Moran of the Lady Letty Part 21

"Nonsense; why, think, we'll have it in your honor. Every smart girl in town will come, and you'll be the lion of--"

"You don't seem to understand!" cried Wilbur impatiently. "Do you think there's any fun in that for me now? Why, man, I've fought--fought with a naked dirk, fought with a coolie who snapped at me like an ape--and you talk to me of dancing and functions and german favors! It wouldn't do some of you people a bit of harm if you were shanghaied yourselves.

That sort of life, if it don't do anything else, knocks a big bit of seriousness into you. You fellows make me sick," he went on vehemently.

"As though there wasn't anything else to do but lead cotillons and get up new figures!"

"Well, what do you propose to do?" asked Nat Ridgeway. "Where are you going now--back to Magdalena Bay?"

"No."

"Where, then?"

Wilbur smote the table with his fist.

"Cuba!" he cried. "I've got a crack little schooner out in the bay here, and I've got a hundred thousand dollars' worth of loot aboard of her.

I've tried beach-combing for a while, and now I'll try filibustering.

It may be a crazy idea, but it's better than dancing. I'd rather lead an expedition than a german, and you can chew on that, Nathaniel Ridgeway."

Jerry looked at him as he stood there before them in the filthy, reeking blouse and jeans, the ragged boots, and the mane of hair and tangled beard, and remembered the Wilbur he used to know--the Wilbur of the carefully creased trousers, the satin scarfs and fancy waistcoats.

"You're a different sort than when you went away, Ross," said Jerry.

"Right you are," answered Wilbur.

"But I will venture a prophecy," continued Jerry, looking keenly at him.

"Ross, you are a born-and-bred city man. It's in the blood of you and the bones of you. I'll give you three years for this new notion of yours to wear itself out. You think just now you're going to spend the rest of your life as an amateur buccaneer. In three years, at the outside, you'll be using your 'loot,' as you call it, or the interest of it, to pay your taxes and your tailor, your pew rent and your club dues, and you'll be what the biographers call 'a respectable member of the community.'"

"Did you ever kill a man, Jerry?" asked Wilbur. "No? Well, you kill one some day--kill him in a fair give-and-take fight--and see how it makes you feel, and what influence it has on you, and then come back and talk to me."

It was long after midnight. Wilbur rose.

"We'll ring for a boy," said Ridgeway, "and get you a room. I can fix you out with clothes enough in the morning."

Wilbur stared in some surprise, and then said:

"Why, I've got the schooner to look after. I can't leave those coolies alone all night."

"You don't mean to say you're going on board at this time in the morning?"

"Of course!"

"Why--but--but you'll catch your death of cold."

Wilbur stared at Ridgeway, then nodded helplessly, and, scratching his head, said, half aloud:

"No, what's the use; I can't make 'em understand. Good-night I'll see you in the morning."

"We'll all come out and visit you on your yacht," Ridgeway called after him; but Wilbur did not hear.

In answer to Wilbur's whistle, Jim came in with the dory and took him off to the schooner. Moran met him as he came over the side.

"I took the watch myself to-night and let the boy turn in," she said.

"How is it ash.o.r.e, mate?"

"We've come back to the world of little things, Moran," said Wilbur.

"But we'll pull out of here in the morning and get back to the places where things are real."

"And that's a good hearing, mate."

"Let's get up here on the quarterdeck," added Wilbur. "I've something to propose to you."

Moran laid an arm across his shoulder, and the two walked aft. For half an hour Wilbur talked to her earnestly about his new idea of filibustering; and as he told her of the war he warmed to the subject, his face glowing, his eyes sparkling. Suddenly, however, he broke off.

"But no!" he exclaimed. "You don't understand, Moran. How can you--you're foreign-born. It's no affair of yours!"

"Mate! mate!" cried Moran, her hands upon his shoulders. "It's you who don't understand--don't understand me. Don't you know--can't you see?

Your people are mine now. I'm happy only in your happiness. You were right--the best happiness is the happiness one shares. And your sorrows belong to me, just as I belong to you, dear. Your enemies are mine, and your quarrels are my quarrels." She drew his head quickly toward her and kissed him.

In the morning the two had made up their minds to a certain vague course of action. To get away--anywhere--was their one aim. Moran was by nature a creature unfit for civilization, and the love of adventure and the desire for action had suddenly leaped to life in Wilbur's blood and was not to be resisted. They would get up to San Francisco, dispose of their "loot," outfit the "Bertha Millner" as a filibuster, and put to sea again. They had discussed the advisability of rounding the Horn in so small a ship as the "Bertha Millner," but Moran had settled that at once.

"I've got to know her pretty well," she told Wilbur. "She's sound as a nut. Only let's get away from this place."

But toward ten o'clock on the morning after their arrival off Coronado, and just as they were preparing to get under way, Hoang touched Wilbur's elbow.

"Seeum lil one-piece smoke-boat; him come chop-chop."

In fact, a little steam-launch was rapidly approaching the schooner. In another instant she was alongside. Jerry, Nat Ridgeway, Josie Herrick, and an elderly woman, whom Wilbur barely knew as Miss Herrick's married sister, were aboard.

"We've come off to see your yacht!" cried Miss Herrick to Wilbur as the launch b.u.mped along the schooner's counter. "Can we come aboard?" She looked very pretty in her crisp pink shirt-waist her white duck skirt, and white kid shoes, her sailor hat tilted at a barely perceptible angle. The men were in white flannels and smart yachting suits. "Can we come aboard?" she repeated.

Wilbur gasped and stared. "Good Lord!" he muttered. "Oh, come along," he added, desperately.

The party came over the side.

"Oh, my!" said Miss Herrick blankly, stopping short.

The decks, masts, and rails of the schooner were shiny with a black coating of dirt and grease; the sails were gray with grime; a strangling odor of oil and tar, of cooking and of opium, of Chinese punk and drying fish, pervaded all the air. In the waist, Hoang and Jim, bare to the belt, their queues looped around their necks to be out of the way, were stowing the dory and exchanging high-pitched monosyllables.

Miss Herrick's sister had not come aboard. The three visitors--Jerry, Ridgeway, and Josie--stood nervously huddled together, their elbows close in, as if to avoid contact with the prevailing filth, their immaculate white outing-clothes detaching themselves violently against the squalor and sordid grime of the schooner's background.

"Oh, my!" repeated Miss Herrick in dismay, half closing her eyes. "To think of what you must have been through! I thought you had some kind of a yacht. I had no idea it would be like this." And as she spoke, Moran came suddenly upon the group from behind the foresail, and paused in abrupt surprise, her thumbs in her belt.

She still wore men's clothes and was booted to the knee. The heavy blue woolen shirt was open at the throat, the sleeves rolled half-way up her large white arms. In her belt she carried her haftless Scandinavian dirk. She was hatless as ever, and her heavy, fragrant cables of rye-hued hair fell over her shoulders and breast to far below her belt.

Miss Herrick started sharply, and Moran turned an inquiring glance upon Wilbur. Wilbur took his resolution in both hands.

"Miss Herrick," he said, "this is Moran--Moran Sternersen."

Moran took a step forward, holding out her hand. Josie, all bewildered, put her tight-gloved fingers into the calloused palm, looking up nervously into Moran's face.