Thrice Armed

"Well," he said reflectively, "I'm going up the coast, and I want an experienced skipper. That's easy, because I know too much about charterers to let them have my boat without taking me. Yachting's just becoming popular here. Next, there's to be a capable cook, and that could be contrived, because, although Louis is about the worst cook I know, they needn't find it out until we're well away to sea. The third man is the difficulty. He's to be warranted sober, reliable, and intelligent, since he may be required to take the young ladies out fishing in the dory. All to be civil and clean, and provided with suitable uniform. It's in the charter. They appear to be particular people."

Jimmy laughed. "Evidently. Still, I don't quite see what it all has to do with me, since I'm not going. Where's the man you had when you took the last party?"

"On the wharf; he'll never come back again with me. He was a blue-water man, and one day he broke loose and got at the charterers' whisky. Tried to kiss one of the young ladies as he was carrying her on board the dory, and, though I threw him in afterward, her father made considerable unpleasantness over the thing."

He stopped a moment, and looked at Jimmy with a whimsical twinkle in his eyes. "Now, I don't know any reason why you shouldn't come if you feel like it. You seem reasonably sober, and I guess you could be civil. Charterers aren't quite so trying here as one would fancy they are in the Old Country. I've been there; but on the Pacific Slope we haven't yet branded the people who work as quite outside the pale. You could put on the steamboat jacket, and I've an old man-o'-war cap with gold letters on it. The man who left it on board the Sorata privately discharged himself from one of the Pacific squadron. It was a dark night, and he was almost drowned when I got him. Well, it would bring you twelve dollars a week, all found – it's what I'd have to pay another man – besides being a favor to me."

Jimmy laughed outright. He had his cares just then, but he was, after all, a young man of somewhat whimsical temperament, and the prospect of the adventure appealed to him. The twelve dollars a week were more attractive still, since he had reasons for believing that the small sum he had brought with him to Vancouver would be badly wanted before very long, and while the Tyee lay idle he could not trench upon his father's scanty store.

"Well," he said, "it sounds a crazy kind of thing, but that is, perhaps, why it attracts me. I'll come."

Valentine smiled. "Then you'll come off early to-morrow, and try to remember you're a blue-water man who has hired out to me. You want to get yourself up kind of smartly. We'll go below and see what I've got. It's in the charter."

Half an hour later Jimmy was rowed ashore, and he walked back to the wharf where the Tyee was lying with, for the first time during several weeks, a smile in his eyes. It would be a relief to forget his troubles for a week or two, and his father would not need him in the meanwhile. Naturally he did not know that the crazy venture on which he had embarked was to have somewhat important results for him as well as for other people.

CHAPTER V

VALENTINE'S PAID HAND

It was about five o'clock in the evening when Jimmy stood on the Vancouver wharf beside an express wagon, from which the teamster had just flung down what appeared to him an inordinate quantity of baggage. He was then attired in a steamboat officer's jacket, from which he had removed a row of buttons as well as the braid on the cuffs, an old pair of Valentine's white duck trousers carefully mended with sail-sewing twine, a pair of canvas shoes with a burst in one of them, and a somewhat dilapidated man-o'-war cap. In this get-up he expected to pass muster as a professional yacht-hand, though as yet there were very few men who followed that calling in Vancouver or Victoria. Had he been brought up in England he might have felt a little more uncomfortable than he did, but the average Westerner is troubled by no false pride, and is usually willing to earn the money he requires by any means available. Still, Jimmy was not altogether at ease, for he had, at least to some extent, become endued with his comrades' notions during the time he had spent in the mail-boats and the English warship.

A little farther up the wharf Valentine was talking to a gray-haired gentleman whose immaculate blue serge, level voice, and formal attitude seemed to stamp him as different from the men of the Pacific Slope, who have as a rule no time to waste in considering appearances. Two young ladies stood not very far away, and, though the breeze was no more than pleasantly cool, one of them was wrapped in a long cloak and shawl. Jimmy could not see the other very well because of the wagon, but when she moved across the wharf her lithe step and graceful carriage at least suggested vigorous health.

By and by the rattle of a neighboring steamer's winch ceased suddenly, and he heard the voice of the elderly gentleman, who had been glancing in his direction.

"I suppose that is your man," he said, with a clear English intonation. "Couldn't you have got him up a little more smartly? That man-o'-war cap, for instance, is a little out of keeping with the rest of his things."

Jimmy saw Valentine's badly suppressed smile, and caught his answer. "He was in one of the warships, sir, and is a reliable man. I can warrant him civil and sober."

"Well," said the other, "we may as well go off while he brings down the baggage."

The party moved toward the Sorata's dory, and Jimmy was not exactly pleased when he found himself left to carry their baggage, which appeared to be unusually heavy, down a flight of awkward steps. It was not very long since he had stood beside a mail-boat's hatch, and merely raised a hand now and then while her deck-hands stowed the baggage under his direction; but he found something faintly humorous in the situation until, hampered by an awkward load, he lost his balance and fell down the steps. Still, he contrived to deposit the charterers' possessions at the water's edge, and when Valentine came back he packed them into the dory, and about fifteen minutes later staggered into the little white ladies' cabin on board the Sorata with a big trunk in his arms. One of the girls was busy unstrapping a valise, but the other looked around as he came in.

"Put it there!" she said, with a swift glance at him, and then, though he noticed that apparently she had something in her hand, she seemed to change her mind and turned around again.

Jimmy went out backwards, with a faint warmth in his face, and when he had brought in the rest of the baggage he went up and assisted Louis, their third hand, to break out the anchor and get the Sorata under way. She was sliding out through the Narrows when he dropped through the scuttle into the forecastle, and found Valentine filling a tray.

"It's part of your business to carry the baggage," he said. "You want to remember they're particular people, and you're expected to make yourself generally useful and agreeable. Still, I guess there's no need to talk as you would in a mail-boat's saloon."

Jimmy took the tray, but, as it happened, the Sorata lurched on the wash from a passing steamer as he went through the sliding door in the bulk-head, and, plunging into the saloon with arms stretched out, he fell against the table. It was a moment or two before he partly recovered his equanimity, and then, as he looked about him, a hoarse laugh fell through the open skylights. To make things worse, he fancied that the elderly gentleman cast a suspicious glance at him, while he was quite sure that there was a twinkle in one of the young ladies' eyes. She leaned back somewhat wearily upon a locker cushion, and her face was thin and fragile; but her companion sat upright, and Jimmy saw that she also was regarding him. She was tall and somewhat large of frame, with a quiet face that had something patrician in it, and reposeful brown eyes. Jimmy fancied that she and the others must have heard the laugh above.

"It's only that idiot Louis, sir," he said. "It's a habit he has. You'll hear him laugh to himself now and then when he's at the helm."

Then it occurred to him that he was speaking more familiarly than an Englishman would probably expect a yacht-hand to do, and, pulling himself up abruptly, he commenced to lay out the table and pour the coffee.

"You take sugar, miss?" he asked.

"She does," said the man dryly. "When a spoon is not available she prefers her own fingers."

The delicate girl laughed a little, and Jimmy felt his face grow warm, for he was conscious that her companion was watching him with quiet amusement; but he contrived to find the spoons he had forgotten, and when he was about to withdraw the girl with the brown eyes made a little sign.

"I suppose we are at liberty to read any of those books?" she asked, pointing to the hanging shelves. "They are the skipper's?"

Jimmy knew what she was thinking, because the works in question were by no means of the kind one would have expected a professional yacht-hirer to own or to appreciate. He also knew that the forecastle slide was open, and that Valentine was probably listening.

"Of course, miss," he said; "take any of them, if you can understand them. I think it's more than the skipper does. Still, he has a little education, and bought them cheap at book sales. They give a kind of tone to the boat."

"I see," said the girl with the reposeful eyes, and Jimmy backed out in haste. He fancied a little ripple of musical laughter broke out after he had closed the forecastle slide. Then he glanced deprecatingly at Valentine, who did not appear by any means pleased with him.

"I didn't expect too much from you, but the last piece of gratuitous foolery might have been left out," he said. "Did you ever come across a yacht steward who took passengers into his confidence in the casual way you do?"

"No," said Jimmy candidly, "I don't think I ever did. Now, I don't in the least know what came over me, but I can't remember ever losing my head in quite the same way before. It must have been the way the girl with the brown eyes looked at me. In fact, she seemed to be looking right through me. Who is she?"

"Miss Merril."

"Ah!" said Jimmy, a trifle sharply. "Still, it doesn't seem to be an unusual name in this country, and, after all, one couldn't hold her responsible for her father's doings – if she is the one I mean. It's quite possible they wouldn't please her if she were acquainted with them. In fact, it's distinctly probable."

"I wonder why you seem so sure of that? She is the one you mean."

"From her face. You couldn't expect a girl with a face like that to approve of anything that was not – "

He saw Valentine's smile, and broke off abruptly. "Anyway, it doesn't matter in the least to either of us. What is she doing here, and who are the others?"

Valentine laughed. "I don't think I suggested that it did. The man is Austerly, of the Crown-land offices, and English, as you can see – one of the men with a family pull on somebody in authority in the Old Country. I believe he was a yacht-club commodore at home. The delicate girl's his daughter. Not enough blood in her – phthisis, too, I think – and it's quite likely she has been recommended a trip at sea. Miss Merril is, I understand, a friend of hers, and she evidently knows something of yachting too."

"What do you know about phthisis?"

A shadow suddenly crept into Valentine's brown face. "Well," he said quietly, "as it happens, I do know a little too much."

Jimmy asked no more questions, but got his supper, and contrived to keep out of the passengers' way until about ten o'clock that night, when he sat at the helm as the Sorata fled westward before a fresh breeze. To port, and very high above her, a cold white line of snow gleamed ethereally under the full moon. A long roll tipped by flashing froth came up behind her, and she swung over it with the foam boiling at her bows and her boom well off, rolling so that her topsail which cut black against the moonlight swung wildly athwart the softly luminous blue.

Jimmy was watching a long sea sweep by and break into a ridge of gleaming froth, when Miss Merril came out from the little companion and stood close beside him with the silvery light upon her. She had a soft wrap of some kind about her head and shoulders, and, though he could not at first see her face, the way the fleecy fabric hung emphasized her shapely figure.

"I wonder whether you would let me steer?" she asked.

For a moment or two Jimmy hesitated. The Sorata was carrying a good deal of sail, and running rather wildly, while he knew that a very small blunder at the tiller would bring her big main-boom crashing over, the result of which might be disaster. Still, there was something in the girl's manner which, for no reason that he could think of, impressed him with confidence. He felt that she would not have asked him for the helm merely out of caprice, or unless she could steer.

"Well," he said, remembering he was supposed to be a yacht-hand, "we will see what kind of a show you make at it, miss. Take hold, and try to keep her bowsprit on the island. It's the little black smear in the moonlight yonder."

The girl apparently had no difficulty in doing it, though for a while he crouched upon the side-deck with a brown hand close beside the ones she laid on the tiller. Then as, feeling reassured, he relaxed his grasp, she appeared to indicate her hands with a glance.

"They are really stronger than you seem to think," she said, "and I have sailed a yacht before."

Jimmy laughed. "I only thought they were very pretty."

The girl looked around at him a moment, without indignation, but with a grave inquiry in her eyes which Jimmy, who suddenly remembered the rôle he was expected to play, found curiously disconcerting.

"What made you say that?" she asked.