The Habit of the Sea
IT'S Harriott!" exclaimed someone with binoculars to his eyes.
"Of course it is," was the prompt rejoinder. "Herriott doesn't let others see to that sort of thing—in a race. She's pitching, too, by the look of it."
The wide terrace and green lawns of a Sydney yacht club were thronged with an enthusiastic multitude and every eye was on Stella, the leader in the race for the challenge cup. Something was amiss with her gaff topsail. It fluttered impotently while every other sail strained and bellied to a stiff nor'easter.
Then a pigmy figure was seen to creep for'ard to the mast, up it by the hoops to the shrouds, and still up and outward along the gaff. Twice it paused, clinging like a fly to the jolting, swaying spar as the yacht buried her aquiline nose in the muss of a lumpy sea. It reached the peak, a glinting white speck against the intense blue background of the sky, there was a brief struggle that could be better imagined than seen by the spectators, and the topsail was sheeted home, true and clean as a piece of cardboard.
A murmur of discreet applause went up from the club grounds. While jibing at the last mark, Stella's jackyard had fouled the peak halyards, and Herriott had cleared it. The race was his.
Indeed, it would be difficult to mention anything that was not Jack Herriott's. Abounding health, sufficient means, and a charming wife were his, not to mention a seeming inability to do anything otherwise than brilliantly.
A blond and smiling giant, picturesquely dishevelled, he came ashore in one of the launches, to be inundated by members and friends. They congratulated him on winning the cup, but no mention was made of his feat in clearing the jackyard under sail. That was no more than a piece of ordinary good seamanship that would be expected from a man like Herriott, and he knew his kind far too well to refer to it himself.
Behind him, and in almost glaring contrast as they threaded their way up the lawn, limped Tony Landon, Herriott's mate on the Stella, and oldest friend. Physically he was sufficiently unattractive to be remarkable rather than insignificant, and the wound in his foot, received in France, had not added to his charm. Also a certain gaucherie made him anything but a social ornament, but in his good-natured, open-hearted way Herriott had clung to his old friend even after marriage, which was admitted to be a trifle unusual.
Stella Herriott met her husband on the terrace, smiled her congratulations, and allowed him to pass on into the club, where he sprawled at length in a deep leather chair and listened to divergent views on the race with a sufficient showing of boredom.
"Splendid, wasn't it?" said Landon, during a brief moment with Stella at the end of the terrace.
She nodded and smiled. "And you," she added swiftly.
"I?" Landon's unlovely face creased into a frown of perplexity.
"You were at the wheel while he was aloft, weren't you?"
"Oh, that!"
"Yes," said Stella gravely. "You'll dine to-night?"
Landon inclined his head and retreated precipitately before the onrush of a nautical dowager. As a matter of fact, he needed no invitation to the Herriotts'. His status as a friend of the family was of the "dropping in" variety—which made it all the more difficult to keep away.
In the lounge hall he found Herriott contemplating the cup he had won that afternoon.
"Conning the spoils, eh?" Landon commented.
Herriott turned and smiled. "Yes," he said, "and thinking."
"Mistake," grunted Landon.
"As a rule, perhaps, but not this time." Herriott's eyes shone with enthusiasm. He held aloft the cup. "This empty bauble has filled me with horrid ambition"
"America Cup or anything like that?"
"Something as far from cups as I can get. I'm sick of 'em."
Landon nodded.
"And of racing, and racing machines, and white flannels, and club dinners, and claptrap. I want the sea."
"Rather a large order, isn't it?"
"You ought to know."
Landon did know. There were few things he had not done in a somewhat hectic youth, from brass polishing to sailoring before the mast.
"I've never had a chance really to get out," complained Herriott—"family and that sort of thing—but I'm going to, now, that's all. Stella agrees that it would do us both good."
"Both?"
"Yes, you don't imagine she'd be left out of anything like that, do you?"
Landon did not answer.
"I don't believe Lan approves," Herriott communicated to his wife in mock confidence during dinner. "Thinks the sea's altogether too much for us. We'll teach him!"
And they did over coffee in the lounge.
"Elucidate the mystery," suggested Landon, stirring his cup thoughtfully.
"Certainly," beamed Herriott. "Our idea is no paid hands, salt junk, four hours on and eight off, and a passage and perhaps a bucketing in a boat, instead of a slithering match in a racing machine."
"Where to?"
"The Islands, for choice."
"I see," said Landon, after a pause.
"Drat the man!" Herriott broke out, with a characteristic touch of impatience. "What's the matter? Think Stella's not up to it?"
Landon's slow glance travelled from his coffee cup to the delicate profile of the woman at his side.
"Because I may tell you she's the best hand I ever had aboard," Herriott defended loyally. "If you think the briny's too much for Stella, you ought to have been with us in the sailing dinghy when"
"I wasn't thinking anything of the sort," said Landon quietly.
"Then perhaps you're frightened of me," suggested Herriott, with an incredulous but slightly nettled laugh.
Landon laughed also. The occasion called for it. Stella saw fit to come to the rescue.
"When you've quite done discussing me like a pound of pork," she said, "may I suggest that we're giving poor Lan rather an uncomfortable evening?"
"I hope so," grinned Herriott.
"And do you expect him to enthuse over anything? Because I don't."
"He needn't," complained Herriott; "but that's no reason why he should sit like an owl when his skipper—his skipper, mark you—suggests getting out of sight of the club house for once."
"And all this," sighed Landon resignedly, "because I don't leap to my feet and wave my arms in ecstasy at the notion of you good people facing salt junk for a month!"
"Then you'll come?"
"I?"
"Listen to him!" wailed Herriott. "He's just tumbled to it that he's wanted."
Landon stared at his injured foot after a fashion of his. "As to navigation," he suggested irrelevantly, "my mathematics are the memory of an ugly dream these days. How are yours?"
"Worse. I thought of taking old Owen. He has a yachting ticket, and juggling with sights and figures is about all he's fit for."
Landon stirred in his chair, then rose abruptly. "All right," he said, "I'll go—I mean"
"We know what you mean," laughed Herriott—"that you will be delighted to accompany my wife and myself on a unique cruise to the Islands."
"Something like that," said Landon. "Good-night."
When he had gone, Herriott fell to discussing plans with the ardour of a schoolboy. He was intense, virile, over anything that took his fancy, and it was so that Stella loved to see him. They had been married a contented year, and it was their mutual taste for yacht ing that had brought them together. Stella would never forget that. Born of seafaring stock, and reared within sight and sound of the Pacific's infinite moods, her own love of the sea and ships was innate. Unconsciously, perhaps, her standards were set by them. There are some women like that.
"There's no fathoming old Lan," Herriott called through to her from the dressing room that night. "I wonder if we're dragging him into this thing against his will?"
"I don't think any one could do that," she answered.
"I suppose not, but" The rest was smothered in a yawn, and Herriott fell to whistling a chanty between his teeth.
Stella awoke suddenly, completely, as one gets into the habit of doing at sea. The Pioneer, a snub-nosed, essentially sea-worthy pilot cutter of fifteen tons register, converted into a luxurious cruiser with tremendous enthusiasm by Herriott, was rolling idly, her canvas fluttering, the boom straining at the main sheet with every lurch of the ship.
Stella concluded they were becalmed, and instinctively pitying the unfortunate on watch, settled down again to make the most of the few hours' sleep at her disposal. From the first she had insisted on being treated as one of the crew, nothing more nor less, and she had been taken at her word. In consequence, since leaving port four days ago she had been happier than at any time since, as a girl, she had navigated her own small craft amongst the rocky bays and islands of her home.
The same sea sense that had told her the Pioneer was becalmed now informed her that such a thing could not be. There was a breeze; she could hear it. Was it possible that the yacht had come up into the wind, that the helmsman had succumbed to the terrible drowsiness that often assails him through staring overlong at the swaying compass card? She slipped from the bunk of her minute cabin and passed through to where a sliding hatch aft afforded a glimpse of the helmsman in the steering well. There was none. The wheel was deserted and locked amidships. The Pioneer was hove-to.
Through a porthole in the hatch combing it was also possible to command a view of the deck for'ard, and here with face pressed close to the glass Stella stood as one hypnotized. In the searching moonlight all was clear. Her husband and Landon were on deck, barefooted as always but standing with bowed heads beside an indistinct shape that lay in shadow. Landon's lips were moving.
At the moment Stella was impelled to rush on deck. What had happened? Why had they not told her? Was this treating her as one of the crew? But something restrained her, perhaps the age-old discipline of the sea-farer that was in her blood. The captain, even if he were her own husband, had not seen fit to summon her. Perhaps he was right. Her presence might have made things more difficult. In any case it was enough.
Landon's lips had ceased to move. The two men stooped, raised the burden at their feet, and gently lowered it over the side. When they straightened themselves, their hands were empty. They came aft, talking in low tones, but when seated on the sliding hatch every word was audible.
"... and what on earth do we do now?" demanded her husband in a voice that was new to her.
"Hush!" whispered Landon. "She still sleeps, thank God!"
"Hush nothing!" said Herriott petulantly. "She would be the first to want to be told."
There was a short pause.
"I know," said Landon. "Of course you must do as you think best—my mistake."
The matter seemed to pass from Herriott's mind.
"We must turn back," he stated firmly; "that goes without saying. But what I don't know is how we're going to get there. Do you?"
It was the voice of a lost child.
"We have yesterday's noon position on the chart, and we've got a log. It's dead reckoning, and I can do that. If the present wind holds"
"Ah, the wind!" muttered Herriott. "I was just thinking"
"I shouldn't do too much of that. It isn't always good."
"What d'you mean?" The tone was truculent.
"I mean," came Landon's level response, "that we're on a different lay to racing now. We're at sea. We've been playing at things; now we're up against 'em. What's more, we're ' hands'—not bad 'hands,' as they go—but we can't navigate."
"Is that what made you so infernally chary of joining us?"
"Partly."
"And the rest?"
"There's something coming up from the nor'east," said Landon. "How's the barometer?"
Stella heard him creep for'ard, down the fo'castle companion, and into the saloon. There was the brief flash of an electric torch, again darkness, and the oft patter of his returning footfall.
"How is it?" came Herriott's anxious question.
"Fallen, and still at it."
"And what does that mean here?"
"Haven't a notion till it gets us," said Landon, "but we're all right hove-to. Look here, this thing has got on our nerves, and small wonder. I suggest you turn in until dawn."
"And you?"
"I'm as comfortable here as anywhere."
"You'll call me if anything happens?"
"Double quick."
By the time Herriott had reached the saloon Stella was in her bunk. She heard a cupboard opened softly, the faintest clink of glass, and a sigh as her husband settled down on one of the settees. She lay motionless, staring wide-eyed at the white-enamelled timber overhead.
With the dawn a gray nor'easter bore down upon the Pioneer, and quickly strengthened to a gale. Hove-to under double-reefed mainsail, the little yacht took it without flinching, as she had been built to do, and Stella busied herself with preparing hot drinks for the men when they should come below.
In passing through the saloon to the galley she found her husband still outstretched on the cushions.
"Stella," he said, "I have something horrible to tell you. Owen died last night."
She did not attempt to simulate surprise, but sat on the settee beside him without speaking.
"He just petered out at the wheel," Herriott went on in a strained voice. "It was my relief, and I found him sitting there—dead. Heart failure, I suppose. We—we made quite sure, and then buried him."
"Why didn't you tell me?" said Stella gently.
"Lan—we both thought it best not to. We should never have brought him. It's my fault. I feel terrible about it."
"Why?" said Stella. "You needn't. It was no one's fault. He knew what he was in for, and still wanted to come." She paused. "It's the way I should like to go when I do," she added quietly.
Herriott looked at her. There was something in his eyes that she had not seen there before.
"You take it well," he said.
"How else would you have me take it?" she asked him.
"It's this awful feeling of responsibility for everything—everything." muttered Herriott. " It weighs me down. I must share it with someone."
"Why not with me?" said Stella.
"Lan doesn't approve"
"Pouf for Lan!" said Stella. "He's not captain."
"I suppose that's it. But he ought to be."
Stella gave him a quick almost startled look.
"He ought to be," repeated Herriott. "I feel it. He has this infernal sea knack of doing things without talking about them. He's a born seaman. I'm discovering that I'm not."
Stella put a finger to his lips. "Never say that," she said. "I can't believe it."
"You mean you don't want to."
"I mean I don't want to, and I can't."
A wave crest smote the Pioneer a resounding thwack on her snub nose and swept the deck, dying with a gurgle in the scuppers.
Herriott swung his feet from the settee.
"Listen," he said. "You may as well know. We're hove-to in a gale that may last a week and drift us anywhere. There's nothing between us and the South Pole but the sea, and neither Lan nor I can navigate. I think that's all—oh, except that there are only fifteen gallons in the fresh-water tank. You see the position?"
"Yes," she said, "and thanks—I like to know. I'll have breakfast ready in ten minutes."
Herriott caught her at the galley door. "No, by thunder, you don't!" he roared, thrusting her aside, and commenced wrestling with the kettle in the reeling galley.
Stella left him to it, and went on deck in oilskins. Landon, soaked through, was limping about the deck seeing to lashings.
"Better go below!" he shouted at her above the turmoil of wind and sea.
She did not answer, but returned him look for look, and proceeded to help. Soon they had finished. The Pioneer rode like a cork. Gray, wind-swept hills of water bore down on her out of the angry murk ahead, but she soared to their summit and down their reverse slopes with the agility of an acrobat.
"She's snug!" shouted Landon, grinning through rivulets of water. "Staunch little packet."
Stella nodded and smiled. He looked aft and waved an arm.
"Sea room, that's all we want," he said, "and we've got it. She's all right; come below."
Stella was following him toward the companion when he turned in the lee of the hatch.
"Jack's told you?" he said.
"Yes," she answered, and they went below.
Herriott was fuming over the inadequacies of oil stoves in anything of a sea, and when the meal was served he sat silent and morose. He was a changed man, and he knew it. There is nothing quite like a prolonged bucketing in small craft to give the best of us a glimpse of himself. Herriott felt vaguely that the sea had found him wanting, and the knowledge alternately surprised and tortured him.
Neither Stella nor Landon addressed him, but talked of the habits of sea birds during storm, of the formation and action of waves, and such-like trivialities that irritated Herriott beyond expression. Was it possible that they were blind to their position? Or were their verbal banalities a mask? In any case they were treating him as a child, he felt. It was a conspiracy between this friend of his and his own wife to humiliate and nullify him. There was a bond between them, too. It was the first time he had noticed it. How long had it been? What was it? He must be careful, very careful, but he was not to be fooled. Suspicion smouldered in his eyes.
He left the table abruptly and went on deck, to cling to the shrouds and stare stonily over the tossing, windswept waste. In that hour it seemed to Herriott that the sea was imbued with personality. He had wanted it—as his servant. It was here—his master. It was sapping him of his manhood, discovering him to his wife and to his friend. It was a mighty, unknown enemy that he hated and feared.
"Jack's out of sorts," said Stella, when he had gone.
"I know," Landon answered, without meeting her steady gaze. "You must remember I've known him a long time—longer than you." She waited for him to go on, and he did—he had to. "Salt junk, and one thing and another. He'll be all right in a day or two."
That was all they said. It was all they needed to say.
For three days and three nights the Pioneer rode and drifted, and with the dawn of the fourth the wind veered, without slackening strength, to the opposite quarter. Landon noted the change.
"It's fair," he said. They were the first words he had uttered to Herriott in two days. "We ought to make all the northing we can."
"Fire ahead," returned Herriott; "you're in charge."
"Since when?"
"Now."
"Why?"
"Because I choose."
The two men faced one another on the lurching deck. They had known each other as well as it is possible for one man to know another under normal present-day circumstances, yet now each looked into the eyes of a stranger. Landon turned on his heel.
"All right," he said. "Stand by to hoist the squaresail."
Herriott obeyed with compressed lips, and presently the Pioneer was racing homeward before a following gale. At the wheel it was soul-racking work. The gray hills of water had grown to mountains, up which the little craft was lifted as by a giant hand and flung reeling into the valley beyond. Combers, seemingly out of the sky, hung over her and broke as by a miracle, astern. It was fatal for the helmsman to look behind him. In the history of the sea more than one has been shot for so doing. The sight causes the breath to catch, the body to flinch for just that fraction of time that it takes to broach-to and founder.
And Stella enjoyed it! Herriott made the amazing discovery that night while his wife was on watch, and her small, finely chiselled face came into the searching radius of the binnacle lights. It was the face of a thoroughbred engaged in combat that it loved. The thing was inexplicable to Herriott. He dreaded his trick at the wheel with an intensity of which he had never dreamed himself capable.
At midnight, through the sliding hatch, he watched Landon relieve Stella. They talked, Herriott caught wind-blown snatches of it—
"... must be doing ten at least.... Plumb on our course, as far as I can make out. If this lasts..."
"She answers well."
"Like a bird.... Ah, here they come!" The hissing thunder of a breaker drowned the rest. The Pioneer was hurled into a pit that appeared bottomless, until at long last she brought up with a soul-sickening jolt. Landon's set face, with its protruding jaw, relaxed into a grin of triumph.
"Like a bird!" he repeated admiringly.
Herriott staggered to his bunk, gripped the creaking white-enamelled timber overhead in his two hands, and laughed—if it could be called a laugh. "'Like a bird'!" he mimicked inanely between clenched teeth, and laughed again. The bond—this was the bond between them, their inborn love of the sea that he had thought his also until the soul-revealing nightmare of the last two weeks. And now he found himself an outsider aboard his own ship—with his own wife! He was an intruder, a mountebank. Herriott still hated the sea, but quite suddenly he no longer feared it. It was his enemy, and he would fight.
At four o'clock he went to relieve Landon.
"How's she going?" he asked.
"Bit tricky," said Landon, without taking his eyes from the swaying compass card.
Herriott waited, but Landon made no move.
"It's my watch," said Herriott.
"Do you think"
"I've given up thinking—on your advice. It's my watch."
The Pioneer fell corkscrewing into an inky trough. Landon righted her with an effort.
"Stella's below," he said shortly. "You put me in charge. I'm going to carry on."
A white rage seized on Herriott, but he controlled it.
"I was sick," he said steadily. "I'm all right now, and I'll take over."
He waited for an answer, but there was none.
"If you don't hand over, I'll make you," said Herriott.
"Don't be a fool—as well," muttered Landon.
Herriott took him in his powerful hands, flung him on deck, and seized the wheel.
"Go below," he ordered, and Landon went.
Outside Stella's cabin he paused.
"You heard?" he said.
"Yes," she answered.
"He took me by the scruff of the neck and pitched me on deck like a dog," he whispered gleefully. "He's at the wheel, with a face like thunder. Jack's found himself."
"Thank you, Lan," said Stella.
That was an interview between his wife and his friend that Herriott never heard about, but when the Pioneer, after as evil a night as she had yet encountered, ran into fair weather and finally picked up her mooring off the club-house, he took Landon aside.
"Is an apology any good, old man?" he asked.
"Not a bit," snapped Landon. "You ought to have brained me."