Argosy, Vol. 120, No. 1 — page 80: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

70 pable? What if she saw him—something dreadfully different from what she had always seen him before, something that made men think he was a drunkard? Then she realized that the last coarse phrase had been the end of the interview, and her father was coming away. Her sud- den fear drove her back from the little platform at the stairs’ head, around to the forward side of the cabin. There, for a minute or two, she battled with the notion that she had doubted her father, battled with more doubts. But she must not let the mate misunder- stand. She must explain to him. Above all else she must prevent his taking any rash action. He must be told, convinced, _ that this was not the real skipper with whom he would have most to do; that the bluster must be overlooked as the mere manifestation; of a sick man’s peevishness. She hurried down and through the after deckhouse passage. She looked with al- most wild anxiety about the deck, where the only work being done by a score of husky men was that of assisting the light- er’s crew to make ready for departure. Two of them were engaged at the untying of a single line from one of the big cleats. The rest seemed enjoying a furtive jest the nature of which was all too easy to guess. She ran to the rail and searched the decks of the clumsy lighters. Young Cor- win was not on any of the three—she saw~ that with some relief. But, where was he? Her father had just ordered the shifting of the cargo he had stowed to-day. He was not here to attend to it. Nor had he turned the work over, as might have been for a-‘moment, to Mr. Edwards. The second mate was not in sight. As she ran forward again without en- countering any sign of the man she sought, a sudden sense of defeat, of helplessness, caught her and held her a moment. She did not want to meet the mate with tears . in her eyes and a sob in her voice. She steadied herself with a look across the wide expanse of sea to starboard. She thought she had inherited a love for that apparently infinite vastness which seldom failed to calm her. THE ARGOSY. Then she heard his steps coming from the forward passage on the other side. She hesitated as to how she was to call him, to begin the conversation with him. And then she saw that he had his grip. Not to herself, and much less to him, was she ready to admit that her worst fears were realized, that he, too, was quitting. She could hardly blame him after what she had heard. But—she wanted him to show even better than she dared hope. She put her hasty queries as if she took for granted that he but planned a shore-leave; though the impossibility of that in face of her father’s orders struck her with fresh hope- lessness as she spoke. Her heart sank as he evaded in his re- plies and avoided meeting her eyes. And then, as he finally blurted the unhappy truth, she could not control her disappoint- ment. ” She did not realize that she was calling him by his given name. It was a part of the unaccountable interest she had felt in the man’s combination of courageous spirit with an apparently almost wrecked physique, that the name had stuck to her thought from the moment she heard the dubious woman across the table hail him as 66 Danny.” But the sight of him departing and de- feated—the realization that he was going out of her life as suddenly as he had come into it, and going out to leave a memory of disappointment, of confession that he lacked something of what she had hoped he was—brought another realization which sent her suddeply limp with astonishment turned to grief by the circumstances in ‘which it had come. Something—something bigger and deeper than even Bob Harvey had ever inspired in her—had come with the appearance of this strange man onto her father’s ship. CHAPTER XVI. MUTINY. HERE are several treatments for a woman in tears. Men there are with bone hearts or hearts hardened almost to the point of ossification, who can get the ™ us ™ EO 1NOO S CO@