CHAPTER XV

For several minutes Applebo stood erect, arms folded across his chest, staring into the fog. Presently he shrugged, smiled cynically to himself, and, turning on his heel, went below, where he seated himself on the edge of his bunk.

"An interesting morning," he observed, aloud. "I am richer by one Ideal, and poorer by the loss of another. On the whole, however, I am 'way ahead on the break! If my father is a rough old brute of a pig-headed Scandihoovian sailor, then my sweetheart is the darlingest and loveliest of women, although she is scarcely more than a child. Nothing shall keep me from marrying her! I am mad about her! I would like to write her fathoms on fathoms of verse, but I will not!"

He opened the locker at the head of his bunk, took therefrom a large pile of manuscript, which he proceeded to tear into small fragments.

"I have sung my swan-song as a bard," Applebo observed. "Poetry can make a d---- fool of a man. 'Sickening verse,' quoth my paternal. I shall write no more sickening verse." He stared absently at the yellow bulkhead, then as absently set about to steep some tea. "Perhaps, when I get something in my tummy, I will look with a less saddened retrospect upon my 'family quarrel.' What an old brute! I wonder why Hermione is so fond of him? There is a jolt coming to him when he learns that his accusations were all creatures of his prejudiced and unreasonable imagination. The old beast actually thought that I had been putting her up to secret rendezvous ... when, as a matter of fact, upon the only two occasions when we have met, I have been the one to bring the interview to a close and send her home! Shucks!"

A quart or two of tea, with some dozen and odd macaroons, had a decidedly cheering influence upon the spirits of Mr. Applebo. This breakfast achieved, he wrote a letter to Hermione, telling her of his unfortunate interview with his father. After this, he took the Finn and went ashore, in quest of certain things needed for the run to New York. Most important of these was a fresh supply of macaroons.

At noon the fog had slightly thinned and there was a little air from the northeast. Nobody but Applebo would have thought of putting to sea in such weather, but he had an idea that his father, after interviewing Hermione, might return to express his regret at certain things which he had said, and Applebo had, for the time being, completely changed his views in regard to the desirability of a paternal parent in the scheme of his careless life. Not only had the romantic anticipations of the poet been dealt a severe blow by this brutal introduction to his father, but, what was worse, his hypersensitive mind had almost immediately parodied it, so that, even while smarting from the interview, he was cynically laughing at it. Like many poetic natures, Applebo's had its keen appreciation of the ridiculous, and it was because he was conscious that his sentimentality often enticed him out upon the thin ice of the absurd that he had, as a sort of self-protection, acquired the veiled, mocking pose which left the unsympathetic world in doubt as to whether he was making a fool of himself or of it!

In his interview with Heldstrom, Applebo had been quick to appreciate the futility of a pose of any sort. The sturdy Norwegian would have torn through it like a shark through a gill-net. Applebo had found himself always quite well-equipped to meet force with force, and so, when his father had brought to the onslaught sheer weight of personality, his son had met him with the same backing. The issue had been a draw, and Applebo felt that, if he had frankly won, he would be far less content.

Half an hour later he was feeling a secret admiration for his sturdy, one-ideal old father, and wishing that they had parted friends.

"After all..." said Applebo to his barometer, "the old coot was only carried into breaking water by his devotion to Hermione. What he thought, I'm sure I don't know ... nothing very bad, or he would not have left me alive. It was apparently that I had been enticing her from the path of conventional behaviour. Dammit! I wish I knew what he really _did_ think! I'll go to sea and dope it out under way. The narrow environs of this puddle constrict my intellectual flight." He raised his voice, and the Finn came squattering aft.

"Get the anchor," said Applebo. "We are going to sea."

Twenty minutes later the _Daffodil_ stole wraith-like through the entrance and laid a course across Massachusetts Bay for Cape Cod. The wind was steady, if light, and its direction enabled Applebo to make a broad reach for the Cape. In the middle of the afternoon the fog blew off, while the breeze freshened, hauling steadily to east, then east by south. At dark Applebo sighted the Highlands Light and, soon afterwards, Race Point, and, as the wind was beginning to haul ahead and the general aspect of the weather was unpromising, he decided to run into Provincetown. This he did, dropping anchor in the midst of a fleet of fishermen who were trailing in, one after the other, as the night advanced.

At two o'clock in the morning Applebo was awakened by the hum of his main rigging, the hiss of driving rain, and the short, angry slapping of little waves against the bow of the yawl.

"Good thing we ran in..." he thought, contentedly, and went to sleep again. Two hours later he was again awakened, this time by a clanking and clattering up forward.

"The Finn is giving her the other anchor," he thought. "Must be blowing up...."

At seven in the morning, when he awoke, Applebo shoved his tawny head up through the hatch, to find that it was blowing a southeasterly gale. Crowded close on all sides was the fishing fleet, many other vessels having run in for shelter during the night. Fine, staunch schooners they were, with the big spars and sleek lines of yachts.

Applebo slipped on his bathing-suit and took a dive overboard, to the unconcealed amusement of the crew of an adjacent smack. Finding himself the target for many witticisms, Applebo decided to shorten the range and swam alongside, when, finding a sea-ladder down, he climbed sleepily aboard and blinked at the jovial crew.

"How's fishing?" asked Applebo, hauling his long, wet body over the rail.

The men regarded him with that swift yet searching scrutiny peculiar to their kind. Finding him a "college feller" and locating him at once aboard the _Daffodil_, there seemed to be nothing strange in his wandering half-naked through the wind and rain.

"Fishin's all right," replied an elderly man, who appeared to be the captain of the vessel, "but the weathure ain't. You off'n the ketch yander?"

"Yes. She may not look it, but she is my yacht."

The captain gave her a keen, assaying glance.

"Say," he observed, "that thing looks like the critter we see last week at Hampton Roads. We was in there ketchin' crabs...."

"I was there, too," said Applebo. "I sneaked back up here inside in that easter."

The men looked at him with interest. The captain--a lean, lanky citizen of the State of Maine--shifted his tobacco. He was politely dressed in a nautical costume befitting his rank and consisting of a derby hat with a dint in the left side, a rather tired-looking "biled shirt," a black vest ... for he wore no coat despite the drizzle ... a heavy gold-plated watch-chain, black trousers, and patent-leather shoes, whereof the "patent" was putting up a losing fight against the salt water. This costume would have identified him anywhere along the coast as the captain of something; at first guess, a coasting schooner. The men called him "Dave," despite the fact that he was captain and old enough to have fathered any of them.

"That boat o' yourn looks like a sword-fisher," said he.

"She was built for that," said Applebo.

"She won't never drowned ye. Might starve ye, though."

"She won't do that either," said Applebo. "You will find a lot of yachts that are duller than that yawl of mine."

"I know one that's duller," said the skipper, "'n that's the old _Shark_. We come in abaout daylight this mornin'. It was blowin' toll'ble fresh. M'yeah ... not so peart as what it is now, but there was wind a-plenty. Jibin' raound the Stellwagen Bank we nigh pitched onto that 'ere old wagon...."

"The _Shark_?" cried Applebo.

"It was her. They wa'ant much light, but I seen that behind o' hern wallowin' off into the muck. There ain't no mistakin' that critter! She's been bangin' 'round this coast most as long as what I hev ... 'n' that's consid'able time."

One of the crew, an Irishman, spoke up.

"'Twas the _Shark_," said he. "She was waddlin' out around the Cape like an ould duck. Phwat she was doin' in shwill like this I dunno!"

"We wa'ant lookin' fer nothin' goin' that way," said the captain. "Mercy o' hell we didn't spile her paint! Tearin' chunks off'n the sea, we was!"

"Funny that the _Shark_ should have been out there," said Applebo. "I left her in Marblehead yesterday noon."

"'Twas her," said the Irishman. "There's no mistakin' the nose-pole av her. 'Tis like a pug-nosed girl wid a slate-pencil in her mout'. She was flounderin' to sea like a cow in a bog ... just as graceful, sor. There was a big man wid whuskers a-shtandin' be the wheel. I knaw him. 'Tis ould Heldstrom."

"Who's the owner o' the _Shark_?" asked one of the men.

"'Tis a navy man ... wan Bell...."

"Wa'al..." said the captain, "likely he knowed what he was a-doin' on. Chances air he put into Chatham when he see what was goin' on. Ye kain't tell nothin' 'baout the weathure this time o' year. The day starts in ca'am 'n' peaceful, 'n' the glass nailed tha'ar, 'n' afore sundaown it's blowin' the paint off'n her. Got a heap o' respec' fer saou'easters this time o' year, I hev."

Applebo chatted for awhile with the old man, the crew regarding with much curiosity the nearly nude, beautifully muscled figure standing by the rail apparently indifferent to the gusty wind and the drizzle driving against his gleaming limbs. It was about the end of August and not cold, but a gale off Cape Cod is never really tropical in temperature, and the fishermen were in heavy oilskins over their working-clothes.

Applebo finally wished them good-day, then made a clean dive off the rail, and swam back to the yawl. He found the Finn squatting on the forward deck, staring straight into the wind's eye. A gale always excited this peculiar individual. The dangers of fog, tide, and reef had no apparent effect on the Finn, but as soon as it began to blow he underwent a notable change. It made no difference whether the yawl was hove to in a squall, riding to a sea-anchor, or safely moored in a snug, land-locked harbour; the result upon the Finn was the same. During a storm he had always the intent, expectant air of one awaiting some momentous event. Often he would pause in what he was doing, as though to peer and listen, always watching the direction from which the wind came, sometimes talking to himself, nodding his head, and at times bursting into strange, wild little snatches of song, chanted in a beautiful tenor voice. Applebo once asked him what he heard in the wind, and he answered--"The voices of the newly dead." This, and the peculiar and uncanny way the man had of cocking his head and peering suddenly with one of his divergent eyes at some object either in the sea or sky, might have affected some people most disagreeably. Applebo was merely amused and found his behaviour rather entertaining.

As he swam alongside and hove himself aboard, the Finn did not appear to see him. The man was squatting like a frog against the windlass. He had on an old oilskin overcoat, but his head was bare, the long black hair tossing in the wind and the fine drizzle beating into a face which was of the pale drab of the belly of a fish. The lips were muttering a steady patter.

"What are you doing there?" Applebo demanded.

The beautiful, lustrous eyes turned to him slowly.

"Praying, master," came the soft-voiced answer.

"For whom are you praying?"

"For those about to die."

Applebo dressed, and was refreshing himself with tea and macaroons when he heard a roaring sound close aboard, and poked his head up through the hatch to see a fisherman foaming in, her foresail in rags. Behind her came another, and a little later still another.

He wrote a letter to Hermione, and went ashore to mail it. The gale was harder than ever, and he wondered how the _Shark_ was getting along. But he felt no anxiety, and decided that she had undoubtedly put into Chatham.

He went to bed early that night, in a mood of deep depression. About midnight he was awakened by a pressure on his chest and, as his eyes flashed open, for he was a light sleeper, he saw a dark figure leaning over him and felt the sudden disagreeable trickle of water on his face and neck. Springing up, he thrust at the dark shape, and that so violently as to send the Finn, for it was he, staggering back against the table.

"What do you mean by dripping water over me like that, you fool!" cried Applebo, thinking that the Finn had roused him to say that they were dragging, or something of the sort. A little standing-light was burning, and Applebo saw by its feeble flame that the face of his Finn was working spasmodically and his manner was wild.

"Master," he cried, "I have had a vision!"

"What sort of vision?"

"I saw a white vessel, dismasted and sinking. Her people were clinging about the decks and the sea was washing over them."

Applebo leaned forward, gripping the edge of his bunk.

"What was this vessel?" he cried.

The Finn shook his wet, shaggy head, and again the drops sprinkled Applebo's face and neck.

"I cannot say, master. She was buried in the smother and the vision was not a clear one. It was not like when I saw my father clinging to the bottom of his fishing boat in the Finskii Zalif."

"What happened then?"

"He was never heard of again."

Applebo moved uneasily. He had his full belief in much of the phenomena not to be explained by known physical laws and, therefore, dubbed "superstition." That night he had gone to sleep in a most unusual state of depression, and once or twice he had awakened to listen to the gale humming through the rigging. His first thought had been of the _Shark_, and he had been inquiet, even while his reason told him that to be so was absurd. Wherefore, awakened by the Finn with this lugubrious tale of a vision of shipwreck, his first thought was naturally of the _Shark_.

"What do you think this vessel was, and where?" he demanded, impatiently.

"I could not say, master."

"Then why do you come here and waken me and spatter me with cold water to tell me about it?" Applebo demanded, angrily.

"I thought that I ought to do so."

"But why?"

"God does not give us these visions for nothing, master."

"Then what do you want me to do? Go to sea and wait for an angel to take the wheel?"

The Finn did not answer. He knew quite well that, were the _Daffodil_ at sea, she would be hove to under a storm trysail or riding to a sea-anchor.

"Well...?" snapped Applebo. "What do you advise?"

The man pushed back his dank hair and shook his head. Applebo lost his patience.

"Any fool might dream of shipwreck on a night like this," he said. "Now clear out and let me sleep."

The Finn muttered some excuse and hove himself up through the companionway. Applebo turned over and tried to sleep, but it was a vain effort. The Finn had quite banished all drowsiness for the time, and his little ship's clock had struck two bells, then three, then four and five before he lost consciousness again.

At eight bells ... four of the morning, he awoke with a start. Turning up his lamp, he reached for his barometer and found that it had risen two-tenths. He slid out of his bunk and shoved his head up through the hatch, to discover that the wind had hauled southerly.

"Wind's going around..." he said to himself. "It'll be westerly in the morning and clear, with a hard nor'wester. If it's any way possible, we'll go out about eight."

For several minutes he hung through the hatch, staring into the murk. Some hard puffs struck the yawl, swinging her a trifle on her hawsers.

"Wind's getting westerly now..." said Applebo. "It's not such an awful blow, anyway. We've been out in worse...."

The rain had stopped and the air was comparatively clear. Applebo breathed it deeply. He cocked his head and stood for a moment listening to the roar of the surf on the beach across the neck.

"Some sea out there ... this wind is hauling right around...."

All at once he sprang up through the hatch and started forward along the deck. The fore-hatch was open and he saw the shoulders of the Finn, halfway through it. Then, the man's pallid face was turned up to him in the vague light.

"Heave in your chain," said Applebo. "We are going out."