Satan. H. De Vere Stacpoole
sense into the head of a bedroom steward. Come along and let’s get them down below.”
While they were carting the stuff down, Satan on the hatch cover cut himself a chew of tobacco (he sometimes chewed) and, with his lantern jaws working regularly like the jaws of a cow chewing the cud, contemplated the steadily emptying portmanteau.
He had a plan about that portmanteau, a plan to turn it to profit. Satan’s plans generally had profit for their object. He had taken a genuine liking for Ratcliffe; but it was a curious thing with Satan that even his likings generally helped him along toward profit—perhaps because they were the outcome of a keen intelligence that had been sharpened by knocking about among rascals, beachcombers, wharf rats, as well as honest folk.
When Ratcliffe had fetched down the last load and come up again, he found Satan and the portmanteau gone.
The canvas boat had not been brought on board, but streamed astern on a line. He looked over the side. Satan was in the boat with the portmanteau and in the act of pushing off.
“I’m takin’ her back to the yacht,” said Satan.
Ratcliffe nodded.
At that moment Jude came on deck blinking and hitching up her trousers. She had washed her face and made herself a bit more tidy—perhaps because she had remembered it was Sunday or perhaps because company had come on board. She had evidently put her whole head into the water. It was dripping, and as she stood with the old panama in her hand and her cropped hair drying in the sun Ratcliffe observed her anew and thought that he had never seen a more likable figure. Jude would never be pretty, but she was better than pretty—healthy, honest and capable, trusting and fearless, easily reflecting laughter, and with a trace of the irresponsibility of youth. It was a face entirely original and distinctive. Dirty, it was the face of a larrikin; washed, a face such as I have attempted to describe; and the eyes were extraordinary—liquid-gray, with a look of distance, when she was serious, a look acquired perhaps from life among vast sea spaces.
“Where’s Satan?” asked Jude.
Ratcliffe pointed.
Jude, shading her eyes, looked. Then she laughed.
“Thought he was up to somethin’,” said she. “He’s gone to kid that officer man out of some more truck.”
In a flash Ratcliffe saw the reason of Satan’s activities, and in another flash he saw again, or seemed to see, in Satan and Jude a pair of gipsies of the sea. A gipsies’ caravan camped close to a neat villa—that was the relationship between the Sarah Tyler and the Dryad—and Satan was the caravan man gone round to the villa’s back door to return an empty portmanteau and blarney the servants out of scraps and old odds and ends not wanted, maybe to commandeer a chicken or nick a doormat—heaven only knew! He remembered the fancy Satan had taken to the dinghy. And he, Ratcliffe, had thrown in his lot with these people! Fishing cruise! Rubbish! Gipsy patter, sea thimblerigging, wreck-picking, and maybe petty larceny from Guadaloupe to dry Tortugas—that was what he had signed on for. Why, the Sarah Tyler, could she have been hauled into any law court, would have stood convicted on her very appearance! Jude was honest enough in her way; but her way was Satan’s way, and she had owned up with steadfast, honest eyes to the plundering of a brig and the caching of the plunder. They were “passons to what Pap had been,” but they were his offspring, and the law to them was no doubt what it had been to him—a something to be avoided or outwitted, like a dangerous animal.
All these thoughts running through his head did not disturb him in the least. Far from that! The reckless in him had expanded since he had cut the cable connecting him with the Dryad, and not for worlds would he have changed the Sarah into a vessel of more conventional form, or altered Satan from whatever he might be into a figure of definite respectability.
He reckoned that if Satan broke the law he would be clever enough to avoid the consequences. His tongue alone would get him out of most fixes, and just this touch of gipsiness in the business gave a new flavor to life—the flavor boys seek when they raid orchards and hen-roosts and go pirating with corked faces and lath swords.
“He’s goin’ aboard her,” said Jude.
The portmanteau had been taken up by one of the crew, and now Satan, evidently at the invitation of one of the white-clad figures leaning over the rail of the Dryad, was going up the accommodation ladder, leaving the boat to wash about in the blue water by the stage.
Ratcliffe guessed that one of the white-clad figures was Skelton and that it was on Skelton’s invitation he had gone on board. He felt vaguely uneasy. What did Skelton mean by that? Was he up to any dodge to “crab” the cruise?
However, he had no time to bother over this, for Jude, who had him now to herself without fear of interruption, had opened her batteries.
“Say,” said Jude, hanging over the rail where the awning cast its shadow, speaking without looking at him and spitting into the water, “what are you when you’re ashore, anyway?”
“I’m one of the idle rich,” said Ratcliffe, lighting his pipe.
“Well, you won’t be idle aboard here,” said Jude definitely. “What was your dad? Was your dad an idle-rich?”
“No, he was a ship owner.”
“How many ships did he own?”
“About forty.”
“What sort?”
“Steamers.”
“What sizes?”
“Oh, anything from two to five thousand tons.”
She turned to see if he were guying her.
“There was another man in the business,” said Ratcliffe, “a partner; Ratcliffe & Holt was the same of the firm. The governor died intestate.”
“Somethin’ wrong with his inside?”
“No, he died of a stroke; he was found in his office chair dead; he died at his work.”
“Did they get the chap that did him in?” asked Jude.
“No, it wasn’t a man that struck him; it was apoplexy, a disease, and dying without a will, all his money was divided up between my two brothers and me.”
“How much did you get?”
“Over a hundred thousand.”
“Dollars?”
“No, pounds—four hundred thousand dollars.”
“Got ’em still?”
“Yes.”
“In the bank?”
“Some; the rest is invested.”
She seemed to lose interest in the money business and hung for a moment over the rail, whistling almost noiselessly between her teeth and kicking up a bare heel. Then she said:
“Who’s the chap you were sailin’ with?”
“Skelton is his name.”
“He owns that hooker?”
“Yes.”
“Well,” said Jude suddenly, as if waking from a reverie, “this won’t boil potatoes—I’ve got to get dinner ready. Come ’long and help if you’re willin’.”
There was half a sack of potatoes in the galley. She set the stove going, and then, on her knees before the open sack, she sent him to fetch half a bucket of water from overboard. He found the bucket with a rope attached, brought the water, and filled the potato kettle, then he brought more water for the washing of the potatoes.
She did the washing squatting on her heels before the bucket.
“Where did you get them from?” asked Ratcliffe.
“Get which?”
“The