother died he plunged into the money game.He was always making it, piling it up ruthlessly but honestly.Then that craving petered out, and he took a hand in the collecting game.What will come next I don’t know.As a boy I was always afraid of him.He was kind to me, but in the abstract.I was like an extra on the grocer’s bill.He put me into the hands of a tutor—a lovable old dreamer—and paid no more attention to me.He never put his arms round me and told me fairy stories.”

“Poor little boy!No fairy stories!”

“Nary a one until I began to have playmates.”

“Do the ropes hurt?”

“They might if I were alone.”

“What do you make of the beads?”

“Only that they have some strange value, or father wouldn’t be after them.Love beads!Doesn’t sound half so plausible as Cunningham’s version.”

“That handsome man who limped?”

“Yes.”

“A real adventurer—the sort one reads about!” 107

“And the queer thing about him, he keeps his word, too, for all his business is a shady one.I don’t suppose there is a painting or a jewel or a book of the priceless sort that he doesn’t know about, where it is and if it can be got at.Some of his deals are aboveboard, but many of them aren’t.I’ll wager these beads have a story of loot.”

“What he steals doesn’t hurt the poor.”

“So long as the tigers fight among themselves and leave the goats alone, it doesn’t stir you.Is that it?”

“Possibly.”

“And besides, he’s a handsome beggar, if there ever was one.”

“He has the face of an angel!”

“And the soul of a vandal!”—with a touch of irritability.

“Now you aren’t fair.A vandal destroys things; this man only transfers——”

“For a handsome monetary consideration——”

“Only transfers a picture from one gallery to another.”

“Well, we’ve seen the last of him for a while, anyhow.”

“I wonder.”

“Will you answer me a question?”

“Perhaps.”

“Do you know where those beads are?” 108

“A little while gone I smelt tobacco smoke,” she answered, dryly.

“I see.We’ll talk of something else then.Have you ever been in love?”

“Have you?”

“Violently—so I believed.”

“But you got over it?”

“Absolutely!And you?”

“Oh, I haven’t had the time.I’ve been too busy earning bread and butter.What was she like?”

“A beautiful mirage—the lie in the desert, you might say.Has it ever occurred to you that the mirage is the one lie Nature utters?”

“I hadn’t thought.She deceived you?”

“Yes.”

A short duration of silence.

“Doesn’t hurt to talk about her?”

“Lord, no!Because I wasn’t given fairy stories when I was little, I took them seriously when I was twenty-three.”

“Puppy love.”

“It went a little deeper than that.”

“But you don’t hate women?”

“No.I never hated the woman who deceived me.I was terribly sorry for her.”

“For having lost so nice a husband?” —with a bit of malice. 109

He greeted this with laughter.

“It is written,” she observed, “that we must play the fool sometime or other.”

“Have you ever played it?”

“Not yet, but you never can tell.”

“Jane, you’re a brick!”

“Jane!”she repeated.“Well, I don’t suppose there’s any harm in your calling me that, with partitions in between.”

“They used to call me Denny.”

“And you want me to call you that?”

“Will you?”

“I’ll think it over—Denny!”

They laughed.Both recognized the basic fact in this running patter.Each was trying to buck up the other.Jane was honestly worried.She could not say what it was that worried her, but there was a strong leaven in her of old-wives’ prescience.It wasn’t due to this high-handed adventure of Cleigh, senior; it was something leaning down darkly from the future that worried her.That hand mirror!

“Better not talk any more,” she advised.“You’ll be getting thirsty.”

“I’m already that.”

“You’re a brave man, captain,” she said, her tone altering from gayety to seriousness. “Don’t worry about me. I’ve always been able to take 110 care of myself, though I’ve never been confronted with this kind of a situation before.Frankly, I don’t like it.But I suspect that your father will have more respect for us if we laugh at him.Has he a sense of humour?”

“My word for it, he has!What could be more humorous than tying me up in this fashion and putting me in the cabin that used to be mine?Ten thousand for a string of glass beads!I say, Jane!”

“What?”

“When he comes back tell him you might consider twenty thousand, just to get an idea what the thing is worth.”

“I’ll promise that.”

“All right.Then I’ll try to snooze a bit.Getting stuffy lying on my back.”

“The brute!If I could only help you!”

“You have—you are—you will!”

He turned on his side, his face toward the door.His arms and legs began to sting with the sensation known as sleep.He was glad his father had overheard the initial conversation.A wave of terror ran over him at the thought of being set ashore while Jane went on.Still he could have sent a British water terrier in hot pursuit.

Jane sat down and took inventory. She knew but little about antiques—rugs and furniture—but 111 she was full of inherent love of the beautiful.The little secretary upon which she had written the order on the consulate was an exquisite lowboy of old mahogany of dull finish.On the floor were camel saddle-bays, Persian in pattern.On the panel over the lowboy was a small painting, a foot broad and a foot and a half long.It was old—she could tell that much.It was a portrait, tender and quaint.She would have gasped had she known that it was worth a cover of solid gold.It was a Holbein, The Younger, for which Cleigh some years gone had paid Cunningham sixteen thousand dollars.Where and how Cunningham had acquired it was not open history.

An hour passed. By and by she rose and tiptoed to the partition. She held her ear against the panel, and as she heard nothing she concluded that Denny—why not? —was asleep. Next she gazed out of the port. It was growing dark outside, overcast. It would rain again probably. A drab sky, a drab shore. She saw a boat filled with those luscious vegetables which wrote typhus for any white person who ate them. A barge went by piled high with paddy bags—rice in the husk—with Chinamen at the forward and stern sweeps. She wondered if these poor yellow people had ever known what it was to play? 112

Suddenly she fell back, shocked beyond measure.From the direction of the salon—a pistol shot!This was followed by the tramp of hurrying feet.Voices, now sharp, now rumbling—this grew nearer.A struggle of some dimensions was going on in the passage.The racket reached her door, but did not pause there.She sank into the chair, a-tremble.

Dennison struggled to a sitting posture.

“Jane?”

“Yes!”

“Are you all right?”

“Yes, what has happened?”

“A bit of mutiny, I take it; but it seems to be over.”

“But the shot!”

“I heard no cry of pain, only a lot of scuffling and some high words.Don’t worry.”

“I won’t.Can’t you break a piece of glass and saw your way out?”

“Lord love you, that’s movie stuff!If I had a razor, I couldn’t manage it without hacking off my hands.You are worried!”

“I’m a woman, Denny.I’m not afraid of your father; but if there is mutiny, with all these treasures on board—and over here——”

“All right.I’ll make a real effort.”

She could hear him stumbling about. She 113 heard the crash of the water carafe on the floor.Several minutes dragged by.

“Can’t be done!”said Dennison.“Can’t make the broken glass stay put.Can’t reach my ankles, either, or I could get my feet free.There’s a double latch on your door.See to it!Lord!”

“What is it?”

“Nothing.Just hunting round for some cuss words.Put the chair up against the door knob and sit tight for a while.”

The hours dragged by in stifling silence.

Meanwhile, Cleigh, having attended to errands, lunched, had gone to the American consulate and presented the order.His name and reputation cleared away the official red tape.He explained that all the fuss of the night before had been without cause.Miss Norman had come aboard the yacht, and now decided to go to Hong-Kong with the family.This suggested the presence of other women on board.In the end, Jane’s worldly goods were consigned to Cleigh, who signed the receipt and made off for the launch.

It was growing dark.On the way down the river Cleigh made no attempt to search for the beads.

The salon lights snapped up as the launch drew alongside. Once below, Cleigh dumped Jane’s possessions into the nearest chair and turned to 114 give Dodge an order—only to find the accustomed corner vacant!

“Dodge!”he shouted.He ran to the passage.“Dodge, where the devil are you?”

“Did you call, sir?”

Cleigh spun about.In the doorway to the dining salon stood Cunningham, on his amazingly handsome face an expression of anxious solicitude!

---

Cleigh was not only a big and powerful man—he was also courageous, but the absence of Dodge and the presence of Cunningham offered such sinister omen that temporarily he was bereft of his natural wit and initiative.

“Where’s Dodge?”he asked, stupidly.

“Dodge is resting quietly,” answered Cunningham, gravely.“He’ll be on his feet in a day or two.”

That seemed to wake up Cleigh a bit.He drew his automatic.

“Face to the wall, or I’ll send a bullet into you!”

Cunningham shook his head.

“Did you examine the clip this morning?When you carry weapons like that for protection never put it in your pocket without a look-see.Dodge wouldn’t have made your mistake.Shoot!Try it on the floor, or up through the lights—or at me if you’d like that better.The clip is empty.”

Mechanically Cleigh took aim and bore against the trigger. There was no explosion. A 116 depressing sense of unreality rolled over the Wanderer’s owner.

“So you went into town for her luggage?Did you find the beads?”

Cleigh made a negative sign.It was less an answer to Cunningham than an acknowledgment that he could not understand why the bullet clip should be empty.

“It was an easy risk,” explained Cunningham.“You carried the gun, but I doubt you ever looked it over.Having loaded it once upon a time, you believed that was sufficient, eh?Know what I think?The girl has hidden the beads in her hair.Did you search her?”

Again Cleigh shook his head, as much over the situation as over the question.

“What, you ran all this risk and hadn’t the nerve to search her?Well, that’s rich!Unless you’ve read her from my book.She would probably have scratched out your eyes.There’s an Amazon locked up in that graceful body.I’d like to see her head against a bit of clear blue sky—a touch of Henner blues and reds.What a whale of a joke!Abduct a young woman, risk prison, and then afraid to lay hands on her!You poor old piker!”Cunningham laughed.

“Cunningham——”

“All right, I’ll be merciful. To make a long 117 story short, it means that for the present I am in command of this yacht.I warned you.Will you be sensible, or shall I have to lock you up like your two-gun man from Texas?”

“Piracy!”cried Cleigh, coming out of his maze.

“Maritime law calls it that, but it isn’t really.No pannikins of rum, no fifteen men on a dead man’s chest.Parlour stuff, you might call it.The whole affair—the parlour side of it—depends upon whether you purpose to act philosophically under stress or kick up a hullabaloo.In the latter event you may reasonably expect some rough stuff.Truth is, I’m only borrowing the yacht as far as latitude ten degrees and longitude one hundred and ten degrees, off Catwick Island.You carry a boson’s whistle at the end of your watch chain.Blow it!”was the challenge.

“You bid me blow it?”

“Only to convince you how absolutely helpless you are,” said Cunningham, amiably.“Yesterday this day’s madness did prepare, as our old friend Omar used to say.Vedder did great work on that, didn’t he?Toot the whistle, for shortly we shall weigh anchor.”

Like a man in a dream, Cleigh got out his whistle.The first blast was feeble and windy.Cunningham grinned.

“Blow it, man, blow it!” 118

Cleigh set the whistle between his lips and blew a blast that must have been heard half a mile away.

“That’s something like!Now we’ll have results!”

Above, on deck, came the scuffle of hurrying feet, and immediately—as if they had been prepared against this moment—three fourths of the crew came tumbling down the companionway.

“Seize this man!”shouted Cleigh, thunderously, as he indicated Cunningham.

The men, however, fell into line and came to attention.Most of them were grinning.

“Do you hear me?Brown, Jessup, McCarthy—seize this man!”

No one stirred. Cleigh then lost his head. With a growl he sprang toward Cunningham. Half the crew jumped instantly into the gap between, and they were no longer grinning. Cunningham pushed aside the human wall and faced the Wanderer’s owner.

“Do you begin to understand?”

“No!But whatever your game is, it will prove bad business for you in the end.And you men, too.The world has grown mighty small, and you’ll find it hard to hide—unless you kill me and have done with it!”

“Tut, tut! Wouldn’t harm a hair of your 119 head.The world is small, as you say, but just at this moment infernally busy mopping up.What, bother about a little dinkum dinkus like this, with Russia mad, Germany ugly, France grumbling at England, Italy shaking her fist at Greece, and labour making a monkey of itself?Nay!I’ll shift the puzzle so you can read it.When the yacht was released from auxiliary duties she was without a crew.The old crew, that of peace times, was gone utterly, with the exception of four.You had the yacht keelhauled, gave her another daub of war paint and set about to find a crew.And I had one especially picked for you!Ordinarily, you’ve a tolerably keen eye.Didn’t it strike you odd to land a crew who talked more or less grammatically, who were clean bodily, who weren’t boozers?”

Cleigh, fully alive now, coldly ran his inspecting glance over the men.He had never before given their faces any particular attention.Besides, this was the first time he had seen so many of them at once.During boat drill they had been divided into four squads.Young faces, lean and hard some of them, but reckless rather than bad.All of them at this moment appeared to be enjoying some huge joke.

“I can only repeat,” said Cleigh, “that you are all playing with dynamite.” 120

“Perhaps.Most of these boys fought in the war; they played the game; but when they returned nobody had any use for them.I caught them on the rebound, when they were a bit desperate.We formed a company—but of that more anon.Will you be my guest, or will you be my prisoner?”

The velvet fell away from Cunningham’s voice.

“Have I any choice?I’ll accept the condition because I must.But I’ve warned you.I suppose I’d better ask at once what the ransom is.”

“Ransom?Not a copper cent!You can make Singapore in two days from the Catwick.”

“And for helping me into Singapore I’m to agree not to hand such men as you leave me over to the British authorities?”

“All wrong!The men who will help you into Singapore or take you to Manila will be as innocent as newborn babes.Wouldn’t believe it, would you, but I’m one of those efficiency sharks.Nothing left to chance; all cut and dried; pluperfect.Cleigh, I never break my word.I honestly intended turning over those beads to you, but Morrissy muddled the play.”

“Next door to murder.”

“Near enough, but he’ll pull out.”

“Are you going to take Miss Norman along?”

“What, set her ashore to sic the British Navy 121 on us?I’m sorry.I don’t want her on board; but that was your play, not mine.You tried to double-cross me.But you need have no alarm.I will kill the man who touches her.You understand that, boys?”

The crew signified that the order was understood, though one of them—the returned Flint—smiled cynically.If Cunningham noted the smile he made no verbal comment upon it.

“Weigh anchor, then!Look alive!The sooner we nose down to the delta the sooner we’ll have the proper sea room.”

The crew scurried off, and almost at once came familiar sounds—the rattle of the anchor chain on the windlass, the creaking of pulley blocks as the launch came aboard, the thud of feet hither and yon as portables were stowed or lashed to the deck-house rail.For several minutes Cleigh and Cunningham remained speechless and motionless.

“You get all the angles?”asked Cunningham, finally.

“Some of them,” admitted Cleigh.

“At any rate, enough to make you accept a bad situation with good grace?”

“You’re a foolhardy man, Cunningham. Do you expect me to lie down when this play is over? I solemnly swear to you that I’ll spend the rest of my days hunting you down.” 122

“And I solemnly swear that you shan’t catch me.I’m through with the old game of playing the genie in the bottle for predatory millionaires.Henceforth I’m on my own.I’m romantic—yes, sir—I’m romantic from heel to cowlick; and now I’m going to give rein to this stifled longing.”

“You will come to a halter round your neck.I have always paid your price on the nail, Cunningham.”

“You had to.Hang it, passions are the very devil, aren’t they?Sooner or later one jumps upon your back and rides you like the Old Man of the Sea.”

Cleigh heard the rumble of steam.

“Objects of art!”went on Cunningham.“It eats into your vitals to hear that some rival has picked up a Correggio or an ancient Kirman or a bit of Persian plaque.You talk of halters.Lord lumme, how obliquely you look at facts!Take that royal Persian there—the second-best animal rug on earth—is there no murder behind the woof and warp of it?What?Talk sense, Cleigh, talk sense!You cable me: Get such and such.I get it.What the devil do you care how it was got, so long as it eventually becomes yours?It’s a case of the devil biting his own tail—pot calling kettle black.”

“How much do you want?” 123

“No, Cleigh, it’s the romantic idea.”

“I will give you fifty thousand for the rug.”

“I’m sorry.No use now of telling you the plot; you wouldn’t believe me, as the song goes.Dinner at seven.Will you dine in the salon with me, or will you dine in the solemn grandeur of your own cabin, in company with Da Vinci, Teniers, and that Carlo Dolci the Italian Government has been hunting high and low for?”

“I will risk the salon.”

“To keep an eye on me as long as possible.That’s fair enough.You heard what I said to those boys.Well, every mother’s son of ’em will toe the mark.There will be no change at all in the routine.Simply we lay a new course that will carry us outside and round Formosa, down to the South Sea and across to the Catwick.I’ll give you one clear idea.A million and immunity would not stir me, Cleigh.”

“What’s the game—if it’s beyond ransom?”

Cunningham laughed boyishly.

“It’s big, and you’ll laugh, too, when I tell you.”

“On which side of the mouth?”

“That’s up to you.”

“Is it the rug?”

“Oh, that, of course! I warned you that I’d come for the rug. It took two years out of my young life to get that for you, and it has always 124 haunted me.I just told you about passions, didn’t I?Once on your back, they ride you like the devil—down-hill.”

“A crook.”

“There you go again—pot calling kettle black!If you want to moralize, where’s the line between the thief and the receiver?Fie on you!Dare you hang that Da Vinci, that Dolci, that Holbein in your gallery home?No!Stolen goods.What a passion!You sail across the seas alone, alone because you can’t satisfy your passion and have knowing companions on board.When the yacht goes out of commission you store the loot, and tremble when you hear a fire alarm.All right.Dinner at seven.I’ll go and liberate your son and the lady.”

“Cunningham, I will kill you out of hand the very first chance.”

“Old dear, I’ll add a fact for your comfort. There will be guns on board, but half an hour gone all the ammunition was dumped into the Whangpoo. So you won’t have anything but your boson’s whistle. You’re a bigger man than I am physically, and I’ve a slue-foot, a withered leg; but I’ve all the barroom tricks you ever heard of. So don’t make any mistakes in that direction. You are free to come and go as you please; but the moment you start any rough house, into your 125 cabin you go, and you’ll stay there until we raise the Catwick.You haven’t a leg to stand on.”

Cunningham lurched out of the salon and into the passage.He opened the door to Cabin Two and turned on the light.Dennison blinked stupidly.Cunningham liberated him and stood back.

“Dinner at seven.”

“What the devil are you doing on board?”asked Dennison, thickly.

“Well, here’s gratitude for you! But in order that there will be no misunderstanding, I’ve turned to piracy for a change. Great sport! I’ve chartered the yacht for a short cruise.” His banter turned into cold, precise tones. Cunningham went on: “No nonsense, captain! I put this crew on board away back in New York. Those beads, though having a merit of their own, were the lure to bring your father to these parts. Your presence and Miss Norman’s are accidents for which I am genuinely sorry. But frankly, I dare not turn you loose. That’s the milk in the cocoanut. I grant you the same privileges as I grant your father, which he has philosophically agreed to accept. Your word of honour to take it sensibly, and the freedom of the yacht is yours. Otherwise, I’ll lock you up in a place not half so comfortable as this.” 126

“Piracy!”

“Yes, sir.These are strangely troubled days.We’ve slumped morally.Humanity has been on the big kill, with the result that the tablets of Moses have been busted up something fierce.And here we are again, all kotowing to the Golden Calf!All I need is your word—the word of a Cleigh.”

“I give it.”Dennison gave his word so that he might be free to protect the girl in the adjoining cabin.“But conditionally.”

“Well?”

“That the young lady shall at all times be treated with the utmost respect.You will have to kill me otherwise.”

“These Cleighs!All right.That happens to be my own order to the crew.Any man who breaks it will pay heavily.”

“What’s the game?”asked Dennison, rubbing his wrists tenderly while he balanced unsteadily upon his aching legs.

“Later!I’ll let Miss Norman out.That’s so—her things are in the salon.I’ll get them, but I’ll unlock her door first.”

“What in heaven’s name has happened?”asked Jane as she and Dennison stood alone in the passage.

“The Lord knows!” gloomily. “But that 127 scoundrel Cunningham has planted a crew of his own on board, and we are all prisoners.”

“Cunningham?”

“The chap with the limp.”

“With the handsome face?But this is piracy!”

“About the size of it.”

“Oh, I knew something was going to happen!But a pirate!Surely it must be a joke?”

So it was—probably the most colossal joke that ever flowered in the mind of a man.The devil must have shouted and the gods must have held their sides, for it took either a devil or a god to understand the joke.

---

That first dinner would always remain vivid and clear-cut in Jane Norman’s mind.It was fantastic.To begin with, there was that picturesque stone image at the head of the table—Cleigh—who appeared utterly oblivious of his surroundings, who ate with apparent relish, and who ignored both men, his son and his captor.Once or twice Jane caught his glance—a blue eye, sharp-pupiled, agate-hard.But what was it she saw—a twinkle or a sparkle?The breadth of his shoulders!He must be very powerful, like the son.Why, the two of them could have pulverized this pretty fellow opposite!

Father and son!For seven years they had not met.Their indifference seemed so inhuman!Still, she fancied that the son dared not make any approach, however much he may have longed to.A woman!They had quarrelled over a woman!Something reached down from the invisible and pinched her heart.

All this while Cunningham had been talking—banter. The blade would flash toward the father or whirl upon the son, or it would come toward 129 her by the handle.She could not get away from the initial idea—that his eyes were like fire opals.

“Miss Norman, you have very beautiful hair.”

“You think so?”

“It looks like Judith’s.You remember, Cleigh, the one that hangs in the Pitti Galleria in Florence—Allori’s?”

Cleigh reached for a piece of bread, which he broke and buttered.

Cunningham turned to Jane again.

“Will you do me the favour of taking out the hairpins and loosing it?”

“No!”said Dennison.

“Why not?”said Jane, smiling bravely enough, though there ran over her spine a chill.

It wasn’t Cunningham’s request—it was Dennison’s refusal.That syllable, though spoken moderately, was the essence of battle, murder, and sudden death.If they should clash it would mean that Denny—how easy it was to call him that!—Denny would be locked up and she would be all alone.For the father seemed as aloof and remote as the pole.

“You shall not do it!”declared Dennison.“Cunningham, if you force her I will break every bone in your body here and now!”

Cleigh selected an olive and began munching it.

“Nonsense!” cried Jane. “It’s all awry 130 anyhow.”And she began to extract the hairpins.Presently she shook her head, and the ruddy mass of hair fell and rippled across and down her shoulders.

“Well?”she said, looking whimsically into Cunningham’s eyes.“It wasn’t there, was it?”

This tickled Cunningham.

“You’re a woman in a million!You read my thought perfectly.I like ready wit in a woman.I had to find out.You see, I had promised those beads to Cleigh, and when I humanly can I keep my promises.Sit down, captain!”For Dennison had risen to his feet.“Sit down!Don’t start anything you can’t finish.”To Jane there was in the tone a quality which made her compare it with the elder Cleigh’s eyes—agate-hard.“You are younger and stronger, and no doubt you could break me.But the moment my hand is withdrawn from this business—the moment I am off the board—I could not vouch for the crew.They are more or less decent chaps, or they were before this damned war stood humanity on its head.We wear the same clothes, use the same phrases; but we’ve been thrust back a thousand years.And Miss Norman is a woman.You understand?”

Dennison sat down.

“You’d better kill me somewhere along this voyage.” 131

“I may have to.Who knows?There’s no real demarcation between comedy and tragedy; it’s the angle of vision.It’s rough medicine, this; but your father has agreed to take it sensibly, because he knows me tolerably well.Still, it will not do him any good to plan bribery.Buy the crew, Cleigh, if you believe you can.You’ll waste your time.I do not pretend to hold them by loyalty.I hold them by fear.Act sensibly, all of you, and this will be a happy family.For after all, it’s a joke, a whale of a joke.And some day you’ll smile over it—even you, Cleigh.”

Cleigh pressed the steward’s button.

“The jam and the cheese, Togo,” he said to the Jap.

“Yess, sair!”

A hysterical laugh welled into Jane’s throat, but she did not permit it to escape her lips.She began to build up her hair clumsily, because her hands trembled.

Adventure! She thrilled! She had read somewhere that after seven thousand years of tortuous windings human beings had formed about themselves a thin shell which they called civilization. And always someone was breaking through and retracing those seven thousand years. Here was an example in Cunningham. Only a single step was necessary. It took seven thousand years to 132 build your shell, and only a minute to destroy it.There was something fascinating in the thought.A reckless spirit pervaded Jane, a longing to burst through this shell of hers and ride the thunderbolt.Monotony—that had been her portion, and only her dreams had kept her from withering.From the house to the hospital and back home again, days, weeks, years.She had begun to hate white; her soul thirsted for colour, movement, thrill.The call that had been walled in, suppressed, broke through.Piracy on high seas, and Jane Norman in the cast!

She was not in the least afraid of the whimsical rogue opposite. He was more like an uninvited dinner guest. Perhaps this lack of fear had its origin in the oily smoothness by which the yacht had changed hands. Beyond the subjugation of Dodge, there had not been a ripple of commotion. It was too early to touch the undercurrents. All this lulled and deceived her. Piracy? Where were the cutlasses, the fierce moustaches, the red bandannas, the rattle of dice, and the drunken songs? —the piracy of tradition? If she had any fear at all it was for the man at her left—Denny—who might run amuck on her account and spoil everything. All her life she would hear the father’s voice—“The jam and the cheese, Togo.” What men, all three of them! 133

Cunningham laid his napkin on the table and stood up.

“Absolute personal liberty, if you will accept the situation sensibly.”

Dennison glowered at him, but Jane reached out and touched the soldier’s sleeve.

“Please!”

“For your sake, then.But it’s tough medicine for me to swallow.”

“To be sure it is,” agreed the rogue.“Look upon me as a supercargo for the next ten days.You’ll see me only at lunch and dinner.I’ve a lot of work to do in the chart house.By the way, the wireless man is mine, Cleigh, so don’t waste any time on him.Hope you’re a good sailor, Miss Norman, for we are heading into rough weather, and we haven’t much beam.”

“I love the sea!”

“Hang it, you and I shan’t have any trouble!Good-night.”

Cunningham limped to the door, where he turned and eyed the elder Cleigh, who was stirring his coffee thoughtfully.Suddenly the rogue burst into a gale of laughter, and they could hear recurrent bursts as he wended his way to the companion.

When this sound died away Cleigh turned his glance levelly upon Jane. The stone-like mask 134 dissolved into something that was pathetically human.

“Miss Norman,” he said, “I don’t know what we are heading into, but if we ever get clear I will make any reparation you may demand.”

“Any kind of a reparation?”—an eager note in her voice.

Dennison stared at her, puzzled, but almost instantly he was conscious of the warmth of shame in his cheeks.This girl wasn’t that sort—to ask for money as a balm for the indignity offered her.What was she after?

“Any kind of reparation,” repeated Cleigh.

“I’ll remember that—if we get through.And somehow I believe we shall.”

“You trust that scoundrel?”asked Cleigh, astonishedly.

“Inexplicably—yes.”

“Because he happens to be handsome?”—with frank irony.

“No.”But she looked at the son as she spoke.“He said he never broke his word.No man can be a very great villain who can say that.Did he ever break his word to you?”

“Except in this instance.”

“The beads?”

“I am quite confident he knows where they are.” 135

“Are they so precious?What makes them precious?”

“I have told you—they are love beads.”

“That’s rank nonsense!I’m no child!”

“Isn’t love rank nonsense?”Cleigh countered.He was something of a banterer himself.

“Have you never loved anybody?”she shot back at him.

A shadow passed over the man’s face, clearing the ironic expression.

“Perhaps I loved not wisely but too well.”

“Oh, I’m sorry!I didn’t mean——”

“You are young; all about you is sunshine; I myself have gone down among the shadows. Cunningham may keep his word; but there is always the possibility of his not being able to keep it. He has become an outlaw; he is in maritime law a pirate. The crew are aware of it; prison stares them in the face, and that may make them reckless. If you weren’t on board I shouldn’t care. But you are young, vital, attractive, of the type that appeals to strong men. In the dry stores there are many cases of liquor and wine. The men may break into the stuff before we reach the Catwick. That will take ten or twelve days if Cunningham lays a course outside Formosa. What’s his game? I don’t know. Probably he will maroon us on the Catwick, an island I know 136 nothing about, except that it is nearer to Saigon than to Singapore.So then in the daytime stay where I am or where Captain Dennison is.Good-night.”

Dennison balanced his spoon on the rim of the coffee cup—not a particularly easy job.

“Whatever shall I do with the jade?”Jane asked, irrelevantly.

“What?”

“The jade necklace.That poor Chinaman!”

“Ling Foo?I wish I had broken his infernal yellow neck!But for him neither of us would be here.But he is right,” Dennison added, with a jerk of his head toward the door.“You must always be with one or the other of us—preferably me.”He smiled.

“Will you promise me one thing?”

“Denny.”

“Will you promise me one thing, Denny?”

“And that is not to attempt to mix it with the scoundrel?”

“Yes.”

“I promise—so long as he keeps his.But if he touches you—well, God help him!”

“And me! Oh, I don’t mean him. It is you that I am afraid of. You’re so terribly strong—and—and so heady. I can never forget how you went into that mob of quarrelling troopers. But 137 you were an officer there; your uniform doesn’t count here.If only you and your father stood together!”

“We do so far as you are concerned.Never doubt that.Otherwise, though, it’s hopeless.What are you going to demand of him—supposing we come through safely?”

“That’s my secret.Let’s go on deck.”

“It’s raining hard, and there’ll be a good deal of pitching shortly.Better turn in.You’ve been through enough to send the average woman into hysterics.”

“It won’t be possible to sleep.”

“I grant that, but I’d rather you would go at once to your cabin.”

“I wonder if you will understand.I’m not really afraid.I know I ought to be, but I’m not.All my life has been a series of humdrum—and here is adventure, stupendous adventure!”She rose abruptly, holding out her arms dramatically toward space.“All my life I have lived in a shell, and chance has cracked it.If only you knew how wonderfully free I feel at this moment!I want to go on deck, to feel the wind and the rain in my face!”

“Go to bed,” he said, prosaically.

Though never had she appeared so poignantly desirable. He wanted to seize her in his arms, 138 smother her with kisses, bury his face in her hair.And swiftly upon this desire came the thought that if she appealed to him so strongly, might she not appeal quite as strongly to the rogue?He laid the spoon on the rim of the cup again and teetered it.

“Go to bed,” he repeated.

“An order?”

“An order.I’ll go along with you to the cabin.Come!”He got up.

“Can you tell me you’re not excited?”

“I am honestly terrified.I’d give ten years of my life if you were safely out of this.For seven long years I have been knocking about this world, and among other things I have learned that plans like Cunningham’s never get through per order.I don’t know what the game is, but it’s bound to fail.So I’m going to ask you, in God’s name, not to let any romantical ideas get into your head.This is bad business for all of us.”

There was something in his voice, aside from the genuine seriousness, that subdued her.

“I’ll go to bed.Shall we have breakfast together?”

“Better that way.”

To reach the port passage they had to come out into the main salon. Cleigh was in his corner reading. 139

“Good-night,” she called.All her bitterness toward him was gone.“And don’t worry about me.”

“Good-night,” replied Cleigh over the top of the book.“Be sure of your door.If you hear any untoward sounds in the night call to the captain whose cabin adjoins yours.”

When she and Dennison arrived at the door of her cabin she turned impulsively and gave him both her hands.He held them lightly, because his emotions were at full tide, and he did not care to have her sense it in any pressure.Her confidence in him now was absolute, and he must guard himself constantly.Poor fool!Why hadn’t he told her that last night on the British transport?What had held him back?

The uncertain future—he had let that rise up between.And now he could not tell her.If she did not care, if her regard did not go beyond comradeship, the knowledge would only distress her.

The yacht was beginning to roll now, for they were making the East China Sea.The yacht rolled suddenly to starboard, and Jane fell against him.He caught her, instantly turned her right about and gently but firmly forced her into the cabin.

“Good-night. Remember! Rap on the partition if you hear anything you don’t like.” 140

“I promise.”

After she had locked and latched the door she set about the business of emptying her kit bags.She hung the evening gown she had worn all day in the locker, laid her toilet articles on the dresser, and set the brass hand warmer on the lowboy.Then she let down her hair and began to brush it.She swung a thick strand of it over her shoulder and ran her hand down under it.The woman in “Phra the Phœnician,” Allori’s Judith—and she had always hated the colour of it!She once more applied the brush, balancing herself nicely to meet the ever-increasing roll.

Nevertheless, she did feel free, freer than she had felt in all her life before.A stupendous adventure!After the braids were completed she flung them down her back, turned off the light, and peered out of the rain-blurred port.She could see nothing except an occasional flash of angry foam as it raced past.She slipped into bed, but her eyes remained open for a long time.

Dennison wondered if there would be a slicker in his old locker. He opened the door. He found an oilskin and a yellow sou’wester on the hooks. He took them down and put them on and stole out carefully, a hand extended each side to minimize the roll. He navigated the passage and came out into the salon. 141

Cleigh was still immersed in his book.He looked up quickly, but recognizing the intruder, dropped his gaze instantly.Dennison crossed the salon to the companionway and staggered up the steps.Had his father ever really been afraid of anything?He could not remember ever having seen the old boy in the grip of fear.What a devil of a world it was!

Dennison was an able seaman. He had been brought up on the sea—seven years on the first Wanderer and five on the second. He had, in company with his father, ridden the seven seas. But he had no trade; he hadn’t the money instinct; he would have to stumble upon fortune; he knew no way of making it. And this knowledge stirred his rancor anew—the father hadn’t played fair with the son.

He gripped the deck-house rail to steady himself, for the wind and rain caught him head-on.

Then he worked his way slowly along to the bridge.Twice a comber broke on the quarter and dropped a ton of water, which sloshed about the deck, drenching his feet.He climbed the ladder, rather amused at the recurrence of an old thought—that climbing ship ladders in dirty weather was a good deal like climbing in nightmares: one weighed thousands of pounds and had feet of lead.

Presently he peered into the chart room, which 142 was dark except for the small hooded bulbs over the navigating instruments.He could see the chin and jaws of the wheelman and the beard of old Captain Newton.From time to time a wheel spoke came into the light.

On the chart table lay a pocket lamp, facing sternward, the light pouring upon what looked to be a map; and over it were bent three faces, one of which was Cunningham’s.A forefinger was tracing this map.

Dennison opened the door and stepped inside.

---

“How are you making out, Newton?”he asked, calmly.

“Denny?Why, God bless me, boy, I’m glad to see you!How’s your dad?”

“Reading.”

“That would be like him.I don’t suppose if hell opened under his feet he’d do anything except look interested.And it ’pears to me’s though hell had opened up right now!”

A chuckle came from the chart table.

“What’s your idea of hell, Newton?”asked Cunningham.

“Anything you might have a hand in,” was the return bolt.

“Why, you used to like me!”

“Yes, yes!But I didn’t know you then.The barometer’s dropping.If it was August I’d say we were nosing into a typhoon.I always hated this yellow muck they call a sea over here.Did you pick up that light?”

“Yes, sir,” answered the wheelman. “I take it she’s making south—Hong-Kong way. There’s 144 plenty of sea room.She’ll be well down before we cross her wake.”

Silence except for the rumble of the weather canvas standing up against the furious blasts of the wind.Dennison stepped over to the chart table.

“Cunningham, I would like to have a word with you.”

“Go ahead.You can have as many as you like.”

“At dinner you spoke of your word.”

“So I did.What about it?”

“Do you keep it?”

“Whenever I humanly can.Well?”

“What’s this Catwick Island?”

“Hanged if I know!”

“Are you going to maroon us there?”

“No.At that point the yacht will be turned back to your father, and he can cruise until the crack o’ doom without further interference from yours truly.”

“That’s your word?”

“It is—and I will keep it.Anything else?”

“Yes.I will play the game as it lies, provided that Miss Norman is in nowise interfered with or annoyed.”

“How is she taking it?”

“My reply first.” 145

“Neither I nor the crew will bother her.She shall come and go free as the gull in the air.If at any time the men do not observe the utmost politeness toward her you will do me a favour to report to me.That’s my word, and I promise to keep it, even if I have to kill a man or two.I wish to come through clean in the hands so far as your father, Miss Norman, and yourself are concerned.I’m risking my neck and my liberty, for this is piracy on the high seas.But every man is entitled to one good joke during his lifetime, and when we raise the Catwick I’ll explain this joke in full.If you don’t chuckle, then you haven’t so much as a grain of humour in your make-up.”

“Well, there’s nothing for me to do but take your word as you give it.”

“That’s the way to talk.Now, Flint, this bay or lagoon——”

The voice dropped into a low, indistinguishable murmur.Dennison realized that the moment had come to depart; the edge of the encounter was in Cunningham’s favour and to remain would only serve to sharpen this edge.So he went outside, slamming the door behind him.

The word of a rogue! There was now nothing to do but turn in. He believed he had a glimmer. Somewhere off the Catwick Cunningham and his crew were to be picked up. He would not be 146 going to the Catwick himself, not knowing whether it was jungle or bald rock.But if a ship was to pick him up, why hadn’t she made Shanghai and picked him up there?Why commit piracy—unless he was a colossal liar, which Dennison was ready enough to believe.The word of a rogue!

Some private war?Was Cunningham paying off an old grudge?But was any grudge worth this risk?The old boy wasn’t to be scared; Cunningham ought to have known that.If Cleigh came through with a whole skin he’d hunt the beggar down if it carried him to the North Pole.Cunningham ought to have known that, too.A planted crew, piracy—and he, Dennison Cleigh, was eventually to chuckle over it!He had his doubts.And where did the glass beads come in?Or had Cunningham spoken the truth—a lure?A big game somewhere in the offing.And the rogue was right!The world, dizzily stewing in a caldron of monumental mistakes, would give scant attention to an off-side play such as this promised to be.Not a handhold anywhere to the puzzle.The old boy might have the key, but Dennison Cleigh could not go to him for the solution.

His own father! Just as he had become used to the idea that the separation was final, absolute, to be thrown together in this fantastic manner! 147 The father’s arm under his neck and the cup at his lips had shaken him profoundly.But Cleigh would not have denied a dog drink had the dog exhibited signs of thirst.So nothing could be drawn from that.

---

Morning.Jane opened her eyes, only to shut them quickly.The white brilliancy of the cabin hurt.Across the ceiling ran a constant flicker of silver—reflected sunshine on the water.Southward—they were heading southward.She jumped out of bed and stepped over to the port.Flashing yellow water, a blue sky, and far off the oddly ribbed sails of a Chinese junk labouring heavily in the big sea that was still running.Glorious!

She dressed hurriedly and warmly, bundling her hair under a velours hat and ramming a pin through both.

“Denny?”she called.

There was no answer.He was on deck, probably.

An odd scene awaited her in the main salon. Cleigh, senior, stood before the phonograph listening to Caruso. The roll of the yacht in nowise disturbed the mechanism of the instrument. There was no sudden sluing of the needle, due to an amateurish device which Cleigh himself had constructed. The son, stooping, was searching the 148 titles of a row of new novels.The width of the salon stretched between the two.

“Good morning, everybody!”

There was a joyousness in her voice she made not the least attempt to conceal.She was joyous, alive, and she did not care who knew it.

Dennison acknowledged her greeting with a smile, a smile which was a mixture of wonder and admiration.How in the world was she to be made to understand that they were riding a deep-sea volcano?

“Nothing disturbed you through the night?”asked Cleigh, lifting the pin from the record.

“Nothing.I lay awake for an hour or two, but after that I slept like a log.Have I kept you waiting?”

“No.Breakfast isn’t quite ready,” answered Cleigh.

“What makes the sea so yellow?”

“All the big Chinese rivers are mud-banked and mud-bottomed.They pour millions of tons of yellow mud into these waters.By this afternoon, however, I imagine we’ll be nosing into the blue.Ah!”

“Breakfast iss served,” announced Togo the Jap.

The trio entered the dining salon in single file, and once more Jane found herself seated between 149 the two men.One moment she was carrying on a conversation with the father, the next moment with the son.The two ignored each other perfectly.Under ordinary circumstances it would have been strange enough; but in this hour, when no one knew where or how this voyage would end!A real tragedy or some absurd trifle?Probably a trifle; trifles dug more pits than tragedies.Perhaps tragedy was mis-named.What humans called tragedy was epic, and trifles were real tragedies.And then there were certain natures to whom the trifle was epical; to whom the inconsequent was invariably magnified nine diameters; and having made a mistake, would die rather than admit it.

To bring these two together, to lure them from behind their ramparts of stubbornness, to see them eventually shake hands and grin as men will who recognize that they have been playing the fool!She became fired with the idea.Only she must not move prematurely; there must arrive some psychological moment.

During the meal, toward the end of it, one of the crew entered.He was young—in the early twenties.The manner in which he saluted convinced Dennison that the fellow had recently been in the United States Navy.

“Mr. Cunningham’s compliments, sir. Canvas 150 has been rigged on the port promenade and chairs and rugs set out.”

Another salute and he was off.

“Well, that’s decent enough,” was Dennison’s comment.“That chap has been in the Navy.It’s all miles over my head, I’ll confess.Cunningham spoke of a joke when I accosted him in the chart house last night.”

“You went up there?”cried Jane.

“Yes.And among other things he said that every man is entitled to at least one good joke.What the devil can he mean by that?”

Had he been looking at his father Dennison would have caught a fleeting, grim, shadowy smile on the strong mouth.

“You will find a dozen new novels on the shelves, Miss Norman,” said Cleigh as he rose.“I’ll be on deck.I generally walk two or three miles in the morning.Let us hang together this day to test the scalawag’s promise.”

“Mr. Cleigh, when you spoke of reparation last night, you weren’t thinking in monetary terms, were you?”

Cleigh’s brows lowered a trifle, but it was the effect of puzzlement.

“Because,” she proceeded, gravely, “all the money you possess would not compensate me for the position you have placed me in.” 151

“Well, perhaps I did have money in mind.However, I hold to my word.Anything you may ask.”

“Some day I will ask you for something.”

“And if humanly possible I promise to give it,” and with this Cleigh took leave.

Jane turned to Dennison.

“It is so strange and incomprehensible!You two sitting here and ignoring each other!Surely you don’t hate your father?”

“I have the greatest respect and admiration for him.To you no doubt it seems fantastic; but we understand each other thoroughly, my father and I.I’d take his hand instantly, God knows, if he offered it!But if I offered mine it would be glass against diamond—I’d only get badly scratched.Suppose we go on deck?The air and the sunshine——”

“But this catastrophe has brought you together after all these years.Isn’t there something providential in that?”

“Who can say?”

On deck they fell in behind Cleigh, and followed him round for fully an hour; then Jane signified that she was tired, and Dennison put her in the centre chair and wrapped the rug about her.He selected the chair at her right.

Jane shut her eyes, and Dennison opened a novel. It was good reading, and he became 152 partially absorbed.The sudden creak of a chair brought his glance round.His father had seated himself in the vacant chair.

The phase that dug in and hurt was that his father made no endeavour to avoid him—simply ignored his existence.Seven years and not a crack in the granite!He laid the book on his knees and stared at the rocking horizon.

One of the crew passed.Cleigh hailed him.

“Send Mr. Cleve to me.”

“Yes, sir.”

The air and the tone of the man were perfectly respectful.

When Cleve, the first officer, appeared his manner was solicitous.

“Are you comfortable, sir?”

“Would ten thousand dollars interest you?”said Cleigh, directly.

“If you mean to come over to your side, no.My life wouldn’t be worth a snap of the thumb.You know something about Dick Cunningham.I know him well.The truth is, Mr. Cleigh, we’re off on a big gamble, and if we win out ten thousand wouldn’t interest me.Life on board will be exactly as it was before you put into Shanghai.More I am not at liberty to tell you.”

“How far is the Catwick?”

“Somewhere round two thousand—eight or 153 nine days, perhaps ten.We’re not piling on—short of coal.It’s mighty difficult to get it for a private yacht.You may not find a bucketful in Singapore.In America you can always commandeer it, having ships and coal mines of your own.The drop down to Singapore from the Catwick is about forty hours.You have coal in Manila.You can cable for it.”

“You are honestly leaving us at that island?”

“Yes, sir.You can, if you wish, take the run up to Saigon; but your chance for coal there is nil.”

“Cleve,” said Cleigh, solemnly, “you appreciate the risks you are running?”

“Mr. Cleigh, there are no risks.It’s a dead certainty.Cunningham is one of your efficiency experts.Everything has been thought of.”

“Except fate,” supplemented Cleigh.

“Fate?Why, she’s our chief engineer!”

Cleve turned away, chuckling; a dozen feet off this chuckle became boisterous laughter.

“What can they be after?Sunken treasure?”cried Jane, excitedly.

“Hangman’s hemp—if I live long enough,” was the grim declaration, and Cleigh drew the rug over his knees.

“But it can’t be anything dreadful if they can laugh over it!” 154

“Did you ever hear Mephisto laugh in Faust?Cunningham is a queer duck.I don’t suppose there’s a corner on the globe he hasn’t had a peek at.He has a vast knowledge of the arts.His real name nobody seems to know.He can make himself very likable to men and attractive to women.The sort of women he seeks do not mind his physical deformity.His face and his intellect draw them, and he is as cruel as a wolf.It never occurred to me until last night that men like me create his kind.But I don’t understand him in this instance.A play like this, with all the future risks!After I get the wires moving he won’t be able to stir a hundred miles in any direction.”

“But so long as he doesn’t intend to harm us—and I’m convinced he doesn’t—perhaps we’d better play the game as he asks us to.”

“Miss Norman,” said Cleigh in a tired voice, “will you do me the favour to ask Captain Dennison why he has never touched the twenty thousand I deposited to his account?”

Astonished, Jane turned to Dennison to repeat the question, but was forestalled.

“Tell Mr. Cleigh that to touch a dollar of that money would be a tacit admission that Mr. Cleigh had the right to strike Captain Dennison across the mouth.”

Dennison swung out of the chair and strode off 155 toward the bridge, his shoulders flat and his neck stiff.

“You struck him?”demanded Jane, impulsively.

But Cleigh did not answer.His eyes were closed, his head rested against the back of the chair so Jane did not press the question.It was enough that she had seen behind a corner of this peculiar veil.And, oddly, she felt quite as much pity for the father as for the son.A wall of pride, Alpine high, and neither would force a passage!

They did not see the arch rogue during the day, but he came in to dinner. He was gay—in a story-telling mood. There was little or no banter, for he spoke only to Jane, and gave her flashes of some of his amazing activities in search of art treasures. He had once been chased up and down Japan by the Mikado’s agents for having in his possession some royal-silk tapestry which it is forbidden to take out of the country. Another time he had gone into Tibet for a lama’s ghost mask studded with raw emeralds and turquoise, and had suffered untold miseries in getting down into India. Again he had entered a Rajput haremlik as a woman, and eventually escaped with the fabulous rug which hung in the salon. Adventure, adventure, and death always at his elbow! There was nothing of the braggart in the man; he 156 recounted his tales after the manner of a boy relating some college escapades, deprecatingly.

Often Jane stole a glance at one or the other of the Cleighs.She was constantly swung between—but never touched—the desire to laugh and the desire to weep over this tragedy, which seemed so futile.

“Why don’t you write a book about these adventures?”she asked.

“A book?No time,” said Cunningham.“Besides, the moment one of these trips is over it ends; I can recount it only sketchily.”

“But even sketchily it would be tremendously interesting.It is as if you were playing a game with death for the mere sport of it.”

“Maybe that hits it, though I’ve never stopped to analyze.I never think of death; it is a waste of gray matter.I should be no nearer death in Tibet than I should be asleep in a cradle.Why bother about the absolute, the inevitable?Humanity wears itself out building bridges for imaginary torrents.I am an exception; that is why I shall be young and handsome up to the moment the grim stalker puts his claw on my shoulder.”

He smiled whimsically.

“But you, have you never caught some of the passion for possessing rare paintings, rugs, manuscripts?” 157

“You miss the point.What does the sense of possession amount to beside the sense of seeking and finding?Cleigh here thinks he is having a thrill when he signs a check.It is to laugh!”

“Have you ever killed a man?”It was one of those questions that leap forth irresistibly.Jane was a bit frightened at her temerity.

Cunningham drank his coffee deliberately.

“Yes.”

“Oh!”

Jane shrank back a little.

“But never willfully,” Cunningham added—“always in self-defence, and never a white man.”

There was a peculiar phase about the man’s singular beauty.Animated, it was youthful; in grim repose, it was sad and old.

“Death!”said Jane in a kind of awed whisper.“I have watched many die, and I cannot get over the terror of it.Here is a man with all the faculties, physical and mental; a human being, loving, hating, working, sleeping; and in an instant he is nothing!”

“A Chinaman once said that the thought of death is as futile as water in the hand.By the way, Cleigh—and you too, captain—give the wireless a wide berth.There’s death there.”

Jane saw the fire opals leap into the dark eyes.

---

The third day out they were well below Formosa, which had been turned on a wide arc.The sea was blue now, quiescent, waveless; there was only the eternal roll.Still Jane could not help comparing the sea with the situation—the devil was slumbering.What if he waked?

Time after time she tried to force her thoughts into the reality of this remarkable cruise, but it was impossible.Romance was always smothering her, edging her off, when she approached the sinister.Perhaps if she had heard ribald songs, seen evidence of drunkenness; if the crew had loitered about and been lacking in respect, she would have been able to grasp the actuality; but so far the idea persisted that this could not be anything more than a pleasure cruise.Piracy?Where was it?

So she measured her actions accordingly, read, played the phonograph, went here and there over the yacht, often taking her stand in the bow and peering down the cutwater to watch the antics of some humorous porpoise or to follow the smother of spray where the flying fish broke. In fact, she 159 conducted herself exactly as she would have done on board a passenger ship.There were moments when she was honestly bored.

Piracy! This was an established fact. Cunningham and his men had stepped outside the pale of law in running off with the WandererBut piracy without drunken disorder, piracy that wiped its feet on the doormat and hung its hat on the rack!There was a touch of the true farce in it.Hadn’t Cunningham himself confessed that the whole affair was a joke?

Round two o’clock on the afternoon of the third day Jane, for the moment alone in her chair, heard the phonograph—the sextet from Lucia.She left her chair, looked down through the open transom and discovered Dennison cranking the machine.He must have seen her shadow, for he glanced up quickly.

He crooked a finger which said, “Come on down!”She made a negative sign and withdrew her head.

Here she was again on the verge of wild laughter. Donizetti! Pirates! Glass beads for which Cleigh had voyaged sixteen thousand miles! A father and son who ignored each other! She choked down this desire to laugh, because she was afraid it might end suddenly in hysteria and tears. She returned to her chair, and there was the 160 father arranging himself comfortably.He had a book.

“Would you like me to read a while to you?”she offered.

“Will you?You see,” he confessed, “I’m troubled with insomnia.If I read by myself I only become interested in the book, but if someone reads aloud it makes me drowsy.”

“As a nurse I’ve done that hundreds of times.But frankly, I can’t read poetry; I begin to sing-song it at once; it becomes rime without reason.What is the book?”

Cleigh extended it to her.The moment her hands touched the volume she saw that she was holding something immeasurably precious.The form was unlike the familiar shapes of modern books.The covers consisted of exquisitely hand-tooled calf bound by thongs; there was a subtle perfume as she opened them.Illuminated vellum.She uttered a pleasurable little gasp.

“The Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s,” she read.

“Fifteenth century—the vellum.The Florentine covers were probably added in the seventeenth.I have four more downstairs.They are museum pieces, as we say.”

“That is to say, priceless?”

“After a fashion.” 161

“‘Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it; if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned!’”

“Why did you select that?”

“I didn’t select it; I remembered it—because it is true.”

“You have a very pleasant voice.Go on—read.”

Thus for an hour she read to him, and by the time she grew tired Cleigh was sound asleep.The look of granite was gone from his face, and she saw that he, too, had been handsome in his youth.Why had he struck Denny on the mouth?What had the son done so to enrage the father?Some woman!And where had she met the man?Oh, she was certain that she had encountered him before!But for the present the gate to recollection refused to swing outward.Gently she laid the beautiful book on his knees and stole over to the rail.For a while she watched the flying fish.

Then came one of those impulses which keep human beings from becoming half gods—a wrong impulse, surrendered to immediately, unweighed, unanalyzed, unchallenged. The father asleep, the son amusing himself with the phonograph, she was now unobserved by her guardians; and so she put into execution the thought that had been 162 urging and intriguing her since the strange voyage began—a visit to the chart house.She wanted to ask Cunningham some questions.He would know something about the Cleighs.

The port door to the chart house was open, latched back against the side.She hesitated for a moment outside the high-beamed threshold—hesitated because Captain Newton was not visible.The wheelman was alone.Obliquely she saw Cunningham, Cleve, and a third man seated round a table which was littered.This third man sat facing the port door, and sensing her presence he looked up.Rather attractive until one noted the thin, hard lips, the brilliant blue eyes.At the sight of Jane something flitted over his face, and Jane knew that he was bad.

“What’s the matter, Flint?”asked Cunningham, observing the other’s abstraction.

“We have a visitor,” answered Flint.

Cunningham spun his chair round and jumped to his feet.

“Miss Norman?Come in, come in!Anything you need?”he asked with lively interest.

“I should like to ask you some questions, Mr. Cunningham.”

“Oh!Well, if I can answer them, I will.”

He looked significantly at his companions, who rose and left the house by the starboard door. 163

“They can’t keep away from him, can they?”said Flint, cynically.“Slue-Foot has the come-hither, sure enough.I had an idea she’d be hiking this way the first chance she got.”

“You haven’t the right dope this trip,” replied Cleve.“The contract reads: Hands off women and booze.”

“Psalm-singing pirates!We’ll be having prayers Sunday.But that woman is my style.”

“Better begin digging up a prayer if you’ve got that bug in your head.If you make any fool play in that direction Cunningham will break you.I saw you last night staring through the transom.Watch your step, Flint.I’m telling you.”

“But if she should happen to take a fancy to me, who shall say no?”

“Hate yourself, eh?There was liquor on your breath last night.Did you bring some aboard?”

“What’s that to you?”

“It’s a whole lot to me, my bucko—to me and to the rest of the boys. Cleigh will not prosecute us for piracy if we play a decent game until we raise the Catwick. On old Van Dorn’s tub we can drink and sing if we want to. If Cunningham gets a whiff of your breath, when you’ve had it, you’ll get yours. Most of the boys have never done anything worse than apple stealing. It was the adventure. All keyed up for war and no place to 164 go, and this was a kind of safety valve.Already half of them are beginning to knock in the knees.Game, understand, but now worried about the future.”

“A peg or two before turning in won’t hurt anybody.I’m not touching it in the daytime.”

“Keep away from him when you do—that’s all.We’re depending on you and Cunningham to pull through.If you two get to scrapping the whole business will go blooey.If we play the game according to contract there’s a big chance of getting back to the States without having the sheriff on the dock to meet us.But if you mess it up because an unexpected stroke put a woman on board, you’ll end up as shark bait.”

“Maybe I will and maybe I won’t,” was the truculent rejoinder.

“Lord!”said Cleve, a vast discouragement in his tone.“You lay a course as true and fine as a hair, and run afoul a rotting derelict in the night!”

Flint laughed.

“Oh, I shan’t make any trouble.I’ll say my prayers regular until we make shore finally.The agreement was to lay off the Cleigh booze.I brought on board only a couple of quarts, and they’ll be gone before we raise the Catwick.But if I feel like talking to the woman I’ll do it.”

“It’s your funeral, not mine,” was the ominous 165 comment.“You’ve been on the beach once too often, Flint, to play a game like this straight.But Cunningham had to have you, because you know the Malay lingo.Remember, he isn’t afraid of anything that walks on two feet or four.”

“Neither am I—when I want anything.But glass beads!”

“That was only a lure for Cleigh, who’d go round the world for any curio he was interested in.”

“That’s what I mean.If it were diamonds or pearls or rubies, all well and good.But a string of glass beads!The old duffer is a nut!”

“Maybe he is.But if you had ten or twelve millions, what would you do?”

“Jump for Prome and foot it to the silk bazaar, where there are three or four of the prettiest Burmese girls you ever laid your eyes on.Then I’d buy the Galle Face Hotel in Colombo and close it to the public.”

“And in five years—the old beach again!”

Flint scowled at the oily, heaving rolls, brassy and dazzling. He was bored. For twelve weeks he had circled the dull round of ship routine, with never shore leave that was long enough for an ordinary drinking bout. He was bored stiff. Suddenly his thin lips broke into a smile. Cleve, noting the smile, divined something of the 166 impellent thought behind that smile, and he grew uneasy.He recalled his own expression of a few moments gone—the unreckoned derelict.

---

“Thank you for coming up,” said Cunningham.“It makes me feel that you trust me.”

“I want to,” admitted Jane.

A disturbing phenomenon.Always there was a quickening of her heart-beats at the beginning of each encounter with this unusual gentleman rover.It was no longer fear.What was it?Was it the face of him, too strong and vital for a woman’s, too handsome for a man’s?Was it his dark, fiery eye which was always reversing what his glib tongue said?Some hidden magnetism?Alone, the thought of him was recurrent, no matter how resolutely she cast it forth.Even now she could not honestly say whether she was here to ask questions of Cunningham or of herself.Perhaps it was because he was the unknown, whereas Denny was for the most part as readable as an open book.The one like the forest stream, sometimes turbulent but always clear; the other like the sea through which they plowed, smooth, secret, ominous.

“Do your guardians know where you are?”—raillery in his voice.

“No. I came to ask some questions.” 167

“Curiosity.Sit down.What is it you wish to know?”

“All this—and what will be the end?”

“Well, doubtless there will be an end, but I’m not seer enough to foretell it.”

“Then you have some doubts?”

“Only those that beset all of us.”

“But somehow—well, you don’t seem to belong to this sort of game.”

“Why not?”

Unexpectedly he had set a wall between.She had no answer, and her embarrassment was visible on her cheeks.

“Here and there across the world rough men call me Slue-Foot.Perhaps my deformity has reacted upon my soul and twisted that.Perhaps if my countenance had been homely and rugged I would have walked the beaten paths of respectability.But the two together!”

“I’m sorry!”

“A woman such as you are would be.You are a true daughter of the great mother—Pity.But I have never asked pity of any.I have asked only that a man shall keep his word to me as I will keep mine to him.”

“But you are risking your liberty, perhaps your life!”

“I’ve been risking that for more than twenty 168 years.The habit has become normal.All my life I’ve wanted a real adventure.”

She gazed at him in utter astonishment.

“An adventure?Why, you yourself told me that you had risked your life a hundred times!”

“That?”—with a smile and a shrug.“That was business, the day’s work.I mean an adventure in which I am accountable to no man.”

“Only to God?”

“Well, of course, if you want it that way.For myself, I’m something of a pagan.I have dreamed of this day.When you were a little girl didn’t you dream of a wonderful doll that could walk and make almost human noises?Well, I’m realizing my doll.I am going pearl hunting in the South Seas—the thing I dreamed of when I was a boy.”

“But why commit piracy?Why didn’t you hire a steamer?”

“Oh, I must have my joke, too.But I hadn’t counted on you.In every campaign there is the hollow road of Ohain.Napoleon lost Waterloo because of it.Your presence here has forced me to use a hand without velvet.These men expected a little fun—cards and drink; and some of them are grumbling with discontent.But don’t worry.In five days we’ll be off on our own.”

“What is the joke?” 169

“That will have to wait.For a few minutes I heard you reading to-day.Your voice is like a bell at sea in the evening.‘Many waters cannot quench love,’” he quoted, the flash of opals in his eyes, though his lips were smiling gently.“The Bible is a wonderful book.Its authors were poets who were not spoiled by the curse of rime.Does it amuse you to hear me talk of the Bible?—an unregenerate scalawag?Well, it is like this: I am something of an authority on illuminated manuscripts.I’ve had to wade through hundreds of them.That is the method by which I became acquainted with the Scriptures.The Song of Songs!Lord love you, if that isn’t pure pagan, what is?I prefer the Proverbs.Ask Cleigh if he has that manuscript with him.It’s in a remarkable state of preservation.Remember?‘There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not: The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid.’Ask Cleigh to show you that.”

Cleigh!The name swung her back to the original purpose of this visit.

“Do you know the Cleighs well?”

“I know the father. He has the gift of strong men—unforgetting and unforgiving. I know little 170 or nothing about the son, except that he is a chip of the old block.Queer twist in events, eh?”

“Have you any idea what estranged them?”

“Didn’t know they were at outs until the night before we sailed.They don’t speak?”

“No.And it seems so utterly foolish!”

“Cherchez la femme!”

“You believe that was it?”

“It is always so, always and eternally the woman.I don’t mean that she is always to blame; I mean that she is always there—in the background.But you!I say, now, here’s the job for you!Bring them together.That’s your style.For weeks now you three will be together.Within that time you’ll be able to twist both of them round your finger.I wonder if you realize it?You’re not beautiful, but you are something better—splendid.Strong men will always be gravitating toward you, wanting comfort, peace.You’re not the kind that sets men’s hearts on fire, that makes absconders, fills the divorce courts, and all that.You’re like a cool hand on a hot forehead.And you have a voice as sweet as a bell.”

Instinct—the female fear of the trap—warned Jane to be off, but curiosity held her to the chair. She was human; and this flattery, free of any suggestion of love-making, gave her a warming, 171 pleasurable thrill.Still there was a fly in the amber.Every woman wishes to be credited with hidden fires, to possess equally the power to damn men as well as to save them.

“Has there never been——”

“A woman?Have I not just said there is always a woman?”He was sardonic now.“Mine, seeing me walk, laughed.”

“She wasn’t worth it!”

“No, she wasn’t.But when we are twenty the heart is blind.So Cleigh and the boy don’t speak?”

“Cleigh hasn’t injured you in any way, has he?”

“Injured me?Of course not!I am only forced by circumstance—and an oblique sense of the comic—to make a convenience of him.And by the Lord Harry, it’s up to you to help me out!”

“I?”—bewildered.

---

Jane gazed through the doorway at the sea.There was apparently no horizon, no telling where the sea ended and the faded blue of the sky began.There was something about this sea she did not like.She was North-born.It seemed to her that there was really less to fear from the Atlantic fury than from these oily, ingratiating, rolling mounds.They were the Uriah Heep of waters.She knew how terrible they could be, far more terrible than the fiercest nor’easter down the Atlantic.Typhoon!How could a yacht live through a hurricane?She turned again toward Cunningham.

“You are like that,” she said, irrelevantly.

“Like what?”

“Like the sea.”

Cunningham rose and peered under the half-drawn blind.

“That may be complimentary, but hanged if I know!Smooth?—is that what you mean?”

“Kind of terrible.”

He sat down again. 173

“That rather cuts.I might be terrible.I don’t know—never met the occasion; but I do know that I’m not treacherous.You certainly are not afraid of me.”

“I don’t exactly know.It’s—it’s too peaceful.”

“To last?I see.But it isn’t as though I were forcing you to go through with the real voyage.Only a few days more, and you’ll have seen the last of me.”

“I hope so.”

He chuckled.

“What I meant was,” she corrected, “that nothing might happen, nobody get hurt.Human beings can plan only so far.”

“That’s true enough.Every programme is subject to immediate change.But, Lord, what a lot of programmes go through per schedule!Still, you are right.It all depends upon chance.We say a thing is cut and dried, but we can’t prove it.But so far as I can see into the future, nothing is going to happen, nobody is going to walk the plank.Piracy on a basis of 2.75 per cent.—the kick gone out of it!But if you can bring about the reconciliation of the Cleighs the old boy will not be so keen for chasing me all over the map when this job is done.”

“Will you tell me what those beads are?” 174

“To be sure I will—all in due time.What does Cleigh call them?”

“Love beads!”scornfully.

“On my solemn word, that’s exactly what they are.”

“Very well.But remember, you promise to tell me when the time comes.”

“That and other surprising things.”

“I’ll be going.”

“Come up as often as you like.”

Cunningham accompanied her to the bridge ladder and remained until she was speeding along the deck; then he returned to his chart.But the chart was no longer able to hold his attention.So he levelled his gaze upon the swinging horizon and kept it there for a time.Odd fancy, picturing the girl on the bridge in a hurricane, her hair streaming out behind her, her fine body leaning on the wind.A shadow in the doorway broke in upon this musing.Cleigh.

“Come in and sit down,” invited Cunningham.

But Cleigh ignored the invitation and stepped over to the steersman.

“Has Miss Norman been in here?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How long was she here?”

“I don’t know, sir; perhaps half an hour.”

Cleigh stalked to the door, but there he turned, 175 and for the first time since Cunningham had taken the yacht Cleigh looked directly, with grim intentness, into his enemy’s eyes.

“Battle, murder, and sudden death!”Cunningham laughed.“You don’t have to tell me, Cleigh!I can see it in your eyes.If Miss Norman wants to come here and ask questions, I’m the last man to prevent her.”

Cleigh thumped down the ladder.Cunningham was right—there was murder in his heart.He hurried into the main salon, and there he found Jane and Dennison conversing.

“Miss Norman, despite my warning you went up to the chart house.”

“I had some questions to ask.”

“I forbid you emphatically.I am responsible for you.”

“I am no longer your prisoner, Mr. Cleigh; I am Mr. Cunningham’s.”

“You went up there alone?”demanded Dennison.

“Why not?I’m not afraid.He will not break his word to me.”

“Damn him!”roared Dennison.

“Where are you going?”she cried, seizing him by the sleeve.

“To have it out with him! I can’t stand this any longer!” 176

“And what will become of me—if anything happens to you, or anything happens to him?What about the crew if he isn’t on hand to hold them?”

The muscular tenseness of the arm she held relaxed.But the look he gave his father was on a par with that which Cleigh had so recently spent upon Cunningham.Cleigh could not support it, and turned his head aside.

“All right.But mind you keep in sight!If you will insist upon talking with the scoundrel, at least permit me to be within call.What do you want to talk to him for, anyhow?”

“Neither of you will stoop to ask him questions, so I had to.And I have learned one thing.He is going pearl hunting.”

“What?Off the Catwick?There’s no pearl oyster in that region,” Dennison declared.“Either he is lying or the Catwick is a blind.The only chance he’d have would be somewhere in the Sulu Archipelago; and this time of year the pearl fleets will be as thick as flies in molasses.Of course if he is aware of some deserted atoll, why, there might be something in it.”

“Have you ever hunted pearls?”

“In a second-hand sort of way. But if pearls are his game, why commit piracy when he could have chartered a tramp to carry his crew? There’s 177 more than one old bucket hereabouts ready to his hand for coal and stores.He’ll need a shoe spoon to get inside or by the Sulu fleets, since the oyster has been pretty well neglected these five years, and every official pearler will be hiking down there.But it requires a certain amount of capital and a stack of officially stamped paper, and I don’t fancy Cunningham has either.”

Cleigh smiled dryly, but offered no comment.He knew all about Cunningham’s capital.

“Did he say anything about being picked up by another boat?”asked Dennison.

“No,” answered Jane.“But I don’t believe it will be hard for me to make him tell me that.I believe that he will keep his word, too.”

“Jane, he has broken the law of the sea.I don’t know what the penalty is these days, but it used to be hanging to the yard-arm.He won’t be particular about his word if by breaking it he can save his skin.He’s been blarneying you.You’ve let his plausible tongue and handsome face befog you.”

“That is not true!”she flared.Afterward she wondered what caused the flash of perversity.“And I resent your inference!”she added with uplifted chin.

Dennison whirled her about savagely, stared into her eyes, then walked to the companion, up 178 which he disappeared.This rudeness astonished her profoundly.She appealed silently to the father.

“We are riding a volcano,” said Cleigh.“I’m not sure but he’s setting some trap for you.He may need you as a witness for the defense.Of course I can’t control your actions, but it would relieve me immensely if you’d give him a wide berth.”

“He was not the one who brought me aboard.”

“No.And the more I look at it, the more I am convinced that you came on board of your own volition.You had two or three good opportunities to call for assistance.”

“You believe that?”

“I’ve as much right to believe that as you have that Cunningham will keep his word.”

“Oh!”she cried, but it was an outburst of anger.And it had a peculiar twist, too.She was furious because both father and son were partly correct; and yet there was no diminution of that trust she was putting in Cunningham.“Next you’ll be hinting that I’m in collusion with him!”

“No.Only he is an extraordinarily fascinating rogue, and you are wearing the tinted goggles of romance.”

Fearing that she might utter something regrettable, she flew down the port passage and entered her cabin, where she remained until dinner. 179 She spent the intervening hours endeavouring to analyze the cause of her temper, but the cause was as elusive as quicksilver.Why should she trust Cunningham?What was the basis of this trust?He had, as Denny said, broken the law of the sea.Was there a bit of black sheep in her, and was the man calling to it?And this perversity of hers might create an estrangement between her and Denny; she must not let that happen.The singular beauty of the man’s face, his amazing career, and his pathetic deformity—was that it?

---

“Where’s the captain?”asked Cunningham, curiously, as he noted the vacant chair at the table that night.

“On deck, I suppose.”

“Isn’t he dining to-night?”—an accent of suspicion creeping into his voice.“He isn’t contemplating making a fool of himself, is he?He’ll get hurt if he approaches the wireless.”

“Togo,” broke in Cleigh, “bring the avocats and the pineapple.”

Cunningham turned upon him with a laugh.

“Cleigh, when I spin this yarn some day I’ll carry you through it as the man who never batted an eye.I can see now how you must have bluffed Wall Street out of its boots.”

When Cunningham saw that Jane was distrait 180 he made no attempt to pull her out of it.He ate his dinner, commenting only occasionally.Still, he bade her a cheery good-night as he returned to the chart house, where he stayed continually, never quite certain what old Captain Newton might do to the wheel and the compass if left alone too long.

Dennison came in immediately after Cunningham’s departure and contritely apologized to Jane for his rudeness.

“I suppose I’m on the rack; nerves all raw; tearing me to pieces to sit down and twiddle my thumbs.Will you forgive me?”

“Of course I will!I understand.You are all anxious about me.Theoretically, this yacht is a volcano, and you’re trying to keep me from kicking off the lid.But I’ve an idea that the lid will stay on tightly if we make believe we are Mr. Cunningham’s guests.But it is almost impossible to suspect that anything is wrong.Whenever a member of the crew comes in sight he is properly polite, just as he would be on a liner.If I do go to the bridge again I’ll give you warning.Good-night, Mr. Cleigh, I’ll read to you in the morning.Good-night—Denny.”

Cleigh, sighing contentedly, dipped his fingers into the finger bowl and brushed his lips.

The son drank a cup of coffee hastily, lit his 181 pipe, and went on deck.He proceeded directly to the chart house.

“Cunningham, I’ll swallow my pride and ask a favour of you.”

“Ah!”—in a neutral tone.

“The cook tells me that all the wine and liquor are in the dry-stores compartment.Will you open it and let me chuck the stuff overboard?”

“No,” said Cunningham, promptly.“When I turn this yacht back to your father not a single guy rope will be out of order.It would be a fine piece of work to throw all those rare vintages over the rail simply to appease an unsubstantial fear on your part!No!”

“But if the men should break in?And it would be easy, because it is nearer them than us.”

“Thank your father for building the deck like a city flat.But if the boys should break in, there’s the answer,” said Cunningham, laying his regulation revolver on the chart table.“And every mother’s son of them knows it.”

“You refuse?”

“Yes.”

“All right.But if anything happens I’ll be on top of you, and all the bullets in that clip won’t stop me.”

“Captain, you bore me. Your father and the girl are good sports. You ought to be one. I’ve 182 given you the freedom of the yacht for the girl’s sake when caution bids me dump you into the brig.I begin to suspect that your misfortunes are due to a violent temper.Run along with your thunder; I don’t want you hurt.”

“If I come through this alive——”

“You’ll join your dad peeling off my hide—if you can catch me!”

It was with the greatest effort that Dennison crushed down the desire to leap upon his tormentor.He stood tense for a moment, then stepped out upon the bridge.His fury was suffocating him, and he realized that he was utterly helpless.

Ten minutes later the crew in their quarters were astonished to see the old man’s son enter.None of them stirred.

“I say, any you chaps got an extra suit of twill?This uniform is getting too thick for this latitude.I’m fair melting down to the bone.”

“Sure!”bellowed a young giant, swinging out of his bunk.He rummaged round for a space and brought forth a light-weight khaki shirt and a pair of ducks.“Guess these’ll fit you, sir.”

“Thanks.Navy stores?”

“Yes, sir.You’re welcome.”

Dennison’s glance travelled from face to face, and he had to admit that there was none of the criminal type here. They might carry through 183 decently.Nevertheless, hereafter he would sleep on the lounge in the main salon.If any tried to force the dry-stores door he would be likely to hear it.

At eleven o’clock the following morning there occurred an episode which considerably dampened Jane’s romantical point of view regarding this remarkable voyage.Cleigh had gone below for some illuminated manuscripts and Dennison was out of sight for the moment.She leaned over the rail and watched the flying fish.Suddenly out of nowhere came the odour of whisky.

“You ought to take a trip up to the cutwater at night and see the flying fish in the phosphorescence.”

She did not stir.Instinctively she knew who the owner of this voice would be—the man Cunningham called Flint.A minute—an unbearable minute—passed.

“Oh!Too haughty to be a good fellow, huh?”

Footsteps, a rush of wind, a scuffling, and an oath brought her head about.She saw Flint go balancing and stumbling backward, finally to sprawl on his hands and knees, and following him, in an unmistakable attitude, was Dennison.Jane was beginning to understand these Cleighs; their rage was terrible because it was always cold.

“Denny!”she called.

But Dennison continued on toward Flint.

---

Flint was a powerful man, or had been.The surprise of the attack over, he jumped to his feet, and blazing with murderous fury rushed Dennison.Jane saw a tangle of arms, and out of this tangle came a picture that would always remain vivid—Flint practically dangling at the end of Dennison’s right arm.The rogue tore and heaved and kicked and struck, but futilely, because his reach was shorter.Dennison let go unexpectedly.

“Listen to me, you filthy beachcomber!If you ever dare speak to Miss Norman again or come within ten feet of her I’ll kill you with bare hands!There are no guns on board this yacht—bare hands.Now go back to your master and say that I’d like to do the same to him.”

Flint, his hands touching his throat with inquiring solicitude—Flint eyed Dennison with that mixture of pain and astonishment that marks the face of a man who has been grossly deceived. Slowly he revolved on his shaking legs and staggered forward, shortly to disappear round the deck house. 185

“Oh, Denny, you’ve done a foolish thing!You’ve shamed that man before me and put murder in his heart.It isn’t as if we were running the yacht.We are prisoners of that man and his fellows.It would have been enough for you to have stepped in between.”

“I haven’t any parlour varnish left, Jane.His shoulder was almost touching yours.It was an intentional insult, and that was enough for me.The dog!Still looking at the business romantically?”

His tone was bitter.Her reproach, no doubt justified, cut deeply.

“No, I’m beginning to become a little afraid—afraid that the men may get out of hand.I don’t care what you and your father think, but I believe Cunningham honestly wishes us to reach the Catwick without any conflict.”

“Ah, Cunningham!”

“There you go again—angry and bitter!Why can’t you take it sensibly, like your father?”

“My father doesn’t happen to be——”

He stopped with mystifying abruptness.

“Doesn’t happen to be what?”

“The sort of fool I am!”

“You’re not so good a comrade as you were.”

“Can’t you understand? I’ve been stood upon my head. The worry about you on one side and the contact with my father on the other would be 186 sufficient.But Cunningham and this pirate crew as a tail to the kite!But, thank God, I had the wit to come in search of you!”

“I thank God every minute, Denny!You are very strong,” she added, shyly.

“Glad of that, too.But I repeat, I’ve lost the parlour varnish and the art of parlour talk.For seven years I’ve been wandering in strange places, most of them hard; so I say what I think and act on the spur.That dog had liquor on his breath.Is Cunningham secretly letting them into the dry-stores?”

“The man may have brought it aboard at Shanghai.What a horrible thing a great war is!In a week it knocks aside all the bars of restraint it took years to erect.Could a venture like this have happened in 1913?I doubt it.There comes your father.But who is the man with him?He’s been hurt.”

“Father’s watchdog.They had to beat him up to get his gun away from him.That was the racket we heard.Evidently Father expects you to read to him, so I’ll take a constitutional.”

“Why, where’s your uniform?”she cried.

“Laid it aside. From now on it will be stuffy. Those military boots were killing me. I borrowed the rig from one of the pirates, but I’ll have to go barefoot.” 187

“Will you come to your chair soon?I shall worry otherwise.You might run into that man again.”

“I shan’t go below,” he promised, starting off.

Twenty thousand at compound interest for seven years, he thought, as he made the first turn.A tidy sum to start life with.Could he swallow his pride?And yet what hope was there of making a real living?He had never specialized in anything, and the world was calling for specialists and discarding the others.Another point to consider: Foot-loose for seven years, could he stand the shackles of office work, routine, the sameness day in and day out?He was returning to the States without the least idea what he wanted to do; that was the disturbing phase of it.If only he were keen for something!A typical son of the rich man.The only point in his favour was that he had not spent his allowances up and down Broadway.No, he would never touch a dollar of that money.That was final.

What lay back of this sudden desire to make good in the world?Love!There wasn’t the slightest use in lying to himself.He wanted Jane Norman with all the blood in his body, with all the marrow in his bones; and he had nothing to offer her but empty hands.

He shot a glance toward the bridge. And 188 because he had no right to speak—obligated to silence by two reasons—that easy-speaking scoundrel might trap her fancy.It could not be denied that he was handsome, but he was nevertheless a rogue.The two reasons why he must not speak were potent.In the first place, he had nothing to offer; in the second place, the terror she was no doubt hiding bravely would serve only to confuse her—that is, she might confuse a natural desire for protection with something deeper and tenderer, and then discover her mistake when it was too late.

What was she going to ask of his father when the time came for reparation?That puzzled him.

He made the rounds steadily for an hour, and during this time Jane frequently looked over the top of the manuscript she was reading aloud.At length she laid the manuscript upon her knees.

“Mr. Cleigh, what is it that makes art treasures so priceless?”

“Generally the depth of the buyer’s purse.That is what they say of me in the great auction rooms.”

“But you don’t buy them just because you are rich enough to outbid somebody else?”

“No, I am actually fond of all the treasures I possess. Aside from this, it is the most fascinating game there is. The original! A painting that Holbein laid his own brushes on, mixed his own 189 paint for!I have then something of the man, tangible, visible; something of his beautiful dreams, his poverty, his success.There before me is the authentic labour of his hand, which was guided by the genius of his brain—before machinery spoiled mankind.Oh, yes, machinery has made me rich!It has given the proletariat the privilege of wearing yellow diamonds and riding about in flivvers.That must be admitted.But to have lived in those days when ambition thought only in beauty!To have been the boon companions of men like Da Vinci, Cellini, Michelangelo!Then there are the adventures of this concrete dream of the artist.I can trace it back to the bare studio in which it was conceived, follow its journeys, its abiding places, down to the hour it comes to me.”

Jane stared at him astonishedly.All that had been crampedly hidden in his soul flowed into his face, warming and mellowing it, even beautifying it.Cleigh went on:

“Where will it go when I have done my little span? What new adventures lie in store for it? Across the Ponte Vecchio in Florence runs a gallery of portraits: at the south end of this gallery there is or was a corner given over to a copyist. He strikes you dumb with the cleverness of his work, but he has only an eye and a hand—he hasn’t a soul. A copy is to the original what a 190 dummy is to a live man, no matter how amazingly well done the copy is.The original, the dream; nothing else satisfies the true collector.”

“I didn’t know,” said Jane, “that you had so much romance in you.”

“Romance?”It was almost a bark.

“Why, certainly.No human being could love beauty the way you do and not be romantic.”

“Romantic!”Cleigh leaned back in his chair.“That’s a new point of view for Tungsten Cleigh.That’s what my enemies call me—the hardest metal on earth.Romantic!”He chuckled.“To hear a woman call me romantic!”

“It does not follow that to be romantic one must be sentimental.Romance is something heroic, imaginative, big; it isn’t a young man and a girl spooning on a park bench.I myself am romantic, but nobody could possibly call me sentimental.”

“No?”

“Why, if I knew that we’d come through this without anybody getting hurt I’d be gloriously happy.All my life I’ve been cooped up.For a little while to be free!But I don’t like that.”

She indicated Dodge, who sat in Dennison’s chair, his head bandaged, his arm in a sling, thousands of miles from his native plains, at odds with his environment. His lean brown jaws were set and the pupils of his blue eyes were mere pin 191 points.During the discussion of art, during the reading, he had not stirred.

“You mean,” said Cleigh, gravely, “that Dodge may be only the beginning?”

“Yes.Your—Captain Dennison had an encounter with the man Flint before you came up.He is very strong and—and a bit intolerant.”

“Ah!”Cleigh rubbed his jaw and smiled ruminatively.“He was always rather handy with his fists.Did he kill the ruffian?”

“No, held him at arm’s length and threatened to kill him.I’m afraid Flint will not accept the situation with good grace.”

“Flint?I never liked that rogue’s face.”

“He has found liquor somewhere, and I saw murder in his eyes.Denny isn’t afraid, and that’s why I am—afraid he’ll run amuck uselessly.His very strength will react against him.”

“I was like that thirty years ago.”So she called him Denny?Cleigh laid his hand over hers.“Keep your chin up.There’s a revolver handy should we need it.I dare not carry it for fear Cunningham might discover and confiscate it.Six bullets.”

“And if worse comes to worse, will—will you save one for me? Please don’t let Denny do it! You are old, and if you lived after it wouldn’t be 192 in your thoughts so long as it would be in his—if he killed me.Will you promise?”

“Yes—if worse comes to worse.Will you forgive me?”

“I do.But still I’m going to hold you to your word.”

“I’ll pay the score, whatever it is.Now suppose you come below with me and take a look at the paintings?You haven’t seen my cabin yet.”

What was this unusual young woman going to ask of him?He wondered.The more he thought over it the more convinced he was that she had assisted in the abduction.

---

After they had gone below Dennison dropped into Jane’s chair.Immediately Dodge began to talk: “So you nearly throttled that ornery coyote, huh?Whata you know about this round-up?The three o’ ’em came in, and I never smelt nothin’ until they were on top o’ me.How should I smell anythin’?Hobnobbing together for days, how was I to know they were a bunch of pirates?Is your old man sore?”

“Naturally.”

“I mean appertainin’ to me?”

“I don’t see how he could be.Who took care of you—bound you up?”

“That nice-lookin’ greaser with the slue foot. Soft speakin’ like a woman and an eye like a timber wolf. Some hombre!Where we bound for?”

“God knows!”—dejectedly.

“Bad as that, huh?Your girl?”

“No.”

“No place for a girl. If they hadn’t busted my arm I wouldn’t care so much! If it comes to a 194 show-down I won’t be no good to anybody. Gimme my guns and we’d be headin’ home in five minutes. These hombres know somethin’ o’ my gun play. Gee, it’s lonesome here!” Dodge mused for a moment. “Say, what’s your old man’s idea hog-tyin’ you that-a-way?”

“He’ll tell you perhaps.”

“Uh-huh.Say, what did the Lord make all that stuff for?”with a gesture toward the brazen sea.“What’s it good for, anyhow?”

“But for the sea we wouldn’t have any oysters or codfish,” said Dennison, soberly.

Dodge chuckled.

“Oysters and codfish!Say, you’re all right!Never knew the old man had a son until you blew in.Back in New York nobody ever said nothin’ about you.Where you been?”

“Lots of places.”

“Any ridin’?”

“Some.”

“Can you shoot?”

“A little.”

“Kill any o’ them Bolsheviks?”

“That would be guesswork.Did you ever kill a man?”

“Nope. Didn’t have to. I’m pretty good on the draw, and where I come from they knew it and didn’t bother me.” 195

“I see.”

“Shootin’ these days is all in the movies.I was ridin’ for a film company when your old man lassoed me for this job.Never know when you’re well off—huh?I thought there wouldn’t be nothin’ to do but grub pile three times a day and the old man’s cheroots in between.And here I be now, ridin’ along with a bunch of pirates!Whata you know about that?And some of them nice boys, too.If they were riff-raff, barroom bums, I could get a line on it.But I’ll have to pass the buck.”

“You haven’t got an extra gun anywhere, have you?”

“We’d be headin’ east if I had”—grimly. “I’d have pared down the odds this mornin’. That hombre with the hop-a-long didn’t leave me a quill toothpick. Was you thinkin’ of startin’ somethin’?” —hopefully.

“No, but I’d feel more comfortable if Miss Norman could carry a gun.”

“Uh-huh. Say, she’s all right. No hysterics. Ain’t many of ’em that wouldn’t ’a’ been snivellin’ all day and night in her bunk. Been listenin’ to her readin’. Gee, you’d think we were floatin’ round this codfish lake just for the fun of it! She won’t run to cover if a bust-up comes. None whatever! And I bet she can cook, too. Them kind can always cook.” 196

Conversation lapsed.

Below, Jane was passing through an unusual experience.

Said Cleigh at the start: “I’m going to show you the paintings—there are fourteen in all.I will tell you the history of each.And above all, please bear in mind the price of each picture.”

“I’ll remember.”

But she thought the request an odd one, coming from the man as she knew him.

Most of the treasures were in his own spacious cabin.There was a Napoleonic corner—a Meissonier on one side and a Detaille on the other.In a stationary cabinet there were a pair of stirrups, a riding crop, a book on artillery tactics, a pair of slippers beaded with seed pearls, and a buckle studded with sapphires.

“What are those?”she asked, attracted.

“They belonged to the Emperor and his first Empress.”

“Napoleon?”

“The Corsican.Next to the masters, I’ve a passion for things genuinely Napoleonic.The hussar is by Meissonier and the skirmish by Detaille.”

“How much is this corner worth?”

“I can’t say, except that I would not part with those objects for a hundred thousand; and there 197 are friends of mine who would pay half that sum for them—behind my back.This is a Da Vinci.”

Half an hour passed.Jane honestly tried to be thrilled by the splendour of the names she heard, but her eye was always travelling back toward the slippers and the buckle.The Empress Josephine!Romance and gallantry in the old, old days!

“The painting in your cabin is by Holbein.It cost me sixteen thousand.Now let us go out and look at the rug.That is the apple of my eye.It is the second finest example of the animal rug in the world.A sheet of pure gold, half an inch thick, covering the rug from end to end, would not equal its worth.”

Jane admired the rug, but she would have preferred the gold.Her sense of the beautiful was alive, but there was always in her mind the genteel poverty of the past.She was beginning to understand.To go in quest of the beautiful required an unlimited purse and an endless leisure; and she would have never the one nor the other.

“How much gold would that be?”she inquired, naïvely.

“Nearly eighty thousand.Have you kept in mind the sums I have given you?”

“Yes. Let me see—good heavens, a quarter of a million! But why do you carry them about like this?” 198

“Because I’m something of a rogue myself.I could not enjoy the rug and the paintings except on board.The French, the Italian, and the Spanish governments could confiscate every solitary painting except the Meissonier and the Detaille, for the simple reason that they were stolen.Oh, I did not steal them myself; I merely purchased them with one eye shut.If I hadn’t bought them they would have gone to some other collector.Do you get a glimmer of the truth now?”

“The truth?”—perplexedly.

“Yes—where Cunningham will get his pearls?”—bitterly.

“Oh!”

“And I could not touch him.A quarter of a million!And with his knowledge of the secret marts he could easily dispose of them.Worth a bold stroke, eh?”

“But how will he get them off the yacht—transship them?”

Her faith in Cunningham began to waver.A quarter of a million!The thought was as bells in her ears.

“Of the outside issues I have no inkling.But I have shown you his pearls.”

“But the crew! Certainly they will not return to any port with us. And why should he lie to 199 me?There is no reason in the world why he shouldn’t have told me, if he had committed piracy to obtain your paintings.And he was poring over maps.”

“Some tramp is probably going to pick him up.He’s ordered us away from the wireless.Cunningham must have his joke, so he is beguiling you with twaddle about hunting pearls.He is robbing me of my treasures, and I can’t strike back on that count.But I can land him in prison on the count of piracy; and by the Lord Harry, I’ll do it if it takes my last dollar!He’ll rue this adventure, or they call me Tungsten for nothing!”

“I wanted so to believe in him!”

“Not difficult to understand why.He has a silver tongue and a face like John the Baptist—del Sarto’s—and you are romantic.The picture of him has enlisted your sympathies.You are filled with pity that he should be so richly endowed, facially and mentally, and to be a cripple such as children laugh over.”

“Have you never considered what mental anguish must be the portion of a man whose body is twisted as his is? I know. So I pity him profoundly, even if he is a rogue. That’s all I was born for—to pity and to bind up. And I pity you, Mr. Cleigh, you who have walled your heart in granite.” 200

“You’re plain-spoken, young lady.”

“Yes, certain sick minds need plain speaking.”

“Then my mind is sick?”

“Yes.”

“And only a little while gone it was romantic!”

“Two hundred million hands begging for bread, and you crossing the world for a string of glass beads whose value is only sentimental!”

“I can’t let that pass, Miss Norman.I have trusted lieutenants who attend to my charities.I’m not a miser.”

“You are, with the greatest thing in the world—human love.”

“Shall a man give it where it is not wanted?But enough of this talk.I have shown you Cunningham’s pearls.”

“Perhaps.”

---

Night and wheeling stars.It was stuffy in the crew’s quarters.Half naked, the men lolled about, some in their bunks, some on the floor.The orders were that none should sleep on deck during the voyage to the Catwick.

“All because the old man brings a skirt on board, we have to sweat blood in the forepeak!”growled Flint.“We’ve got a right to a little sport.”

“Sure we have!”

The speaker was sitting on the edge of his bunk. 201 He was a fine specimen of young manhood, with a pleasant, rollicking Irish countenance.He looked as if he had been brought up clean and had carried his cleanliness into the world.The blue anchor and love birds on his formidable forearms proclaimed him a deep-sea man.It was he who had given Dennison the shirt and the ducks.

“Sure, we have a right to a little sport!But why call in the undertaker to help us out?You poor fish, all the way from San Francisco you’ve been grousing because shore leaves weren’t long enough for you to get prime soused in.What’s two months in our young lives?”

“I’ve always been free to do as I liked.”

“You look it!I’ll say so!The chief laid down the rules of this game, and we all took oath to follow those rules.The trouble with you is, you’ve been reading dime novels.Where do you think you are—raiding the Spanish Main?There’s every chance of our coming out top hole, as those lime-juicers say, with oodles of dough and a whole skin.”

“Say, don’t I know this Sulu game? I tell you, if he does find his atoll there won’t be any shell. Not a chance in a hundred! Somebody’s been giving him a song and dance. As I get the dope, some pearl-hunting friend of his croaks and leaves him this chart. Old stuff! I bet a million boobs 202 have croaked trying to locate the red cross on a chart.”

“Why the devil did you sign on, then?”

“I wanted a little fun, and I’m going to have it.There’s champagne and Napoleon brandy in the dry-stores.Wouldn’t hurt us to have a little of it.If we’ve got to go to jail we might as well go lit up.”

“Flint, you talk too much,” said a voice from the doorway.It was Cunningham’s.He leaned carelessly against the jamb.The crew fell silent and motionless.“Boys, you’ve heard Hennessy.Play it my way and you’ll wear diamonds; mess it up and you’ll all wear hemp.The world will forgive us when it finds out we’ve only made it laugh.”Cunningham strolled over to Flint, who rose to his feet.“Flint, I want that crimp-house whisky you’ve been swigging on the sly.No back talk!Hand it over!”

“And if I don’t?”said Flint, his jaw jutting.

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