CHAPTER II
FOR nearly a week the squat tramp swabbed off the marks of her trade, wallowed and plunged through cold green seas and stinging rainstorms. Vi, who after one day of uneasy emotions regarding food had proved to be a good sailor, spent most of her time on the upper bridge wrapped in oilskins, inhaling stores of tangy ozone into her injured lungs. Down below amid the creak and groan and swish Mr. Claude Selwyn lay wedged in his bunk, cursing his father for having sent him; cursing, too, the ship, the sea, the sky and the pussyfooted Chinese steward who waited upon with numerous bottles of champagne which the owner's son had provided for his plutocratic pleasure.
“You cussee too muchee,” Chi Loo told him softly many times. “You savvee man cussee too muchee s'ip go for die one time.”
“Be glad if the thing did anyway,” moaned Selwyn. “Get out, you chink, and don't talk so much! Here, come back, you! Open another bottle, savvee? Oh, Lord—urrgh!”
Once indeed Selwyn sent for the captain and irritably ordered him to put into the nearest port. Captain Kelvett regretted that he was unable to do so and advised him to go up on deck. Whereupon the owner's son wanted to know with many adjectives whether the ship didn't belong to him, and threatened to have the master sacked if he didn't obey. Captain Kelvett smiled indulgently, urged him not to drink so much champagne and left him.
When the Hesperus was wallowing off the coast of Portugal with a half-gale from the sou'west on her squat quarter Selwyn did struggle to the saloon table with the fiddles on, looking very white and wan. But the sight of Vi eating with the gusto of a sea-whipped appetite sent him scuttling back to his bunk peevishly protesting that they were leaving him to die.
The morning Vi spent as usual on the upper bridge, her dark, bobbed hair matted with rain upon her glowing cheeks framed in a yellow oilskin.
“When d'you think we shall be out of this dirty weather, Mr. Masters?” she inquired of the mate, whose grizzled mustaches stuck over a woolen wrapper which always he persisted in using as if he were subject to asthma or some other sedentary complaint.
“'Morrow probably, miss. Soon as we get through the Straits. Feel all right to-day?”
“All right!” echoed Vi indignantly. “I've been all right right along. Happen to be a good sailor, you know, Mr. Masters.”
“Mr. Selwyn there can't say as much, then. Haven't seen him since we cleared the roads.”
“Neither have I,” said Vi, smiling. “Except this morning for a moment.”
“Nice lad,” mumbled the old man, who always spoke as if airing a chronic grievance. “A bit wild. Always was, even as a kiddie. But he's got an eye for the main chance same as his pa.”
“You've been long with the firm, Mr. Masters?”
“Thirty years, miss. Started with 'em when old man Selwyn bought his first tramp. James Selwyn it was then, down on Water Street.”
“But,” exclaimed the girl, “why haven't you got a command by now? Why, it's”
“Never had the price.”
“The price? Why, what”
“I couldn't ever save—not on a mate's salary. Why, my dear young lady, for every ship there's half a dozen men holding extra-master's tickets. Those as has the money to invest gets the job.
“That's the way of the sea—or nowadays anyway. Always was, I reckon. Worst trade on earth. And yet I dunno. You know you get restless if you stop ashore for long.
“Sailors—some of 'em—are like that. They live a dog's life, cuss out of it—beg pardon, miss!—and yet they can't keep away.”
“Heavens, I think it's a beastly shame!” ejaculated Vi.
He glanced through the window of the wheel-house at the clock and nodded to the helmsman, who struck the ship's bell. Eight bells echoed an instant later above the swish of the sea and wind from the break of the fo'c's'le head. Immediately afterward the second mate, Carnell, came on the bridge to relieve the mate, followed by a sailor to take his trick at the wheel.
“MORNING, Mr. Carnell,” greeted Vi, looking sharply at the man's features, which, when the coal-dust had been removed, revealed the weather-whipped red complexion of the Saxon.
“Goo' mornin', miss!' he responded with a distinct trace of the “sh” in his speech and, avoiding her eyes, turned his own red-rimmed ones, emphasized the more by the blond lashes, to the compass as he gabbled over the course and standing orders.
The first officer, who did not appear to notice or to care if he did notice, left the bridge mumbling something to Vi about lunch being on the table. But Vi did not seem inclined for food. She stood pretending to be interested in the tumbling lights of greens and creams, regarding the second mate obliquely while he walked, steadily enough in spite of the heaving deck, to the starboard dodger, where he began to fiddle around with the binocular-box attached to the rail.
Then after a while, as if deciding that the girl was never going below, he entered the wheel-house and bent down as if examining the steam-gear at the back. But Vi caught the significant movement of an elbow and the back of his head. Presently he came out on to the open bridge. His eyes seemed brighter and his actions more sure or perhaps more defiant.
“Beeshly wet weather!” he remarked as he passed her.
“Indeed,” said Vi with a quiver of the lips. “I should have imagined that it was exceedingly dry.”
His blue eyes held hers for a moment; then he laughed and walked on. At first Vi, who was of a sociable disposition, had met a taciturnity that was broken only by bitter remarks. The first of the mutual interests she discovered which led him to talk at all was of their respective experiences in the war; he of his not inglorious part upon, and frequently in, the water.
At times she had remarked that he became quite loquacious, his talk being interlarded with remarks of more than usual cynical bitterness, and at length she began to understand why. At first Vi was wroth and disgusted. She had a natural loathing for excess of any sort; an emotion strengthened by her slight medical knowledge, and more by her military service.
Yet she saw that he was young, not more than thirty, and from her uncle's remarks an exceedingly capable officer. shame, she had muttered to herself; and took pains to show in a subtle manner what she thought.
But that seemed to make no difference to his conduct at all. And Vi realized that he must be a pretty heavy drinker, for although indulgence sometimes affected his speech it never seemed in the least degree to fuddle his brain or his feet. Of course she could not “sneak” to her uncle the captain, as apparently Carnell knew right well, although he always made a pretense of hiding his cups.
Now Vi had naturally as a woman a strong motherly instinct, and that instinct had strangely enough been fostered by her military experience as an officer of the W.A.A.C.'s, a tendency some people would say to boss one around. As she struggled against this earnest desire to lecture the man—a desire which as a matter of fact she had been fighting for several days—the subject came alongside her and leaning on the rail remarked conversationally:
“Haven't sheen Mr. Shelwyn around lately? How ish he?”
“Haven't the remotest idea!” snapped Vi.
She stared hard at the blunt black bow heaving from the green sea into gray sky and back, wiped a wet lump of hair from her right eye and turned her head.
“Mr. Carnell, why do you drink?”
“Drink!” he repeated as if he had never heard the word. “Drink! Why”
The blue eyes stared in utter astonishment. Then slowly they seemed to glaze and came that typical Anglo-Saxon expression of blank taciturnity.
“I'm afraid that I don't understand, Mish Kelvett,” he said, the gravity of the voice drowning even the absurdity of the lisp.
“You know very well that I know that you drink, Mr. Carnell,” said Vi.
“Again you misunderstand me, Miss Kelvett,” he retorted with equal solemnity. “I have always undershtood that drinking—sh—shmoking—ish permitted to any one over the age of twenty-one; or ish it eighteen?”
“That's not the point. By drinking I mean to excess.”
“And by shmoking I mean to exshess.”
“Really, Mr. Carnell, I may smoke if I choose, but”
“Quite sho,” he retorted and, turning on his heel, walked up the incline of the deck to the starboard corner.
“ the man,” muttered Vi.
But as she clambered down the bridge-ladder she laughed.