The Pirate of Panama Part 36

"Did the storm teach you that?"

I looked out at the flying scud and back at the storm-bewitched girl with laughter rippling from her throat and the wild joy of a rare moment in her eyes.

"Yes, the storm. It brought you to my arms and your heart to mine."

"I think it did, Jack; the wee corner of it that was not yours already."

Her shy eyes fell and I drew her close to me. In the dusk that had fallen like a cloak over the ship her lips met mine with the sweetest surrender in the world.

So in the clamorous storm our hearts found safe anchorage.

CHAPTER XIX

SENSE AND NONSENSE

The squall pa.s.sed as suddenly as it had swept upon us, and left in its wake a night of stars and moonbeat.

Apparently there was no question of returning the mutineers to the irons from which we had freed them. Alderson, Smith, Neidlinger, and Higgins were grouped together on the forecastle deck in amiable chat.

Blythe was still at the wheel, and our cheerful friend from the cattle country at the piano bawling out the identical chorus I had interrupted so ruthlessly just before the first blow of the mutiny was struck.

He was l.u.s.tily singing as Evelyn and I trod the deck.

"Tom sings as if with conviction. I hope it may not be deep-rooted," I laughed.

"If you mean me----"

"I don't mean Miss Berry."

To my surprise she took the words seriously.

"It isn't so, Jack. Say it isn't so."

"Does that mean that it is?" I asked.

"No-o. Only I can't bear to think that our happiness will make anybody else unhappy."

"It doesn't appear to be making him unhappy."

"But he doesn't know--yet."

"Then he's really serious? I wasn't quite sure."

She sighed.

"I wish he wasn't. How girls can like to make men fall in love with them I can't conceive. He's such a splendid fellow, too."

"He's a man, every inch of him," I offered by way of comfort. "It won't hurt him to love a good woman even if he doesn't win her. He'll recover, but it will do him a lot of good first."

"Would you feel so complacent if it were you?" she asked slyly, with a flash of merry eyes.

We happened to be in the shadow of the smokestack. After the interlude I expounded my philosophy more at length.

"He's young yet--at least his heart is. A man has to love a nice girl or two before he is educated to know the right one when he meets her. I don't pity Yeager--not a great deal, anyhow. It's life, you know," I concluded cheerfully.

"Oh, I see. A man has to love a nice girl or two as an educative process." Her voice trailed into the rising inflection of a question.

"Then the right girl ought to thank me for helping to prepare Mr. Yeager for her--if I am."

"That's a point of view worth considering," I a.s.sented.

"But I suppose she will never even know my name," she mused.

"Most likely not," was my complacent answer.

Whereupon she let me have her thrust with a little purr of amus.e.m.e.nt in her voice.

"Any more than I shall know what nice girls prepared you for me."

"_Touche_," I conceded with a laugh. "I didn't know you were the kind of young woman that lays traps for a fellow to tumble into."

"And I didn't know you were a war-worn veteran toughened by previous campaigns," she countered gaily. "You've been very liberally educated, didn't you say?"

"No, I didn't say. This is how I put it to myself: A boy owes something to the nice girls all about him. One would not like to think, for instance, that the youths of Tennessee had been so insensible as never to have felt a flutter when your long lashes drifted their way," I diplomatically suggested.

"How nicely you wrap it up," she said with her low, soft laugh. "And must my heart have fluttered, too, for them? Unless it has, I won't be properly educated for you, shall I?"

"Ah, that's the difference. You are born perfect lovers, but we have to acquire excellence through experience."

"Oh!"

An interjection can sometimes express more than words. My sweetheart's left me wondering just what she meant. There was amus.e.m.e.nt in it, but there was, too, a demure suppression to which I had not the key.

She, too, I judged, had known a few love episodes in her life. Perhaps she had been engaged before, as is sometimes the custom among Southern girls. The thought gave me a queer little stab of pain.

Yeager came out of the deck pavilion as we pa.s.sed.

"I say, let's have some music, good people."

I looked at my watch.

"My turn at the wheel. Maybe Blythe will join you."

He did. From the pilot-house I could hear his clear tenor and Evelyn's sweet soprano filling the night with music. Presently they drifted into patriotic songs, in which Tom came out strong if not melodious. But when the piano sounded the notes of "Dixie" Evelyn's voice rose alone, clear and full-throated as that of a lark.

After being relieved by Alderson I turned in and slept round the clock.