CHAPTER I
UNDER a sky that looked like an inverted bowl of asphalt the S. S. Hesperus, with her bridge and forecastle glimmering like the whites of the eyes of the trimmers in her holds, squatted sullenly beneath a coal-tip in Barry Dock, the waters of which were like a stagnant pond covered with black slime. At each roar following the tilting of a truck she appeared to shiver with disgust as if impatiently indignant at the return, after her war record, to her common lot in commercial life.
From behind endless lines of black trucks a rackety cab throbbed fussily beneath the filigree of metal girders, and disgorged on to the puddled stones the figures of a man in a black overcoat and high-crowned derby hat, and the slim figure of a girl whose scarlet hat and green cloak were as incongruous as a parrot in a field of dingy sparrows. Hopping daintily from one dry patch to another and dodging the sooty drips from the overhead rail-track, she made her way, carrying a light grip, on to the grimy gangway.
As she reached the rail a young man in a pea-jacket, whose only recognizable features were his blue eyes, hastened from the break of the bridge toward her as she descended the short inboard ladder and, raising his peak cap with grimy fingers which held a tally-book and pencil, proffered and withdrew the other hand.
“Sorry, Miss Kelvett!” he said, showing the gleam of teeth like a negro. “I'm mighty dirty. Let me take your bag.”
“Oh, thanks! Never mind; it's quite light,” she replied, smiling. “Isn't it awful? When d'you think we'll sail?”
“Afternoon tide, I expect. Afternoon, sir!” he added, saluting the captain following the wake of his niece.
“Evenin'! H'm,” grunted the Old Man, regarding the coal-shoot. “Haven't finished yet? The agent promised for noon.”
“I know, sir; but they're finishing No. 4 now.”
“Um. Mr. Selwyn aboard yet?”
“Mr. Selwyn?”
“Yes, yes. Young Selwyn, the owner's son. The owner told me he was to come the trip with us.”
“No, sir; haven't seen him yet.”
“All hands aboard?”
“Yes sir.”
“Tugs here?”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right!”
As Captain Kelvett trudged across the gritty iron deck after his niece the coal-grimed second mate stood watching until the slender figure had disappeared beyond the chartroom on the bridge. Then with a grumbling sound that sounded like a curse he returned to his post, lifted a flask to his lips and, scowling, chalked down another truck-load in the tally-book.
Down in the small saloon Vivien took off her cloak with a sigh of disgust.
“Pouf!” she snorted as she removed her hat and shook her bobbed black hair. “The place is like a passport office!”
“Can't help it, Vi, dear,” responded her uncle, extracting the ship's papers from a small black bag. “Can't open the ports until we're clear of the coal-dust.”
“Oh, !” ejaculated Vi, ex-W. A. A. C.
“Vi, dear!' expostulated the Old Man. “I wish you”
“Rot, uncle!” retorted Vi, laughing. “You're pre-war. We fought for liberty—which includes women, you dear old thing. Now I'm going to change and go on deck for some air and coal-dust.”
SHE literally dived into her cabin off the saloon, to emerge ten minutes later in a khaki shirt and a blue reefer jacket, smoking a cigaret.
“Oh, uncle,” she called from the companion stairs, “what's this creature like?”
“What creature?” asked Captain Kelvett, looking up from the ship's papers on the saloon table before him.
“Mr.— Oh, the owner's creature.”
“Oh, young Selwyn? I don't know. Only met him once or twice in the office. Young, rather oversmart; looks a bit—um—a bit too fond of the grog. As a matter of fact that's why they've sent him for a trip, I think. Didn't say so, but”
“Oh, what a rotten thing to do! This isn't a Keeley's institute, is it?”
“No, but— My dear, I didn't know he was coming until yesterday and—well, you know; he's the owner's son.”
“I see. Lashings of boodle.”
“Vi, dear, I wish you”
But his protestation was drowned in the roar of coal pouring into the ship's hold. On deck Vi mounted on to the upper bridge where, protected more or less from the clouds of coal-dust, she could smoke and watch in comfort.
Vi was looking forward to an amusing trip. Since being “demobbed” she had suffered a little from the effects of pneumonia contracted in France. This had prevented her renewing a medical course afforded by a small income inherited from her mother. The doctors had ordered her to take a sea-voyage, and fortunately her uncle could give her what her purse could not pay for.
Ina feminine way—for even the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps hasn't taken the “fem” out of the word—she wondered idly what sort of “creature” the owner's son would be. Usually, she knew, officers and engineers of tramp steamers are not very interesting from a social point of view, although campaign experience had eliminated many little snobbish frills from her system, besides teaching her to smoke and to say “” with her red lips instead of with her mind.
In the matter of “” and tobacco there was probably more than a suspicion that the tendency to an excessive use of both drugs was due to a suppressed desire to show all and sundry, particularly ancient maiden ladies of England and the sentimental youths—if any remained—that women were free and equal wielders of the vote. Yet the handling of women had really taught her self-reliance and initiative just as much as leading men teaches a man, and in the knowledge of that she gloried; a type of girl who had discarded forever the ghosts of the crinoline and corsets of the savage Victorian era.
But to her uncle, who had been through the horrors of submarine war, in which he had been torpedoed twice, she had remained what he had always considered her, a mad-cap child—only possibly a little bit worse than ever!
AS IS often the case the agents were wrong and the second mate right. Within an hour the coal tip ceased to belch “black diamonds” into the capacious hold of the Hesperus, and two hours later a procession of beings, who might excusably be mistaken for negroes, emerged from the dusty bowels of the boat for the shore. Immediately afterward the dock pilot, who had been passing the grimy hour or two over a grog in the saloon after the manner of pilots, ascended to the bridge in company with Captain Kelvett.
The grizzled mate took up his position on the fo'c's'l' head and the second went aft. Men cried, tugs panted and fussed, the telegraph tinkled below in the engine-room and slowly the biscuit-box shaped hull of the tramp veered across the stagnant dock.
“Don't seem that young Selwyn is going to turn up,” remarked Captain Kelvett to his niece, who was interestedly watching the maneuvers of warping out.
“Perhaps he doesn't take kindly to coal-dust and rain,” she responded. “Don't blame the dear.”
“Oh, you won't say that when we're outside the roads and get washed down, Vi,” retorted the Old Man, who, like any sailor, was apt to take umbrage at any insult to his ship however ancient and humble she be.
“She certainly wants her buttons burnished!” replied the military niece. “Never mind, uncle,” she added, laughing. “I'll admit I didn't look pretty myself as a rooky doing fatigue. Oh, look at that funny little tug casting off or something. Why, she or it or whatever you call 'em looks exactly like our colonel. She puffed in that identical asthmatical manner.”
As soon as the blunt bow of the Hesperus was free of the other vessels along the dock-side the horny hand of the pilot summoned her own power. Cautiously she felt her way through the narrow passage of the lock-gates, waggling her tail in the absurd self-satisfied manner of the deep-laden tramp to the shouting of the harbor master. Just then she was hailed from the wharf. There a young man in a Homburg hat and coat, and carrying a cane, seated on a valise, waved his hand languidly.
“There's that fellow Selwyn,” muttered Captain Kelvett.
Vi eyed the distant figure appraisingly.
“Looks quite a lad,” she commented.
“Um. Why the he can't come aboard like a gentleman instead of a drunken fireman I don't know,” grumbled the Old Man as he irritably pulled down the handle of the engine-room telegraph. “Stopping the way on her an' all, confound the man!”
As the port quarter of the ship crunched the fenders against the quayside the fashionable young man shouted hilariously to the second mate to lend him a hand. The grimy young man stared at him and bade him in rude terms to seek a warmer climate.
“Are you the 's'cond'?”
“I am,” snapped the second mate.
“Well, put over a gangway at once,” commanded the stranger arrogantly, “I'm Mr. Claude Selwyn.”
“Mr. Carnell!” bawled the captain from the bridge.
“Aye, aye, sir!” responded Carnell.
“Throw Mr. Selwyn a rope ladder. He's coming aboard.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” mumbled Carnell, throwing up his hand as a signal that he had understood the order.
A handy rope ladder was accordingly thrown over the quarter, and up this Mr. Selwyn proceeded to climb none too agilely. As he approached the rail the grimy Second held out his hand courteously to assist him. As Selwyn grabbed he apparently forgot that he could not hold his cane and the hands at the same time.
The former slipped and fell into the dock. With one leg cocked over the taffrail the owner's son stopped and treated the odd loungers on the quay and the attentive people on the boat to a fluent flow of words that would have raised the envy of the proverbial trooper.
“Look here,” interrupted the Second sharply before the epic was concluded; “you cut that out, mister.”
The owner's son regarded the filthy-looking object in front of him and desired to know in the name of the alleged abode of an alleged person whom he thought he was talking to.
“That's all right,” responded Carnell curtly. “You may be the owner's son, knows, but anyway you're going to keep your mouth shut when women are about.”
“Women by !” exclaimed the other, cocking the other leg over the taffrail, “Where?”
“On the bridge—the captain's niece,” retorted Carnell sharply. “Get inboard; we're casting off.”
“So there is!” ejaculated the owner's son, looking up toward Vi on the bridge. “What luck!”
He jumped to the deck, gave a tip to the loafer who had followed him with his valise, and, turning to the Second, added—
“Just bring my bag along, will you?”
The Second glanced at him briefly from head to foot, turned away and held up both hands, calling out to the bridge—
“All clear, sir!”
Gingerly as if suddenly conscious of the filth from which he had derived so many pleasures in life Mr. Claude Selwyn picked his way amid the coal-strewn deck, mounted the ladder to the upper bridge and, glancing curiously at the figure of Vi, greeted the Captain hilariously:
“Hullo, cap'n; here I am. Thought I'd join the old tub after all.”
“Very kind, Mr. Selwyn,” muttered the Old Man, frowning unconsciously. “Um. This is my niece, Miss Kelvett—Mr. Claude Selwyn.”
“How d'ye do,” greeted Mr. Selwyn, sweeping off his hat. “Awfully glad to meet you.”
VI REGARDED him slowly over the top of a cigaret. She saw a man of about thirty who was rather pouched under the eyes, with a prinky nose and a tight, hard mouth decorated by a military-trimmed mustache.
“Really?” she drawled.
“Oh, aren't you?” he queried insolently.
“I reserve my decision,” she retorted, smiling.
“Begad, a Portia on a tramp!” he responded. “I'm awf'ly glad I came. Oh,” he added, glancing aft; “that bally fool's forgotten to bring my bag along. I say, cap'n, will you send some one along to fetch it? And by the way, did my stuff come aboard all right?”
“Half-speed, Mr. Fellows?” inquired Captain Kelvett of the pilot. “Half-speed it is! What's that, Mr. Selwyn? Oh, yes. I'll send a man along as soon as we're clear of the gates.”
Claude Selwyn frowned annoyance, turned aside and remarked to Vi gaily:—
“So were to be fellow passengers! I'd no idea I was going to be so bally lucky. The gov'nor insisted, and to tell the truth I kicked like—er—the devil. A fellow never knows his luck though; what?”
“Possibly.”
Vi leaned over the rail, paused as as if relenting and wishing to be sociable, added—
“D'you live in Cardiff?”
“Lord, no fear!” ejaculated Selwyn. “Awful bally hole.”
“Really? I was born there,” commented Vi coldly, regarding the cold green seas of the Bristol Channel.
“Oh, I say! it all, so was I for that matter,” responded Selwyn. “But you know some Johnny says that there are only two things a chap can't choose—his parents and his place of birth.”
“Most true and most unfortunate,” agreed Vi, turning toward him. “Personally I regret that I'm not the daughter of a millionaire aristocrat and a cobbler's daughter—which would probably be the best chance for a genius.”
“A genuis! Well, I am or will be a millionaire,” retorted Selwyn, whose mustaches, which were rather like a tortured yew-hedge, were twisted to one side. And”
For a fraction of a second Vi's big green eyes grew larger; then she took the cigaret from her lips and laughed.
“Quite so,” she responded gaily. “But—” she paused in mockery of his manner—“you're not an aristocrat.”
He stared at her for a moment. Both sides of his hard mouth curved.
“That's so,” he admitted. “My father was a shipping-clerk on the wharf over there; but he's got the goods.”
“Possibly,” retorted Vi. “But the third generation, you know”
“Quite true,” agreed Vi, “but you learned that phrase in school and not from your mother.”
A shadow of anger passed across his eyes and the thin mouth tightened as he said—
“Maybe; that's not democratic.”
“Yes, it is,” she countered swiftly. “A true aristocrat—true, I said—has drawn noblesse oblige in his mother's milk and the proletariat has learned to work from the same source; but you're neither fish, flesh nor fowl! Have you a match?”
“I beg your pardon,” he murmured as he held a match under the shelter of the dodger.
“Thank you. Ah,” she cried as the ship courtesied to the swell outside the gates, “how glorious is that!”
“That's another rough fact,” he replied, grimacing.
Vi laughed maliciously. At that moment came the commotion as the Channel pilot came to relieve the dock-pilot and the ship slowed down to drop the latter. With the former came the second mate, Carnell, to begin his dog watch.
“I say, you!” exclaimed Selwyn as soon as he saw Carnell. “Where the 's my bag?”
Carnell eyed the owner's son from head to foot slowly.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” he said distinctly.
“Where's my bag, confound it! I left it with you aft there.”
“I haven't the remotest idea of what you're talking about,” Carnell replied casually. He glanced at the captain's niece and on to the pilot, to whom he repeated—
“Stop it is, sir!”
Vi had caught the glance, the accent and the expression. She turned aside to smile. In response to a summons from her uncle Vi followed him from the bridge. When they were in the saloon Vi remarked—
“Who's that second mate of yours?”
“Good Heavens, Vi, I don't know,” responded her uncle, and added as if in explanation:
“He only signed on this last trip. Seems a decent chap, capable, and that's all I care. Don't like this other bumptious young man though.”
“Don't you? I think I rather like him. I love a scrap; and he's so funny!”
With which feminine remarked Vi dived into her cabin.