Thrice Armed. Harold Bindloss
a picture to remember. I wonder what those men have undergone, and where they come from?"
Jimmy smiled, presuming that she was addressing him, though he could not be sure of it.
"Well," he said, "I should fancy they have borne 'most everything that a man could be expected to face, except want of food, while they thrashed her round the Horn. She's American, and, if they drive men hard on board their ships, they at least usually feed them well."
"You know what they have done?"
Jimmy laughed, and forgot his man-o'-war cap as he saw that she was interested. "I believe I do. They've crawled out on those long topsail yards probably once every watch by night and day, clawing at thundering folds of hard, drenched canvas, while the ship lay with her rail in the water when the Cape Horn squalls came down thick with blinding snow. Then they've crawled down with bleeding hands and broken nails, and flung themselves, in their dripping oilskins, into a soddened bunk to snatch a couple of hours' sleep before they were roused to get sail on her again. They have lived for days on cold provisions soaked in brine when the galley fire was drowned out, and it is very likely have not stripped a long boot off for a week. She carries a high rail, but the icy sea that chilled them to the bone has poured across it at every roll."
"Ah!" said the girl; "going west it would be to windward. In one way it's almost an epic. I suppose it's always more or less like that?"
"Yes," said Jimmy; "one of the epics nobody has ever written, perhaps because nobody really could. There are a good many of them. As you say, when one has to fight to windward, things generally happen more or less that way."
Miss Merril turned and looked at him as he sat on the Sorata's counter in the navy cap, and a smile crept into her eyes.
"Still," she said, "perhaps it is, after all, worth while to face them."
They both remembered that afterward, but in the meanwhile it did not strike Jimmy as in any way incongruous that she should talk to him in such a fashion or credit him with more comprehension than one would expect from a professional yacht-hand.
"I don't know," he said simply. "One's heart is apt to fail when one looks forward and sees only the snow-squalls to drive one back to leeward, and the steep head seas."
Then he stood up suddenly with a little laugh as Louis came slouching aft from the forecastle scuttle.
"I'm relieved, and I had better see whether they want anything in the saloon," he said.
It appeared that they wanted nothing, and when he crawled into the forecastle Valentine looked at him with evident curiosity.
"You had apparently a good deal to say to Miss Merril," he observed. "Might one ask what you found to talk about?"
"The last topic was whether it is worth while to hang on and fight one's way to windward when the outlook is black. If I understood her correctly, she seems to believe it is."
Valentine grinned sardonically. "Did you discuss it like a German philosopher, or as a forecastle hand? I suppose it never struck you that it's rather an unusual subject for a yachting roustabout to go into with a young lady passenger?"
"It is," agreed Jimmy, making a little deprecatory gesture. "I'm afraid I didn't remember that before; but it probably doesn't matter, since it's hardly likely that she did either."
His comrade looked at him, and shook his head. "You can believe that—at your age?" he said. "My dear man, a young woman of Miss Merril's intelligence would notice anything that wasn't quite in character the moment you said it. Still, that is your affair. It's the other one I'm worrying about."
"The other one?"
"Miss Austerly. The girl's very sick—probably worse than her father realizes—and it's rather on my conscience that I told them that Louis could cook. Anyway, if this breeze holds we'll bring up off Victoria early to-morrow, and though we're not going in, I'll slip ashore before breakfast and see what one can pick up at the stores."
Jimmy asked him no more questions, but crept into his bunk. About nine o'clock on the morrow, when the Sorata was lying in a bight on the south coast of Vancouver Island, he was aroused by the dory bumping alongside, and he went out on deck. It was then raining hard, and all he could see was a stretch of gray sea and a strip of dripping boulder beach on which a little white surf was breaking. There was a good deal of water in the dory, and Valentine's oilskins were dripping when he climbed out of her with several packages under his arm. Stores open early in that country.
"Now," he said, "you can bail her out, and come down in half an hour when I've fixed up a breakfast that any one could eat."
Jimmy did so, but it was with some little diffidence that he carried the tray into the saloon. It occurred to him that Miss Merril might regret that she had unbent so far the previous night, and he wondered uneasily whether he had ventured further than was advisable. He was also conscious for the first time that the repairs Valentine had made in his garments were less artistic than evident. The girl, however, looked up with a smile, which might have meant anything, and afterward confined her attention to the articles he was laying on the table. There were Chinese preserved dainties and fruit from California, as well as the ordinary fare.
"An unusually good breakfast," said Austerly. "Does your skipper always treat his charterers so well?"
"Yes, sir," said Jimmy. "That is, when he can. You see, he couldn't get these things in Vancouver; there isn't the same demand for them as there is in the capital."
Austerly did not appear altogether satisfied with the ingenious explanation, but he said nothing further. Indeed, he was not a man who said very much on any occasion; and while he commenced his breakfast Miss Merril looked at Jimmy with her little disconcerting smile. Still, there was no malice in it.
She was as fresh that morning as when she came off the previous evening, though both Austerly and his daughter appeared a trifle the worse for the night's run. Miss Merril was wholly unostentatious in speech or bearing, and there was a certain gracious tranquillity about her which suggested latent vigor instead of languidness. She was then, he decided tolerably correctly, in her twenty-fifth year, brown-haired and brown-eyed, with broad, low forehead, unusually straight brows, and, in spite of her smile, a curiously steady gaze. Her face was a full oval, her mouth by no means small, and, while he had seen women of a somewhat similar type whose vigor was tinged with coarseness or a hint of sensuality, there was about this girl a certain daintiness of thought and speech, and a quiet dignity. What she said was, however, sufficiently prosaic.
"I presume that means he went to Victoria for the extra stores this morning; but how did he get there? It must be some distance, from what I know of the coast, and he would have a head-wind all the way back."
"He walked," said Jimmy. "It's necessary for him. One doesn't get very much exercise of that kind at sea. In fact, he walks miles whenever he can."
Miss Austerly appeared a trifle astonished, and her father looked up from his coffee.
"It's a trifle difficult to understand how he manages it," he said. "One would consider the Sorata forty feet long."
Jimmy felt Miss Merril's gaze upon him, and, as had happened before, his ingenuity failed him. Her smile vaguely suggested comprehension, and, for no ostensible reason, that disturbed him. He also saw Louis grinning down at him through the skylights.
"Sugar, sir?" he said; and this was so evidently an inspiration that Miss Austerly laughed, and when her father said that he had been offered it twice already, Jimmy went out with all the haste available. He closed the forecastle slide somewhat noisily, and then sat down and frowned at Valentine.
"Well?" said the latter dryly. "Been making an exhibition of yourself again?"
"I'm afraid I have," said Jimmy. "If it happens another time you can carry the things in yourself and see how nice it is. Still, I don't quite know why I lost my head. I have naturally met quite a few young ladies in my time. I suppose it's wearing that confounded cap and these more confounded clothes."
He