The EX-HUSBAND
HENRY ELLERY believed in “driving ’em,” to use his own pet phrase. And most successful he had been, from the time he picked up the bankrupt Western Rope & Twine Company and by main strength made it a power in the business world, to his latest triumph, the jamming of the common stock of the California Freight & Packet Line from a despised 26 to a proud 320. It was his own boast that he was neither a speculator nor a stock-manipulator.
“I get results by keeping my eye on every dollar invested and every man hired and seeing to it that they pay dividends. If a dollar can’t earn its interest, I charge it off. If an employee wont pay his way, I fire him.”
He was sleepless, merciless and incapable of acknowledging defeat. Everybody on the Pacific Coast remembers the time when California Freight & Packet stock rose to 125 the third year of Ellery’s presidency, stayed there for three months—and then began to sag, five points at a time, when the General Commercial started its great campaign to control the trade of the Pacific. Ellery laughed till his stock touched par. Then he went out and bought till he was on the knife-edge of bankruptcy.
Two great men came to Henry Ellery on the day when he was at the very clock-tick of disaster. They began to blow on California Freight & Packet Line’s house of cards.
“Stop!” said Ellery hoarsely. “You’ve got it wrong! You’re going to help me out and double your fortunes.”
They did. Thereafter men and newspapers spoke respectfully of “Ellery stocks.”
“A wizard who never fails!” people said.
“Never,” the grizzled Henry muttered to himself, and he sent for Malcolm Griffiths, husband of his daughter and only child.
“Griffiths,” he said, “let’s get down under the paint. You aren’t a success as Isabel’s husband.”
The youngish, gray-eyed, smooth-haired son-in-law stiffened in his chair. “Does Isabel say so?” he asked.
Ellery brushed the question aside. “I’ve let you two make the most you could of your affair for two years,” he remarked. “Why she chose to pick you out for a husband is still a mystery. She’s only twenty years old, now, and you're thirty-five; so I reckon we’ll say the answer is that she felt romantic, lost her head and was married to the skipper of one of my ships before she woke up. Now—”
It was a pause of grim meaning. Griffiths did not flinch. He even allowed a faint smile to curve his lips.
“Now Isabel is twenty,” Ellery continued, “—a mere girl in every way. She mustn’t have her whole life spoiled because of a childish mistake.”
“I still think it is her business,” was the reply.
“Is that so?” Ellery responded with a swift change of tone. “Well, I’m tired of her having to do it all. Listen, young man: You were a young master of a steamer when you met her and married her. That’s all you were. You had nothing in the way of property, prospects or natural advantages that could save you from the charge of marrying Isabel for her fortune.”
Griffiths flushed and interrupted firmly: “You forget Isabel. She didn’t need any fortune.”
“Is that so?” Ellery said again in a disagreeable voice. “She has one, just the same. Now, for my daughter’s sake, I accepted you as a son-in-law and gave you every opportunity in the world to get along. I’ve given you a chance that a thousand men I know would almost die to have. You haven’t made good. Fact is, I knew you weren’t making good a year ago. But Isabel insisted that you hadn’t had a chance, and for her sake I gave you a further trial. I have a rule in my business, Griffiths!”
The answer was a slight, definite gesture of protest.
“It is to have nothing to do with people who don’t pay dividends on the investment,” Ellery went on. “I invest my daughter’s happiness in a career to you, and I get nothing. I am going to get rid of you.”
“By dividends you mean that I don’t strike you as a success as a clerk in your office,” Griffiths returned. “I’m not. Of course I’m not. If I were, I should have no hopes of ever making Isabel happy.”
Ellery stared. “Do you mean to tell me you have purposely made an ass of yourself in the notion that you could— Well! I’m glad we’re that much further toward a solution.”
“Not purposely,” the other responded quietly. “I really tried.”
“My word!” Ellery stormed. “You knew that it was the best preparation for advancement—that if you showed yourself worth while in the outside office I would shove you along as fast as I could. I try to make a man of you—”
“And I happened to be a man already,” Griffiths answered. “I was master of the big Majestic. I am a clerk in the outside offices of the California Freight & Packet Line. Yet you expect Isabel to be satisfied.”
“You’re getting three times the wages you got as captain, and—”
Griffiths shook his head. “You’re getting away from your point, Mr. Ellery. What you're ‘trying to get at is that Isabel must manage a divorce. That is none of your business. It’s Isabel’s.”
“A hundred thousand dollars to you,” was the curt statement.
“I don’t want it, wont take it. Go to the devil with your money, sir.”
“All right!” Ellery said slowly. “All right! It’s up to Isabel. I have reason to believe she’ll be glad to be rid of you. Not that she isn’t rather fond of you,” he went on generously, “but she’s growing out of her childish ways of looking at things, and she realizes you aren’t the man for her.”
Griffiths rose. “Of course, if Isabel wants a divorce, I’ve no objection,” he remarked. “But the whole question is in her hands.”
“And you’ll accept her decision?” came the eager demand.
“Sure I will,” the other answered.
There was a flash of triumph in Henry Ellery’s eyes. He relaxed a little.
“You are the dullest man I’ve ever known,” he remarked. “You may have been all right on the bridge of a ship, but you don’t belong among real, live people. Why, hang it, Griffiths, Isabel has been secretly discouraged with you for a year, and you never caught on!” He drew a sealed letter from an inside pocket. “And it never entered your head, I suppose, that I wouldn’t waste time arguing with you about an affair when I could settle it.”
He flipped the envelope across the big desk. Griffiths picked it up.
“It’s from Isabel!” he muttered.
“Ye-es! It’s from Isabel!” mocked Ellery.
Malcolm Griffiths slowly tore the end off, the very act seemed to deepen the scowl on the face of the man opposite him,—pulled the single folded sheet out and opened it.
“She told you what was in it?” he inquired.
“She did,” Ellery answered.
Griffiths read as follows:
The Eighteenth.
Dear Malcolm:
Everybody thinks we've made a terrible mistake and that we ought never to have been married. Dad says you refuse all his offers to help you along in the office. It is a hard thing to say, Malcolm, but you don’t seem at all like the man I married in the consulate at Yokohama.
I have felt, too, that you aren’t happy. You have refused to tell me why and left it to me to guess. So here’s guessing, Malcolm dear—you don’t love me any more.
If this is true, there isn’t much to say except that it’s too bad and I'll take Dad’s advice.
Griffiths folded the letter, put it back in the envelope and lifted his eyes. Ellery did not understand the expression in them, the glimmer of relief and—could it be possible?—triumph. Suddenly the truth stung him in the vitals.
“You miserable hound!’ he whispered furiously. “You're glad! You skunk! Why, I’ll—I’ll—”
Griffiths stood firmly on his feet. There was a ring in his voice that Mr. Ellery had never heard.
“Of course you'll see that Isabel gets her divorce,” he said. “I'll go back to sea—where I belong.”
“Not in my line, you sha’n’t,” was the furious response. “I’ll have you understand that you’re dead. Get me? You’re dead!”
With the utmost calmness Griffiths reached for the telephone that stood by Mr. Ellery’s elbow and called up the apartment where he and Isabel lived. His father-in-law stared at him with bloodshot eyes while he got the number; and Mr. Ellery bit his lip as he listened.
“That you, Isabel? Malcolm speaking. Your father and I have had a talk, and he gave me your letter. . . . . You never want to see me again? . . . . Yes, it’ll be all right about the divorce. Sorry, but I’m off. Good-by.”
He put the telephone down and nodded in a businesslike way. “No need for me to bother,” he remarked. “I leave it to you.”
Ten minutes later Henry Ellery knew that his son-in-law had quit his desk in the offices of the California Freight & Packet Line and departed.
“He dropped in to say he wouldn’t be back,” said the general manager. “I suppose you understand.”
“I do,” Ellery answered briefly, and fell to work.
That evening he alternately caressed and scolded the tearful Isabel.
“You may as well make up your mind to one thing,” he told her, “and that is, you wont see Malcolm again. And you can be glad of it!”
Something in his tone calmed her. Ellery, after a shrewd glance at her, said to himself: “Heavens, what a raving beauty she is! I'll just see to it that that Griffiths does not see her again.”
“Dad,” Isabel said presently in a low voice, “do you think Malcolm is—do you think he is in love with—with somebody else?”
Ellery sat up alertly.
“I know—he did love me,” she went on.
Her father blessed Providence and took the opening. “If I were you, I shouldn’t bother about that now,” he remarked quietly. “Those things don’t matter now.”
Isabel did not mention her husband’s name again.
Some five months later Captain Ericsson of the California Freight & Packet Line harbor tug Wonder turned out of his snug berth at daylight in response to a hoarse summons from his mate.
“It’s the boss’ daughter herself,” he said, “the girl who used to be Cap’n Griffiths’ wife.”
Ericsson sputtered expletives of unbelief into the wash-basin and appareled himself swiftly. He found Isabel in the wheelhouse, a desolate figure. She turned her white face to him and attempted a laugh.
“It’s very early,” she said. “But the Cymric sails at eight o’clock and I can’t get there.”
Tugboat skippers are born, not made. Captain Ericsson reached out and jerked a brass handle, listened for the reassuring jangle far below and then pulled another handle at the same time that he lowered a window, thrust his head out and bellowed imperiously into the fog. The Wonder shook herself and proceeded to back from her slip. A voice sang out “All clear, sir!” and the mate appeared in mist-beaded oilskins.
“Long Wharf,” said Ericsson, jamming the wheel over as the tug churned past the outside dolphins, and putting the engines ahead. He clipped open a speaking-tube and conversed briefly with invisible authority below. The Wonder squatted down duckwise, stuck her battered nose up and scuttered across the course of the inrunning stream of the tide at top speed.
“You see—” Isabel began breathlessly.
“Don’t you worry,” Ericsson responded. “Tide’s just started to flood, and your husband’s vessel can’t kick out of the mud for an hour yet. If so be he’s left last tide, we'll catch him.”
“Oh, I must!” she whispered. “You see he doesn’t know it, but he isn’t my husband any more. I’ve got to tell him the divorce. was granted yesterday, and that he’s—that he can—that he’s free.”
The muttered gossip of months ceased its chemical reaction in Ericsson’s mind—cleared, cooled and precipitated the neutral salt of fact.
“Then you've quit,” he remarked. “Now why’n’t you just write him a letter?”
Isabel’s steady eyes looked their sorrow. “I want him to be happy,” she said, feeling the big captain’s readiness to understand. “And I ought to tell him right away and explain to him.”
“Humph!” Ericsson grunted. “You going to marry again?”
“It’s not me; it’s—it’s him!” she replied bravely.
“This is a devil of a fog,” snapped the skipper suddenly. “We may miss Long Wharf in it. Seems to me this tide is running a leetle stronger than usual.”
The mate, head half out of the pilot-house window, reached a hand back and pulled a brass handle. In answer to the sharp clang of a gong below, the engines stopped. The tug’s bows swung slowly as the helm went over.
“What the—” Ericsson began, and stretched out his hand for the whistle-cord. A field of swirling mud slapped against the tug’s flanks, and a big shadow loomed ahead. More clanging of the gong, and the Wonder caught herself, dug her heels in and came to stop. Twenty feet away, the revolving blades of a huge iron propeller slowly milled the water. The tug stepped back out of the way, turned and steamed ahead along the lofty side of a freighter on whose counter Isabel had read the name Cymric.
Megaphone in hand, Captain Ericsson emerged on his little upper deck and hailed the freighter’s bridge. A figure appeared, seemed to stand motionless a long time and vanished. The man returned almost instantly. Isabel heard her husband’s voice, hoarse and strained.
“What is it?”
Ericsson waved his megaphone imperiously. The Cymric’s engines stopped churning up the mud.
“Your wife!” bawled the tugboat man.
Isabel saw Griffiths bend over and peer through the veiling fog. She stepped into the clear and waved her hand. He saw her, stared and then turned his head. At the unheard command, a couple of Chinese sailors popped up along the bulwarks of the forward deck of the freighter and flipped a sea-ladder down. Its lower step caught in the water, and the ladder was dragged obliquely. They slowly hauled it up till the lower portion was clear and it had resumed the perpendicular. The tug slipped quietly up, and Ericsson grasped his passenger and swung her skillfully across and safely to the ladder.
“Up with you,” he growled reassuringly.
She turned her head. “You'll wait for me?” she cried.
“Sure we'll wait,” was the response from the captain of the tug.
Malcolm himself took her hand and helped her over the rail and to the deck.
“I had to come—I got Captain Ericsson to bring me—I wanted to tell you—” she panted.
Griffiths nodded and made a gesture to the Chinese at the ladder-head. They began to haul it up.
“No!” she cried. “I can’t stay, Malcolm. I only came to tell you—”
“Come to the bridge,” he said gently. “I can’t fool around here in this fog.” He led the way.
Five minutes later the Cymric was straightened out for the channel and gathering way to the low thump of her machines. The tug followed.
“Now,” Griffiths said quietly, and drew Isabel back inside the hood of the chart-table.
She looked at him with tremulous lips. “The judge granted me a divorce yesterday,” she said. “I thought I ought to let you know. I saw in the paper that you were on the Cymric and you were going to sail for Manila this morning. There wasn’t time to write. I tried to get here and I couldn’t. Then I thought of Captain Ericsson.”
“So you aren’t my wife any longer,” he murmured.
“The judge explained it,” she replied, not meeting his eyes. “It is only what they call an interlocutory decree. I—I wont be absolutely divorced for a year. But I thought I ought to let you know—to tell you—the judge said—you could get married in another country just the same.”
“I don’t understand you,” he said.
She lifted her eyes an instant. “You can marry her.”
The silence was broken only by the blast of the whistle telling traffic that the Cymric was drumming down the fairway. Griffith’s face was oddly constrained. When he spoke it was dryly.
“So I can marry her,” he said. “You know her?”
“Father knows,” she whispered. “It—it didn’t seem to me to be any of my business.”
“But you say it’ll be a year yet before the—before our marriage is done with?”
“In California,” she assented.
“How are you going to manage—about your new marriage?” he continued.
She flushed. “I’m not going to get married again,” she whispered.
“And you say you don’t know who—she is?” he persisted, looking at her steadily.
Isabel bowed her head. “I hope she will make you happy,” she replied.
“She will!” he boomed in a new tone, swung on his heel and left her. When he returned, she caught her breath sharply.
“I explained to Ericsson that you’d have breakfast with me,” he told her. “Last time, Isabel!”
A Key Route ferryboat skimmed out of the fog, screamed a warning to the Cymric and swept off with a rustle of creamy skirts. The rocky foundations of Goat Island whitened, echoed the thud of the freighter’s propeller and vanished. Griffiths snapped an order, and the watch-officer repeated it to the wheelsman. The Cymric steadied on a new course.
“Seeing I can’t go below, we'll eat up here,” Griffiths remarked, and he summoned the steward.
Standing together at the chart-table with the hot dishes before them, the two began to eat slowly, thoughtfully, as if there was nothing more to be said. The silence continued until the simple meal was finished and the steward brought the Captain his second cup of coffee and cleared away the other dishes. It was the Captain who spoke first, setting his coffee-cup down with a delicacy that brought a lump into Isabel’s throat, it so reminded her of the physical perfection of trained muscles and nerves that had always marked his movements.
“So the judge gave you a year to think it over in,” he said. “I reckon he meant that to apply to me too.”
Isabel choked. “I want you to forget me and be fair to—to her,” she answered.
“You mean the woman I’m in love with?” he demanded.
She nodded.
“And you think I shouldn't wait a year?”
“No, not a—not a day, Malcolm,” she whispered. “It’s not fair to any woman!”
“I wish you’d tell me just when you found out I wouldn’t make a good husband,” he muttered.
She seemed relieved to have the subject of conversation one on which she had been well coached.
“It was your table-manners that made me make my mistake,” she told him. “You were splendid, Malcolm, much nicer at a dinner than anyone I know! And I thought you would be perfectly at home in San Francisco, in Dad’s office, making lots of money, and enjoying society instead of being away on a horrible old steamer all the time and working. I was perfectly sure! And you hadn’t been—we hadn’t been home two months before I noticed you had commenced not to care. Then Father noticed it. You just simply lost all interest, Malcolm. I tried so hard, too, to keep you interested, for I knew everything depended on your making a good impression on Dad.”
“Which I didn’t,” he acquiesced gravely. “In fact, I made so poor an impression on your father that he’s done his best to keep me from getting a job anywhere at sea. Well, I have the old Cymric for this trip, anyway. I—I hate to bother you with questions, but do you mind telling me just when you found out about—about the woman I’m in love with?”
“I was so stupid I never suspected till Father said something,” she responded. “He wanted to save my feelings.”
Griffiths finished his coffee, wiped his clean-shaven lips and drew out a pipe.
“So you saw that I would never get along in an office?”
“You know you didn’t,” she replied. “You were actually stupid!”
“I was,” he said with an emphasis she thought uncalled for. He left her, for a moment’s talk with the mate on watch, and then he came back. “I certainly was stupid, Isabel. Did it ever occur to you why?”
“I tried to think it wasn’t because you didn’t care about—about our happiness together,” she answered.
He laughed shortly. “Take any man used to running a whole ship of his own, and stick him in an office to sit at a desk and sign other people’s letters, and he shows up a fool.”
“But being captain of a ship isn’t—it doesn’t get you anywhere,” she protested with a sigh.
“Doesn’t it?” he retorted. And then: “There goes the fog!”
The rising nor’wester lifted the gray blanket of vapor in billows. The bay appeared sparkling in the great bowl made by the hills, and the twin headlands of the Golden Gate stood forth on either beam. Isabel gave a little cry of dismay.
“The tug—Captain Ericsson!” she faltered.
“I sent him back to his pier,” he said briefly. “You’re going to make one more trip with Captain Griffiths.”
“But we’re divorced!”
“That’s your affair, not mine,” he answered curtly. “Anyway, you told me yourself that the judge gave you a year to think it over in.”
“But I’m not your wife!” she said with trembling lips.
“All right!” he said calmly. “I'll put you down as a passenger and have a stateroom cleared out for you.”
Pride came to her assistance. She controlled herself and confronted him with dignity. “If you think it’s fair to me, please remember the other woman.”
Griffiths’ eyes mastered hers. “I’ll take care of that,” he responded curtly.
“Are you bound to humiliate me in her eyes?”
“I am,” he answered. “I’m going to show you that the lady I love is your superior in every way, and I’m going to make you a laughingstock in her eyes.”
He took a step forward and addressed the watch-officer.
“Full speed. Tell the engineers we’re out of harbor bounds.”
To Isabel he said: “Now I'll go down and fix things up with the steward for you.”
“I hate you! I could kill you!” she whispered.
He swung back, his face expressionless. “By the way, the papers had it that we’re bound for Manila. A mistake. The Cymric is under charter for Petropaviovski and a cargo of furs. I reckon on its taking a couple of months for the voyage.”
“I’ll never speak to you again so long as I live!” she whispered.
When she found in the cabin she was escorted to a trunk of her own, filled with long-forgotten clothes, and recognized it as one she had carried as a bride on the Majestic, she fervently repeated her vow, stony-eyed, dry-lipped.
WHILE the Cymric steamed west and north, dropping the leagues behind her as steadily as a woman knits, Isabel Griffiths kept her vow—not with frowns or petulance, but with a quiet dignity that hushed even the tattling engine-room. She was present at every meal in the shabby saloon, ate with a good appetite, chatted with the mate and chief engineer, spent much time on deck in a chair and occasionally appeared on the bridge of a fine afternoon. For a few days her husband—or was he husband now?—addressed her with unvarying civility. Then he ceased all attempt to draw her into conversation and devoted himself assiduously to ship’s business.
In due time the freighter sighted the Kuriles, raised the Japanese coast, steamed through the strait into the Okhotsk and proceeded to the Kamchatka port whither she was bound. Within ten days the bulky cargo of furs, bone and fish-oil was loaded, the last papers signed and everything prepared for the trip back to San Francisco.
“We'll fetch out of these seas just in time,” the engineer confided to Isabel the evening before sailing. “Winter comes early and quick in these latitudes. As it is, we’re due for a stiff passage.”
“I fancy the Cymric doesn’t mind bad weather,” she replied lightly.
The chief scraped his lean jaw with broken nails. “No-o-o,” he drawled. “She was built right in the first place. But she’s old, and she hasn’t been kept up to the mark. Repairs haven’t cost much. And a Chinese crew doesn’t exactly keep a steamer fit. To tell the truth, if it weren’t I knew Cap’n Griffiths of old, I’d hate to look forward to the home, what with gales, thick weather, bad loading, old gear, rotten coal and a crew of Orientals. So many things happen to old ships.”
“Do you think the Captain is worried?” she asked calmly.
“Don’t ask me,” the engineer protested. “If he is, he’ll not confess it. If it weren’t for you being aboard, I’d say worry was the last thing in his mind. But naturally he’ll have to consider—”
“Not at all,” she responded coldly.
A week later, at breakfast, much clinking of engine-room telegraph and whistling of speaking-tubes ended in the stilling of the machines. Isabel saw Griffiths look up impatiently at the chief engineer, who had vanished at the first sound but was now back, a bit of oily waste between his palms.
“Low-pressure cylinder, sir,” the chief explained curtly. “Take all day.” He relapsed into technicalities that escaped her. She understood, however, that the matter was serious.
For the first time in many days Griffiths turned and addressed her directly.
“It’ll mean lolloping around in this heavy swell for some time,” he told her. “Better stick in your room. At least don’t go on deck.” The Cymric emphasized his warning by a lurch that flipped dishes out of the fiddles and ended in a creaking beam-end strain that brought an exclamation from Griffiths’ lips.
During the long day, while engineers and their crew toiled below decks, Isabel sat in her cabin,clinging to handholds now and again while the freighter wrestled with the rising sea, now trying to walk off her growing nervousness within the room’s narrow limits. When the engines were going once more and the Cymric had steadied on her course, Isabel went on the bridge. Malcolm was there, well wrapped up, staring into the darkness flowing over the ocean. It struck her that he must be suffering from the intense cold. In a few moments she was sure of this, for her own blood was chilled.
“How long before we'll get back into sunshine?” she asked the chief officer later.
“Two weeks, ma’am,” he responded gloomily.
“I wish the Captain would take better care of himself,” she went quietly on. “He doesn’t stand the cold very well.”
The mate nodded. “The cold is bad enough,” he told her, “But the worst is having Chinese for’ard. Between you and me, the engines aren’t up to the strain that’s being put on them, and in case of a breakdown, we sha’n’t have much time to handle this old packet in, if we’re to keep from being swept. And a Chinaman wont come out of his warm bunk unless you kick him out.”
“I see,” she murmured. “Captain Griffiths feels he ought to be on the bridge all the time to help the watch-officer in case anything happens.”
“Exactly,” was the reply. A keen glance at her expression of concern, and the mate went on, more freely: “The skipper—you know him better than I do—is the kind of man who’s always there when he’s needed. Running a steamer is a sort of one-man job, anyway, ma’am.”
When the triangle was rung for supper, Isabel ate alone, the chief engineer coming in for a minute only to see whether the Captain was there. When she had finished her meal, she wrapped herself up and made her way to the wheelhouse, thence to the bridge. Griffiths acknowledged her presence with a gesture but did not move from his place under the weather dodger.
She saw that the sea was very rough. The wind seemed knifelike, laden with an infinitesimal, sharp sleet that pricked her face like thousands of needles. A heavy hoarfrost quickly whitened on her shoulders and sleeves. She saw that the superstructure of the steamer was covered with it. Her mitten froze to the metal of the stanchions when she reached out to steady herself against the vessel’s rolling. Slowly she began comprehend, as no one can ever comprehend but one who has pitted his strength against it, the prodigious, incalculable malignancy of the sea.
When she was thoroughly miserable from the cold, she went below, undressed crept into bed to warm herself, and presently she fell asleep. She wakened to see Malcolm holding a lantern over her and saying in a husky voice: “Put some clothes and come up to my room”
From the coziness of the bed she scorned him till she caught the urgency in his voice and realized that she no longer heard the rhythmic beat of the Cyrmic’s engines. A moment later she had been wrapped in a blanket and was being carried into the saloon. Griffiths did not set her down till he was in his own cabin abaft the wheelhouse.
“Stay here,” he said sternly, and after a single imperious glance quit the place for the bridge.
For an hour she was unutterably miserable. Then she perceived that the engines were going once more. She controlled herself, rose and departed to her own cabin, where she dressed herself carefully. She had just finished when Malcolm entered brusquely, growled a word or two and insisted that she return to his cabin. When she was outside her room, he locked it and pocketed the key.
She broke her oath and spoke. “Have you no pity?”
His weary eyes met hers. She saw he was strangely white under the tan.
“I don’t intend you shall go down with the ship,” he said.
“Would it matter so much?” she retorted.
He laughed, pushing her ahead of him to the saloon and on up the steps into his own cabin. Once there, he switched on all the lights and said: “It wont be daylight for six hours yet. I sha’n’t be down again. But I must know you are safe—here. Promise!”
“Are we going to be wrecked?”
“Not if I can help it,” he returned huskily. “But I must have my mind free of worry. You must promise me you will not leave this cabin.”
“Oh, I promise,” she answered coldly. “But why worry about me?”
He drew his cap over his ruffled hair and tugged at his mittens. “Because I have a few words to say to you before we end this affair,” he said.
“Say them now,” she responded.
“You wouldn’t understand me,” was the reply. The door slammed on him.
DURING the ensuing hours, as she afterward realized, she must have slept pretty soundly. When she awakened it was suddenly, with the echo of a cry in her ears. Though the electrics were on, she knew it was after daybreak.
She got up and stretched her cramped limbs. The movement of the steamer was regular. How cold it was! She looked around for something to draw over her hands. Malcolm must have several pairs of mittens. She glanced in several drawers filled with roughly tossed-in garments. She opened a heavy wardrobe. At last she went to the desk clamped against the wall and jerked the top up. As she did so, a photograph in a light silver frame fell face downward.
His secret was hers, if she cared for it. The portrait of the woman for whom he had deserted wealth, luxury and a career was ready to her hand. She clung to the desk while the Cymric rolled far over to the send of a sea. Then, with a movement delicate and exact, she closed the desk, leaving the photograph still face down.
She quit the room swiftly, went down the steps into the saloon and called through the pale twilight for the steward. There was no answer. She rounded the big table and proceeded toward the door of the pantry where the old man always held himself in readiness for a summons. He was not there. A few pieces of broken crockery slid back and forth on the oiled floor.
Isabel now was shaking with an appalling dread. Could it be that she was alone on the Cymric? While she slept, had Captain and crew taken to the boats? She put out her hand and dragged frantically at the handle of the door giving on the alleyway. It turned with difficulty. The door slid back. She stared down into the white, still, dead face of the old steward. Beyond him lay a couple of other bodies, very quiet and stiff, yielding nothing to the surge and roll of the deck. She understood perfectly what had happened. A revolver was still fast in the steward’s hand, and the two Chinese had been shot. She stooped over. What had killed the old man? There was no outward sign of a wound. It struck her that he had died of heart-failure after killing the sailors. She remembered that the steward had remarked on his having a weak heart.
She was surprised to feel her own calmness in the presence of a tragedy. She lifted up her skirt and swiftly overpassed the bodies and ran for the ladder leading to the bridge. She cried out when she found Griffiths quietly standing by the rail and gazing down on a dozen Chinese struggling to set a stay-sail.
“I thought you were killed!” she stammered.
Without altering his position, he turned his head, smiled and beckoned her to his side.
“The sailors got a bit out of hand just before daylight,” he told her. “They killed the second and third mates in their room. The steward managed to wing a couple, and the mate settled the affair.”
“The steward is dead,” she told him.
“Too bad!” he commented. “The chief engineer will see to your hot coffee. I will call him and ask him to take you below in the engine-room where it is warm.”
“It’s bitterly cold!” she responded. “How can you stand it?”
He smiled a little wanly. “Part of the game,” he said. “Now go along with the chief.”
The engineer had arrived, blowing like a grampus. He eyed his commander doubtfully, received a meaning glance and a nod, raised one eyebrow and took Mrs. Griffiths’ arm.
THE air of the engine room was so welcome a change that found herself crying with pure pleasure when the chief deposited her at last below the gauges. She wiped her eyes and accepted a cup of scalding coffee from the third, a sturdy youth who seemed inclined to think the whole matter a joke.
The last thing she remembered as she yielded to the drowsy of influence of mingled steam, oil, warmth and coal-gas was the youth's face as he stood, hand on the steam-valve, his eyes on the regular motion of the machines
The clang of the gongs marking the end of one watch and the commencement of another drew her back from sweet unconsciousness. She opened her heavy eyelids a moment, saw that the third engineer was still at his post and the chief engineer beside him. She closed her eyes again. The men were talking in low, distinct tones that carried clearly through the steady hum of the machinery.
“The Cap’n has been standing there for eleven hours, and the chief mate’s been at the wheel for ten,” the chief was saying. “When the mutiny started, the Cap’n was having a cup o’ hot Java at the chart-desk. He dropped it, ran out, and it being pitch dark, grabbed the bridge-rail with his bare hands. The mate got the most of the sailors locked up in the fo’e’s’le and got back to the wheel just as the old steward did for the wheelsman and his relief. Now the skipper wants to know if we can handle our fellows till morning.”
“I reckon we can,” she heard the third reply slowly. “If he can stand the watch topside, you say?”
“I think he'll last till morning,” the chief answered doubtfully. “But if it reaches the Cap’n’s heart, well—”
Isabel sat up quickly. What did they mean? She slid from the lounge to the steel plates and touched the engineer on the arm. He swung round with an oath, glanced into her eyes and tried to smile. She paid no attention to his meaningless “Awake, ma’am?” and cried: “What is the matter with my—with the Captain?”
The chief grinned wretchedly. “He’s up on the bridge, on watch,” he answered.
“But I heard you say—” she protested.
He took her roughly by the arm. “See for yourself, Mrs. Griffiths.”
To emerge from the heated engine-room into the icy blast that poured over and through the upper-works of the wallowing Cymric was breathless work. Had it not been for the steady thrust of the chief’s hand under her elbow she would not have won the bridge, now sheeted in ice and dripping with the ever fresh wash from the crested seas. In the half-light of a moon riding high above the rushing cloud masses, she saw Malcolm in exactly the same posture he had held when she last saw him. Again he twisted his head to greet her. She reached his side in a flurry of relief. To catch herself as the steamer lurched she grasped at the rail with her bare hands, felt the sting of frosted metal and jerked them away. As she did so, she saw her husband’s hands, bone-white, clutching the brass that sheathed the teakwood.
In utter astonishment she reached out and touched a white finger. Then she screamed, twice.
“You fool!” croaked Griffiths to the shaking engineer. “Get her away from here! Quick!”
BUT Isabel had recovered herself. Careless of the nipping, snatching gale, she clung to her husband's arm, dragging furiously at it. Her lips were set, her eyes burning. The chief, cursing his maker, at last got her to go away and into the scant shelter of the chartroom.
“His arms are frozen!” she stormed. “Even his arm is stiff!”
“Listen!” bellowed the old engineer. “The mate is at the wheel, and the carpenter is standing a lookout aft with the hand steering-gear. All that holds this vessel upon her course is that rag of sail for’ard, and all that keeps those Chinamen from running amuck and cleaning up my fireroom and you is that man standing up there at the bridge-rail where everybody can see him.”
“But he is freezing!” she cried.
“That’s exactly what he’s doing,” the engineer assented. “He’s past the worst of it, ma’am. If we pulled his hand away from the rail, he’d keel over, and then—well, I guess this voyage would end right here.”
“And you let him,”—she drew in her breath sharply,—“you let him die?”
“It’ll be daylight before long, ma’am,, he answered, shaking in the terrible cold. “Then we'll be safe—for a while.” He paused, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice. “Keep him—keep him awake, ma’am.”
Isabel saw the old, trembling engineer depart, and she went and took her stand by her husband. He glanced around at her, and she saw the effort he was making to keep his eyes open. Below, on the icy deck, she saw a little group of sailors beating their arms back and forth and now and then running into the shelter of the alleyway under her. Each time the wash of a boarding sea had drained away through the scupper shutters, the little crowd came out again and resumed their fantastic frost-dance.
“The fourth engineer is in the alleyway with a gun,” Griffiths explained dully. “The mate locked their fo’c’s’le. We have to keep ’em out on deck.” He paused and swallowed slowly. “If they run inside and don’t run out again, my dear, use the speaking-tube to the engine-room and tell ’em.”
The Cymric was caught by a wave, and dipped up a hundred tons of brine that crashed down on the forward deck. The sailors scuttered before it and vanished. Isabel held her breath. Would those dark, murderous figures come out again? She raised the lip of the speaking-tube. Griffiths whispered: “Wait!”
And the men came out again, tumbling over one another.
Presently the Captain spoke again. “They get that way—gin and opium—sometimes.”
“Why didn’t you lock them up in their quarters?” she demanded.
He shook his head stiffly. “They tried to set fire.”
“You are freezing to death!”
“I’m all right—only tired.”
“See what you got for coming to sea again, Malcolm!”
“I shouldn’t have brought you along.”
“Why did you want me? You don’t love me.”
Griffiths did not answer. The eastern horizon was growing white, and a big cumulus cloud at the zenith was rimmed with gold. Isabel rubbed her eyes dizzily. A new day had begun. Then she looked at Griffiths. He was swaying on his feet, eyes half closed. She thrust her arms about him and supported him. She heard the chief engineer’s hoarse tones behind her, saying: “Easy, ma’am. Let me have him.”
She drew back and saw the mate.
“We'll just get the skipper to his cabin, ma’am,” he said. “Everything will do, now. Better leave him to us.”
She fled. Later, white-lipped, a rose-flame burning in either cheek, she learned under the old engineer’s tutelage something of the rough surgery of the sea. When it was done, she crouched wide-eyed by the bed of the man she had divorced, who lay muttering beneath the sheets that bound him fast. Later she went to the desk against the wall, opened it and picked up the photograph that lay face downward. It was an enlargement of a snapshot of herself taken as she stood poised on the rail of a launch, holding out her arms to be reached for. Guiltily she turned and glanced at the figure in the bunk. The Cymric rolled far over and plunged, and the decks shook to the thud of the screw. Isabel stood on the tilted floor and laughed softly.
HENRY ELLERY, in his office in the California Freight & Packet Line building, laid down the law.
“I’m not going to try to understand you, Isabel. The very day after I get you finally freed from a rash, childish, foolish marriage with a mere sailor, you run off with him again.”
“He ran off with me,” she replied.
“I wash my hands of the affair,” her father went on. “There is no doubt now that you must marry him again.” He faced Malcolm grimly. “Will you tell me how you are going to make a living for my daughter with two hands gone?”
“Do you insist that I marry her again?” Griffiths inquired calmly.
Mr. Ellery pounded his desk wrathfully. “To-day!”
“Well,” the Captain responded slowly, “I will—on conditions!”
The head of the California Freight & Packet choked. “Conditions!” he raged.
“Yes,” was the reply. “I shall have to refuse to marry Isabel unless you settle a million dollars on her. I must be sure that she wont be dependent any longer on you and your humors.”
“Isabel,” Mr. Ellery said almost inarticulately, “do you understand what this—this fellow is saying?”
She smiled. “Perfectly. Malcolm is quite right when he tells me he wouldn’t dream of going into an office again. Of course he’ll keep on being a sea-captain. I’m going with him. We'll need a lot of money to buy the Cymric.”
“Going to sea with him!” her father repeated in a tragic whisper. “Henry Ellery’s daughter marrying a common skipper and spending her life at sea! Have you no pride?”
“Pride?” she repeated in a full, rich voice. “Yes. Too much to shut my eyes to the biggest profession a brave man can follow, or to prefer a white-handed office man to a man who isn’t afraid of the sea. And entirely too much pride to marry Malcolm again unless I have a fortune to make me worth his while.”
“Worth his while?” croaked Ellery.
Isabel laughed gayly. “You told me yourself nobody ought to count a thing worth while unless it paid dividends.”
OUTSIDE the offices Isabel stopped Malcolm in the middle of the crowded pavement.
“Brave boy!”
“Whew!” he said. “I barely stuck it out. Hardest job of my life, my dear! To make out I wouldn’t—”
“Sh-h-h!” She laid a pink finger on his lips, regardless of the passers-by, who slowed their pace in open admiration. “Now we can buy the Cymric and be happy. Let’s go right over and see her!”
Malcolm laughed and tucked the stumps of his arms deeper into his pockets. “My dearest! Don’t you remember we've got to go and be married all over again?”
She appeared to give up an immediate visit to the Cymric reluctantly. “Oh, if you insist!” she sighed. She delved into her handbag. “I believe I have my million with me. Or could you trust me till to-morrow? Malcolm!”
Traffic stopped, grinning.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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