Fire Mountain Part 21

norther," and for three days Martin's watches on deck were cold, wet and hazardous. He blindly followed his watchmates over lurching, slippery decks, in obedience to unintelligible orders. He was rolled about by shipped seas, and his new oilskins received a stern baptism.

His clerk's hands became raw and swollen from hauling on wet ropes, his unaccustomed muscles ached cruelly, the sea water smarted the half-healed wound on his head, now covered with a strip of plaster.

But he stood the gaff, and worked on. And he was warmly conscious of the unspoken approval of both forecastle and cabin.

During that time of stress he learned something of the sailor's game of carrying on of sail. The wind was fair, and by the blind captain's orders, they held on to every bit of canvas the spars would stand. The little vessel rushed madly through the black, howling nights, and the leaden, fierce days, with every timber protesting the strain, and every piece of cordage adding its shrill, thrummed note to the storm's mighty symphony.

During that time Martin first proved his mettle. He fought down his coward fears, and for the first time ventured aloft, feeling his way through the pitch-black night to the reeling yard-arm, to battle, with his watch, the heavy, threshing sail that required reefing. After the test, when he came below to the warm cabin, he thrilled to the core at his officer's curt praise.

"You'll do!" she muttered in his ear.

But it was not all storm and battle. Quite the reverse. The calm succeeded the storm. Martin came on deck one morning to view a bright sky and a sea of undulating gla.s.s. Astern, above the horizon, were fleecy clouds--they afterwards rode high, and became his friends, those mares' tails--and out of that horizon, from the northeast, came occasional light puffs of wind.

Captain Dabney, pacing his familiar p.o.o.p with firm, sure steps, turned his sightless face constantly to those puffs. There was upon the ship an air of expectancy. And that afternoon Martin beheld an exhibition of the old man's sea-canniness; he suddenly stopped his steady pacing, stood motionless a moment, sniffing of the air astern, and then wheeled upon Ruth.

"To the braces, mister! Here she comes!" he snapped.

She came with tentative, caressing puffs at first, each one a little stronger than the last. Then, with a sigh, a dark blue ripple dancing before her, she arrived, enveloped and pa.s.sed them.

The brig trembled to the embrace and careened gently, as if nestling into a beloved's arms. About the decks were smiling faces and joyous shouts, and the sails were trimmed with a swinging chantey. For the _Coha.s.set_ had picked up the northeast trades.

That night the wind blew, and the next day, and the next, and the next week, and the weeks following. Ever strong and fresh, out of the northeast, came the mighty trade-wind. Nine knots, ten knots, eleven knots--the brig foamed before it, into the southwest, edging eleven knots--the brig foamed before it, into the southwest, edging away always to the westward.

Every sail was spread. Sails were even improvised to supplement the vast press the ship carried, a balloon jib for the bows, and a triangular piece of canvas that the boatswain labored over, and which he spread above the square topsails on the main. He was mightily proud of his handicraft, and walked about, rubbing his huge hands and gazing up at the little sail.

"An inwention o' my own," he proudly confided to Martin. "Swiggle me stiff, if the _Flyin' Cloud_ 'as anything on us, for we've rigged a b.l.o.o.d.y moons'il, says I."

Day by day the air grew warmer, as they neared the tropics. One day they sighted a school of skimming flying fish; that night several flew on board and were delivered into Charley Bo Yip's ready hands, and Martin feasted for the first time upon that dainty morsel. Bonito and porpoise played about the bows.

Martin could not at first understand how a ship that was bound for a distant corner of the cold Bering Sea came to be sailing into the tropics. But the boatswain enlightened him.

"It's a case o' the longest way being the shortest, lad. The winds, says I. We 'ave to make a 'alf circle to the south, using these trades, to make the Siberian coast this time o' year. We're makin' a good pa.s.sage--swiggle me, if Carew an' his _Dawn_ 'ave won past, the way we're sailin'! And the old man reckons seventy days, outside, afore 'e makes 'is landfall o' Fire Mountain. Coming 'ome, now, will be different. We'll sail the great circle, the course the mail-boats follow, an' we'll likely make the pa.s.sage in 'alf the time. We'll run the easting down, up there in the 'igh lat.i.tudes with the westerlies be'ind us."

They were bright, sunny days, those trade-wind days, and wonderful nights. The ship practically sailed herself. A slackening and tightening of sheets, night and morning, and a watch-end tr.i.m.m.i.n.g of yards, was all the labor required of the crew.

So, regular shipboard work, and Martin's education, went forward.

"Chips" plied his cunning hand outside his workshop door; "Sails"

spread his work upon the deck abaft the house.

A crusty, talkative, kind-hearted fellow was Sails. He was an old Scot, named MacLean; and the native burr in his speech had been softened by many years of roving. He always took particular pains to inform any listener that he was a MacLean, and that the Clan MacLean was beyond doubt the foremost, the oldest, and the best family that favored this wretched, hopeless world with residence. He hinted darkly at a villainous conspiracy that had deprived him of his estates and lairdships in dear old Stornoway, Bonnie Scotland. He was a pessimist of parts, and he furnished the needed shade that made brighter Martin's carefree existence.

MacLean had followed Captain Dabney for six years--most of the crew were even longer in the ship--and before joining the _Coha.s.set_, he had, to Martin's intense interest, made a voyage with Wild Bob Carew.

"Och, lad, ye no ken the black heart o' the mon," he would say to Martin. "Wild Bob! Tis 'Black Bob' they should call the caird. The black-hearted robber! Aye, I sailed a voyage wi' the deil. Didna' he beach me wi'oot a penny o' my pay on Puka Puka, in the Marquesas? An'

didna' I stop there, marooned wi' the natives, till Captain Dabney took me off? Forty-six, five an' thrippence he robbed me of.

"I am a MacLean, and a Laird by rights, but I could no afoord the loss o' that siller. Oh, he is the proud deil! His high stomach could no stand my plain words. Forty quid, odd, he owed me, but I could no hold my tongue when he raided the cutter and made off wi' the sh.e.l.l. The MacLeans were ne'er pirates, ye ken. They are honest men and kirkgoers--though I'll no pretend in the old days they didna' lift a beastie or so.

"I talked up to Carew's face, an' told him a MacLean could no approve such work, an' I told him the MacLeans were better folk than he, for all his high head. Ye ken, lad, the MacLeans are the best folk o'

Scotland. When Noah came oot the ark, 'twas the MacLeans met him and helped him to dry land.

"On Puka Puka beach he dumped me, wi'oot my dunnage, and wi'oot a cent o' the siller was due me. Och, he is a bad mon, yon Carew, wi' many a mon's blood on his hands! He has sold his soul to the deil, and Old Nick saves his own. He is a wild mon wi' women, and he is mad aboot the sweet la.s.sie aft. Didna' he try to make off wi' her in Dutch Harbor, three years ago? And didna' the old mon stop him wi' a bullet through the shoulder? And now he tries again in Frisco!

"The la.s.s blooms fairer each day--and Carew's madness grows. Ye'll meet him again, lad, if you stay wi' the ship. Wi' Old Nick to help him, 'tis black fortune he'll bring to the la.s.s, ye'll see." And Sails would croak out dismal prophecies concerning Wild Bob Carew's future activities, so long as Martin would listen.

Indeed, the adventurer of the schooner _Dawn_ was ever present in the thoughts of the brig's complement. He was a real and menacing shadow; even Martin was affected by the lowering cloud. The old hands in the crew all knew him personally, and knew of his mad infatuation for their beloved mate. In the cabin, it was accepted that he would cross their path again, though it was hoped that Fire Mountain would be reached and the treasure secured before that event occurred. But, save for an ever-growing indignation against the haughty Englishman, for daring to aspire to Ruth LeMoyne's hand, Martin gave the matter small thought; he was too busy living the moment.

Concurrent with his education in seamanship, progressed Martin's instruction in the subtle and disquieting game of hearts. Ruth attended to this particular instruction unconsciously, perhaps, but none the less effectively.

Of course, it was inevitable. When a romantic-minded young man aids in the thrilling rescue of an imprisoned maid, that young man is going to look upon that young woman with more than pa.s.sing interest. When the maid in question happens to be extremely pretty, his interest is naturally enhanced. When he is thrown into a close shipboard intimacy with her, and discovers her to be at once an exacting tyrant and a jolly chum, when the maid is possessed of a strange and exciting history, and congenial tastes, when she is not unaware of her own excellence, and, at times, not disinclined to coquet a trifle before a young, virile male--then, the romantic young man's blood experiences a permanent rise in temperature, and there are moments when his heart lodges uncomfortably in his throat, and moments when it beats a devil's own tattoo upon his ribs.

And when there are wonderful tropic nights, and bright eyes by his side that outrival the stars overhead, and a glorious tenor voice softly singing songs of love nearby--then, the heady wine of life works a revolution in a romantic young man's being, and in the turmoil he is accorded his first blinding glimpse of the lover's heaven of fulfilled desire, and his first glimpse also of the lover's h.e.l.l of doubting despair. A man, a maid, a soft, starry night upon the water, a song of love--of course it was inevitable!

Martin's previous experience with the tender pa.s.sion was not extensive.

Circ.u.mstance, shyness and fastidiousness had caused him to ignore most of the rather frequent opportunities to philander that his good looks and lively imagination created, and upon the rare occasions when he had paused, it was because of curiosity--a curiosity quickly sated.

Of course, he had been in love. At twelve years he had betrothed himself to the girl who sat across the aisle, at fifteen, he exchanged rings and vows with a lady of fourteen who lived in the next block, at seventeen he conceived a violent affection for the merry Irish girl who presided over his uncle's kitchen--but Norah scoffed, and remained true to the policeman on the beat, and Martin, for a s.p.a.ce, embraced the more violent teachings of anarchy and dreamed with gloomy glee of setting off a dynamite bomb under a certain uniformed prop of law and order.

The uncle died, and Martin was henceforth too busy earning a living to indulge in sentimental adventures. After a time, as he grew to manhood and his existence became more a.s.sured, he became a reader of stories; and unconsciously he commenced to measure the girls he met with the entrancing heroines of his fiction. The girls suffered by comparison, and Martin's interest in them remained Platonic.

By degrees he became possessor of that refuge of lonely bachelorhood, an ideal--a dream girl, compounded equally of meditation and books.

She was a wonderful girl, Martin's dream girl; she possessed all the virtues, and no faults, and she was very, very beautiful. At first she was a blond maid, and when she framed herself before his eyes, out of the smoke curling upward from his pipe, she was a vision of golden tresses, and rosy cheeks, and clear blue eyes.

But then came Miss Pincher, the manicure maid, to reside at Martin's boarding-house. Miss Pincher's hair was very, very yellow--there were dark hints about that boarding-house board anent royal colors coming out of drug-store bottles--and her eyes were a cold, hard blue. She cast her hard, bold eyes upon Martin. She was a feminist in love.

Martin fled horrified before her determined, audacious wooing.

His blood idol was overthrown, his ideal slain. He went to bed with the stark corpse, and awoke to contemplate with satisfaction a new image, a brooding, soulful brunette.

Then, Martin suddenly discovered that his ideal was neither a rosy Daughter of the _Dawn_, nor a tragic Queen of the Night--she was a merry-faced, neutral-tinted Sister of the Afternoon, a girl with brown hair, so dark as to be black by night, and big brown eyes. A girl with a rich contralto voice that commanded or cajoled in a most distracting fashion. A girl who commanded respect by her mastery of a masculine profession, yet who thereby sacrificed none of her appealing femininity. A girl named Ruth LeMoyne.

There was nothing staid or conservative about the manner of Martin's receiving this intelligence. It was his nature to fall in love with a hard b.u.mp, completely and without reservation. He recognized Ruth as the girl of his dreams the very first moment he obtained a good daylight look at her--that is, upon the afternoon he first mounted to the _Coha.s.set's_ deck, and was welcomed by the smiling, lithesome queen of the storm. Blonde and brunette had in that instant been completely erased from his memory; he had recognized in the mate of the _Coha.s.set_ the companion of his fanciful hours, in every feature she was the girl of his dreams.

There are people who say that every person has his, or her, preordained mate somewhere in the world. They say that the true love, the big love, is only possible when these predestined folk meet. They say that love flames instantly at such a meeting, and that the couple will recognize each other though the whole social scale divide them. They say that Love will conquer all obstacles and unite the yearning pair.

They are a sentimental, optimistic lot, who thus declaim. Martin, when he thought the matter over, inclined to their belief. Only--the trouble was that Ruth did not seem to exactly recognize or welcome her predestined fate.

But there is another theory of love. Any shiny-pated wise man will give the formula.

"Love at first sight! Bosh!" says the wise man. "Love is merely a strong, complex emotion inspired in persons by propinquity plus occasion!"

Perhaps. Certainly, the emotion Martin felt from the time he spoke his first word to Ruth LeMoyne, was strong enough and complex enough to tinge his every thought. And the propinquity was close enough and piquant enough to flutter the heart of a monk--which Martin was not.

And a headlong young man like Martin Blake could be trusted to make the occasion.

He made several occasions. His journey along Cupid's path was filled with the sign-posts of those occasions.

Off duty, Ruth and he were boon companions, during the rather rare hours when she was not in attendance upon the blind captain or asleep.

Martin stinted himself of rest, Ruth was too old a sailor for that.

The dog-watches, and, after they had gained the fine weather, the early hours of the first watch, were their hours of communion. They eagerly discussed books, plays, dreams, the sea, their quest, and themselves.

They called each other by their first names, in comradely fashion.