A Splendid Hazard Part 29

"You don't say!" pinching the ear nearest.

"This is the seventh day out, and not one of them has ceased to be interesting yet."

"Would they cease to be interesting if they proposed?" quizzing.

These two had no unshared secrets. They were sure of each other. He knew that when this child of his divided her affection with another man, that man would be deserving.

"I would rather have them all as they are. They make fine comrades."

He sighed thankfully. "Arthur seems to be out of the race."

"Rather say I am!" with laughter. "Why, a child could read Arthur Cathewe's face when he looks at her. Isn't she simply beautiful?"

"Very. But there are types and types."

"Am I really pretty?" Sometimes she grew shy under her father's open admiration. She was afraid it was his love rather than his judgment that made her beautiful in his eyes.

"My child, there's more than one man who will agree with me when I say that there is no one to compare with you. You are the living quotation from Keats."

"I shall kiss you for that." And straightway she did.

"What do you think of Mr. Breitmann?" soberly.

"He is charming sometimes; but he has a little too much reserve.

Doubtless he sees his position too keenly. He should not."

"Do you like him?"

"Yes," frankly.

"So do I; and yet there are moments when I do not." The admiral filled his pipe carefully.

"But your reason?" surprised.

"That's just the trouble. I haven't any tangible reason. The doubt exists, and I can't explain it. The sea often looks smooth and mild, and the sky is cloudless; yet an old sailor will suddenly grow suspicious; he will see a storm, a heavy blow. And why, he couldn't say for the life of him. Flanagan will tell you."

The girl grew studious and grave. Had there not been an echo of this doubt in her own mind? Immediately she smiled.

"We are talking nonsense and wasting the sunshine."

"How about Fitzgerald?"

"Oh, he's the most sensible of them all. He proposed to me the first night out."

"What?" The admiral dropped his pipe.

"Not so loud!" she warned. And then the clear music of her laughter penetrated beyond the cabin; and Fitzgerald, wandering about without purpose, heard it and paused.

"You minx!" growled the admiral; "to scare your old father like that!"

"Dearest, weren't you fishing to be scared?"

"Let's get out into the sunshine. I never could get the best of you.

But you really don't mean--"

"I really do not. He's too busy telling me the plot of this novel he is going to write to make love to a girl who doesn't want more than one man in the family, and that's her foolish old father."

And they went outside, arm in arm, laughing together like the good comrades they were. M. Ferraud joined them.

"I wish," said he, "that I was a poet."

"What would you do?" she asked.

"I should write a sonnet to your eyebrows this morning, is it not?"

"Mercy, no! That kind of poetry has long been _pa.s.se_."

"_Helas_!" mournfully.

It was a beautiful morning, a sharp blue sky and a sea of running silver; warm, too, for they were bearing away into the southern seas now. Every one had sea-legs by this time, and the larder dwindled in a respectable manner.

Fitzgerald viewed his case dispa.s.sionately. But what to do? A thousand times he had argued out the question, with a single result, that he was a fool for his pains. He became possessed with sudden inexplicable longings for land. He could not get away from this yacht; on land there would have been a hundred straight lines to the woods and the fisherman's philosophy. Things were going directly to one end, and presently he would have no more power to stem the words. At least one thing was certain, the admiral could not drop him overboard.

"The villain?"

He was moved suddenly out of his dream, for the object of it stood smiling at his side. A wisp of hair was blowing across her eyes and she was endeavoring to adjust it under her cap.

"The villain?" making a fine effort to remarshal his thoughts.

"Yes. We were talking about him last night. Where did you leave him?"

"He was still pursuing, I believe."

"Why don't you make him a real villain, a man who never kills any one, but who makes every one unhappy?"

"But that's a problem-villain; what we must have is a romance-villain, the kind every one is sorry for. Look at that old Portuguese man-o'-war," pointing to the crest of a near-by wave. "Funny little codger!"

"When do you expect to begin the story on paper?"

"When I have _all_ the material," not afraid of her eyes at that moment.

She propped her elbows on the rail. It was a seductive pose, and came very near being the young man's undoing.

"Does it seem impossible to you," she said, "that in these prosaic times we are treasure hunting? Must we not wake up and find it a dream?"

"Most dreams are perishable, but in this case we have the dream tightly bound. But what are we going to do with all this money when we find it?"

"Divide it or start a soldiers' home. I've never thought of it as money."