CHAPTER III

Close aboard the _Daffodil_, Wood was about to lift his voice in a hail when there came to his ears the sounds of one declaiming in a rich and resonant bass. Having observed the departure of the Finn some half-hour earlier, Wood decided that Mr. Applebo must be refreshing his solitude by the recital of some of his own verse. It was therefore with no more consciousness of eavesdropping than has one who pauses to listen to the practising of a musician that Wood rested on his oars, to be startled by the following interrogation:--

"_Tell me, beloved, since your eyes Hold all the azure of the skies, Why, then, when night their brightness mars, Those lustrous depths hold all the stars? But when the day's once more begun, I look, and lo ... there shines the sun, And when it sets, alack too soon, In each deep orb I find the moon._"

"_The answer is, Hermione, All heaven's in those eyes for me._"

Before Wood could sufficiently recover from the astonishment produced by this innocent query and its answer, the same voice continued in prose, apparently in criticism of the effort and as follows:

"Shucks ... How do I know her eyes are azure? ... I never saw them.... They might be cadmium or cobalt or madder lake, for all me." (A pause, then) "when night their brightness mars ... mars ... oh, hell, what does it mar it with ... a handful of mud?" (Another pause, then) "Mars is rotten ... let's see ... mars, cars, spars, tars, chars, bars ... augh ... what the deuce ... oh, let it go; it's no worse than the rest. In each deep orb ... fudge, I wonder how many thousand millions of bum poets have said that ... oh, dammit ... dammit ... dammitttt..."

There came the sound of paper violently torn. Wood, smothering his laughter at this unofficial peep into the soul of the poet, raised his voice:--

"Aboard the _Daffodil_..."

There was no answer. Wood tried again.

"Aboard the daffy daffodilly ... I say ... Harold..."

Followed an instant of silence, then a tawny, leonine head was pushed up through the hatch.

"Hello, Harold!" said Wood.

The poet blinked a pair of clear, amber-coloured eyes. His mane of ruddy-yellow hair was touselled and his expression was that of a person surprised in a yawn.

"Hello, Huntington!" he drawled, in a very deep and husky bass. The yellow eyes blinked once or twice at the dinghy. "You're off the _Shark_?"

"Jusso, Mr. Pilot-fish. May I come aboard?"

"Pray do. I am in the act of brewing tea. Sorry I haven't anything more robust to offer you. I cannot keep spirits, as my crew is a Finn with second sight and an alcoholic affinity. He can spot a whiskey-bottle through a teak locker; then he forces the lock and drinks all that there is without reference to the next man. If there were a gallon, he would drink it all."

"And then what?" asked Wood.

"Then I chain him to the mainmast so that he will not start to swim back to Finland. However, my tea is very good. So are the macaroons ... after you scrape off the green mould. The weather has been warm and humid, and I cannot get fresh ones here. I have wired to Boston for a supply. But come aboard..."

He reached over the side for the painter of the dinghy, and caught a clove-hitch one-handedly and with a deftness which did not suggest the amateur. Huntington stepped aboard and looked about with interest.

"A handy little boat," he said.

"Yes. She was designed for a Block Island sword-fisher. I bought her on the stocks before they had touched her inside. These boats' plans are all got out by yacht designers. She is not dull."

"No motor?"

"No. They smell, and the grease would soil my manuscripts. Besides, the beat of the engine would get in my head and spoil my metre. Think of trying to write dactylic hexameter with an accursed motor pounding away:--'Juba-this ... Juba-that...' Come below. Our tannin is distilled."

In the cosey cabin, singular for its extreme bareness and singular yellow colour-scheme, Wood seated himself upon the edge of the bunk and watched the poet as he poured the tea. Mr. Applebo was in his customary service rig of faded yellow rowing-shirt, white duck trousers, and leather sandals. His long, wavy hair, naturally of a reddish yellow, was sun-bleached to the lustreless tone of oakum, and hung in heavy clusters that almost hid his ears. The lithe, beautifully muscled figure was flawless, so far as one could see; big-boned, brawny, deep-chested, yet with a suggestion of lightness and grace which one associates with statues of Hermes. His skin, wherever visible, was of the quality of satin, the colour of old-gold, and his hands, while hardened from physical work and the handling of wet ropes, were exquisitely shaped, the fingers straight and strong and well-spaced.

Most striking of all was the poet's face, and it was here that one paused in doubt before rendering a verdict upon Mr. Applebo's physical attractiveness. In feature and expression there seemed to be no standard with which to compare the man's singular type ... or at least, no human standard. Many faces find their caricatures in the lower animals; one sees people who resemble, or at least, suggest the sheep, monkey, bull-dog, camel, etc. Applebo's face suggested a sleepy lion. There was the same tawny colour-scheme, the blinking, amber eyes focussed on some far-distant point, the straight, broad nose with a mouth which was slightly lifted in the middle, cheeks cut away and showing a prominent malar bone ... certainly, the general resemblance was rather toward the cat carnivora than toward anything human.

So far as expression went, Wood could discover absolutely nothing. There was about the poet an atmosphere of languor, either real or assumed, and one felt that if this sloth could be torn aside, the true man or animal, beneath, might stand revealed.

"What do you do on this boat?" asked Wood.

"I dream dreams ... and laugh at them. I weave long and fascinating romances of which I am the glorious hero ... and laugh at them. Also, I write many wingèd words."

"And laugh at them?"

"No. Other people do that."

"I have been sent over here," said Wood, "to order you to report for luncheon aboard the _Shark_. They are getting tired of you as merely a parlor game."

Applebo looked a little scared.

"Thanks awfully..." he said, less dreamily, "but I cannot go. My delicate sense of social ethics prevents."

"Rot!"

"Really. My extreme sensitiveness. You can't tag strangers about until they ask you to luncheon, nor, having been so weak as to yield to the temptation and accept, could you continue to tag. Then I would be all adrift and not know which way to sail."

"Harold," said Wood, "please go and sing that to the sirens. I am wise to your ingenious sophistries. You are in love with a lady, oh poet. That, and not a lacking initiative, is the reason of your singular fidelity to yon tub."

Applebo raised his tawny head, and blinked once or twice at his guest. Then, in the same dreamy way, he lowered his full cup from his lips. Nothing was more remote from his manner than any hint of agitation, wherefore it struck Wood as odd that he should have let the cup turn in his hand and spill the scalding tea on the dorsum of his bare foot.

"Confound it!" quoth the poet, and grabbed at his foot. The tea-cup struck the edge of the spirit stove and broke, leaving the porcelain ring of the handle on Applebo's finger. Forgetting his foot, he looked at it and blinked.

"There..." said he. "That is the second time that this has happened. A ring upon my finger the minute that my true motive is questioned. I do not like that."

"You ought to," observed Wood, "since you are in love with her."

"Not necessarily. My intentions are honourable but not matrimonial, and a ring is not the symbol of love but of marriage."

"Cynic..."

"No ... poet. Love to the poet is part of his material. It is the most important of his implements of craft. His motive force. I love, but I ask nothing in return ... beyond being permitted to love from afar. But not too far. A poet must be in the general neighbourhood of his inspiration."

"Stop ... my tea is coming up..."

"Worldling! No doubt you are in love with her yourself." The voice of the poet held the tone of one being roused from a beauty-sleep. "I hope that you are ... and that she returns your passion. So much the better. A hopeless love is always productive of the purest verse. The Italian poets understood this. It is all that I needed."

"If I listen to you any longer you will have to chain me to the mainmast with the Finn. Why did you pick out Hermione?"

The eyes of the poet shot him a yellow gleam.

"What makes you think that it is Hermione?"

"You were yapping her name as I came alongside. Never mind; I will not betray you. But I wish that you would let me tell them that it is hopeless passion and not feeble-mindedness which leads you on in the wake of the _Shark_. They would be so pleased."

"Tell them, if you like. It does not matter, since we are destined never to meet. But don't tell which one I am in love with. The others might tease her. All women are cats."

"A lover-like opinion...."

"I am very fond of cats. They are my index ... just as yellow is my colour. I am really very much in love with Hermione."

"When did you see her?"

"Last winter. It was her superb walk that vanquished me. I have never seen her, bow-on. Last winter, on my way down Fifth Avenue every morning to breakfast at the club, I often overhauled her. But I never passed. She drifted along like a marsh lily gathered by the flood."

"But she might enjoy meeting you."

Applebo shook his head. "I am wedded to my Muse. She will not brook a rival. Should Hermione enter my life, I would never write another poem. You see, I would be merely living one. Have a macaroon. There is very little mould on this one."

Wood glanced at him with suspicion, but Applebo's face would have made that of the Sphinx look open and confiding. A big, yellow tom-cat he appeared as he sat there, great shoulders hunched forward, back bent, blinking impenetrably at his guest. He finished a macaroon and licked the crumbs from his lips, and looked even cattier. It would not have surprised his guest had he begun to purr.

"Where did you learn so much seamanship?" asked Wood. "Captain Bell says that the way you find your way around is uncanny."

Applebo waved his hand and shrugged.

"A mere instinct. One might almost say a lower attribute and shared with birds, mammals, and fishes. I am not proud of it."

"Do you write poems of the sea?"

"Sometimes, but the subject does not interest me. A great, empty desolate waste of wet. No, why write poems of the sea when there are so many lovable things; old gardens and dear old people; little children and lovely women ... the last, always in the abstract." His amber eyes glowed.

Wood stared at him keenly, but Applebo appeared oblivious. Wood rose to his feet.

"It is almost two bells," said he, "I must be getting back. Sorry you will not come."

"Thank you, dear boy. Please make all of my excuses. Tell them what you like ... only mention no names. Express my deep appreciation of their goodness, and thank them in my name for permitting me to rot around in their wake. Good-bye ... God bless you."

In a very pensive mood Wood pulled back to the _Shark_, where his lack of success was received somewhat caustically by Cécile. But at the luncheon table Wood had his revenge.

"It is just as I thought," said he. "Applebo's plea that he follows the _Shark_ about to save himself the wear and tear of deciding where to go is all a bluff."

Had he been looking at Hermione as he made this statement, Wood might have seen something in her face to have given him food for thought. But he was looking at Cécile, not without a certain touch of malice. Since the coquette had rather cruelly thrown him over after having given him reason to believe that he was not indifferent to her, Wood had done a good deal of thinking, finally to arrive at the conclusion that all had happened for the best, and that a girl who could find it in her heart to do this sort of thing was not the girl that any man should want to marry. He no longer loved Cécile, and was therefore no longer blind to her faults. Conspicuous amongst these was a tremendous appreciation of her own charms, and Wood felt instinctively that, on learning of Applebo's confession, Cécile would immediately appropriate this devotion to herself. Wood bore no rancour for her treatment of himself, but he would scarcely have been human had he not found a certain cynical enjoyment in the situation.

"I am not at liberty to mention any names," said he, "but when I directly accused him of being secretly in love with some lady aboard the _Shark_, Applebo acknowledged that this was the fact."

Hermione's blue eyes opened very wide and a sudden rich colour flooded her face. Captain Bell and Wood were, however, looking at Cécile. Paula, the second sister, was lunching with friends ashore.

Cécile's black, curving lashes swept down, and she looked at her plate and laughed, while a delicate colour tinged her soft cheeks. Secretly, she had suspected for a long time precisely what Wood had just stated, and the news brought to her that flush of triumph which attended every new and interesting conquest.

Captain Bell surveyed his eldest daughter with disgust.

"My word!" he snapped. "Has it come to a point where they follow her around in boats?"

Wood glanced at Hermione with the slightest suspicion of a wink. She coloured and laughed. Hermione and Cécile had but little in common, and aside from a certain amount of sisterly affection, were rather indifferent to each other. Cécile disapproved Hermione's frank, impetuous manner, and Hermione detested her sister's cold-blooded coquetries. Both of the girls adored their sister Paula.

"Applebo's is a somewhat peculiar devotion," Wood observed, "but that is to be expected, considering Applebo. He asks only to worship from afar. It appears that his sentiment is useful as a source of inspiration; 'motive force,' as he expressed it. He even went so far as to say that it would profit him even more if some other person were to win the heart of his inamorata, as hopeless passion was always productive of the best poetic results."

"Huh..." grunted Bell. "I told you he was a balm!"

"So he intends never to meet me ... us ...?" Cécile corrected herself, but not in time to save the laugh.

"A modest young person, my daughter Cécile," said Bell, dryly. "Of course it's not within the scope of human possibility that Paula or Hermione should have found favour in the eyes of this omelette-head. Cut another notch in your gunstock, my dear..." And he continued in this ironic strain until Hermione and Wood took pity on Cécile and changed the conversation by sheer weight of voices.

Toward the middle of the afternoon Paula Bell returned aboard. There was nothing of the sea about this girl, who was wholly of the warm and comforting earth. Paula's type was such as one sees in the sculptured figures of French public buildings, lending themselves to emblematic decoration, and representing Ceres, with overflowing cornucopia, Justitia with her scales, or perhaps an opulent creature to depict La Vendange, the vintage, or Return of the Grape. In face and figure Paula might have posed for one of these splendid, heroic sculptures. Already, at twenty-two, her form was gracefully mature, and her face, pure of feature, had that pretty alluringness of expression with which the French sculptors know so well how to sweeten and vitalise the classic Greek. We Anglo-Saxons, on the contrary, seeking to copy directly from the ancients, are too apt to get as a result the well-known, frozen-faced females which suggest rather George Washington, a suffragette, or an idealised William Jennings Bryan than the desired Mother of the Earth.

"What do you think...?" cried Paula. "I met the Pilot-fish face to face."

"You did!" cried Hermione. "What did he do?"

"Nothing. It was in the post-office. He stood with his eyes fixed on infinity while the clerk sorted his mail. He is very striking in appearance and as graceful as a panther. People turn to look at him."

"How was he dressed?" asked Cécile.

"Beautifully ... but not the least hint of the nautical. White serge suit, straw-coloured pongee shirt with a dark, smoky-orange colour tie, yellow buckskin shoes. His hair is long and beautifully _ondulé_; such a chevelure is wasted on most men, but not on the Pilot-fish. I wonder if he sleeps with it in papers."

"No," said Wood. "It has always been like that. Freshman year the Sophs tried to cut it for him. The infirmary did a big business for a week. His bull-pup and parrot got in the game and bit one man and gouged the ear of another. The next night the Sophs went back in force to do the job or die. Harold waited until they got inside, then locked the door, threw the key under the bed, and pulled aside the curtains of an alcove. Here was a forbidding-looking keg with "POWDER" stencilled on the side in big red letters, and a fuse in the top. Before anybody could stop him, Harold let out a fearful yell and lighted the fuse. It began to sputter, and the Sophs lost interest in Harold's hair. You see, he was known to be such a wild freak that there was no telling what he might not do, so out they went, taking the door with them and piling up in a heap in the corridor, which was narrow. The fuse reached the bung-hole, when there came a sort of mild explosion. One man fainted. When the smoke cleared away, there was Harold drawing beer out of the other end of the keg. They let him keep his hair."

Cécile did not join in the laughter of the others.

"Then he is a sort of clown?" she asked, a little sharply.

Wood shook his head. "Not a bit. It seems to me that the others were the ones to perform."

Cécile made no answer. To herself she was registering a little vow that she would put the leonine Mr. Applebo through his tricks, and that before she was many days older.

There was to be a little dinner party aboard the _Shark_ that night, and Captain Bell, the most recent of whose fads was the culinary arts, had spent his morning in the galley, preparing certain dishes with which to "surprise" his guests. This innocent pastime of their father's had been encouraged by the girls; as Hermione said, "it kept him out of mischief, while the heat of the galley, acting as a Turkish bath, was good for his asthma."

In the present instance, however, this beneficial occupation was destined to directly affect the future affairs of several people, notably those of Mr. Harold Applebo.

It was during the soup course Captain Bell ventured to expand a little to his guests on the higher attributes of the culinary art:--

"A cook," he observed, didactically, "is far above the menial class. He is an artist, and entitled to the same respectful consideration which might be shown a sculptor, painter, poet, or musician. More, in fact, because a cook ministers, not only to our æsthetic sense and intellectual demands, but to the physical as well. In substantiation of these statements, I am about to offer you an entrée made this morning by my own hands ... ah..."

The peroration was cut short by the entrance of the steward bearing the gastronomic chef-d'œuvre, which was in the form of a vol-au-vent, or chicken-pie. At first glance, the dish appeared to be highly successful. The crust was brown and flaky, and seemed to promise succulent delicacies within. After the first anxious glance, Captain Bell sank back into his chair and looked about with the benevolent expression of one about to confer a rare treat upon his friends.

The steward, struggling manfully with his grin, presented the dish to Cécile, who proceeded to attack it with a blunt knife. The crust sagged like the head of a slack drum, but refused to give up its dead. Cécile exerted a little more pressure. The crust held valiantly, while certain unhallowed gurglings came from beneath. Everybody was watching Cécile with that painful anxiety peculiar to such moments. Bell began to fidget.

"Cut into it..." he snapped. "The chicken ain't goin' to bite you."

The popular tension found relief in a laugh at this witticism. Bell glared, and the ill-timed mirth subsided. Cécile threw her solid weight upon the knife. It bent, and a tiny jet of juice found its exit, hitting Mr. Poole in the eye. He wiped it furtively, and the others pretended not to have observed the accident.

"Briggs, give me a pointed knife," said Cécile.

"Of course..." growled Bell. "Always serve a pointed knife with a pastry."

The perspiring Briggs fetched the desired weapon. Thus armed, Cécile successfully attacked the crust, which she flayed back as one might skin an animal. She helped herself daintily, and the dish was passed to Wood, all eyes watching him as though he were about to draw in any other lottery.

Politic youth that he was, Wood helped himself generously, when there rolled out of the gravy upon his plate, a small, kitchen salt-cellar.

"Thunderation!" snapped the host, "so that's where it went. I hunted half an hour for that thing...."

"Papa..." protested Cécile. Nobody else could speak, and the faces around the board were crimson. Their host was known by his guests to take himself very seriously.

Wood tried again, this time exhuming what appeared to be a misshapen piece of rubber, but which a clever comparative anatomist might have recognised as the sacrum of a fowl with its muscular attachments.

"It smells delicious..." said the young man. He tried to cut the lump, which slipped from beneath his knife and bounded across the saloon. Wood's face expressed polite disappointment at the loss of the relish. The suffering steward, unable to look at him, hurried on with the dish, passing it next to Hermione, who ripped off a ragged piece of the "crust," which she proceeded to cover with a substance much resembling asphalt.

Mr. Poole, Wood's host on the _Arcturus_, came next. The face of this gentleman was painfully congested and his hand trembled so that he could scarcely hold the spoon. Bell watched him narrowly. It was at moments such as these that he was apt to form his friendships and enmities.

Hermione saw that Poole was not up to the ordeal and came generously to the rescue.

"Be careful..." said she, "papa lost his watch a few days ago, and he would never forgive you if you were to break it."

Even Captain Bell had to join in the roar which followed. But there was a fighting gleam in his eye which boded ill for somebody.

"That's right, laugh..." roared Bell. "Funny, ain't it ... and you girls know perfectly well that this is the first dish o' mine that's gone wrong since ... since..."

"Since the casserole blew up and we had to raise the cook's wages," said Hermione.

"It's all the fault of that infernal Pilot-fish and his swab-headed, swivel-eyed Finn..." stormed Bell, oblivious to all attempts at restraint. "How in the deuce am I goin' to cook a dish requirin' care and watchfulness with all hands, cook, scullion..."

"...and yourself..."

"... and myself, then, breaking for the rail every time some square-head for'ard sights a fishin' boat? That's the way the salt-cellar got ... lost. I set it down on the crust for a second to take a look, and it got drawn in, like ... like..."

"Like it might have in any other quicksand," supplied Hermione.

No fear nor respect of the host could drown the roar which followed and stifled echoes of which appeared to come from the pantry, whither the steward had fled. Bell was, however, furious.

"Steward..." he bawled. The unhappy man appeared, saddened, to judge by the funereal expression of his face, and the tears still brimming in his eyes.

"Take this dish forward," said Bell, with great dignity, "and present it, with my compliments, to Captain Heldstrom and the mate."

"How about the corroded top of that salt-cellar, papa?" asked Paula. "Might not that be poisonous?"

"It doesn't need the salt-cellar..." Hermione whispered to the writhing Mr. Poole.

"That may be so ... that may be so," Bell assented. "Wonder none of the rest of you had the wit to think of it. Steward..."

"Sir..."

"Carry the blamed thing up and heave it overboard." Bell glared savagely about him. "There's a whole morning's work and two fine chickens ... no, three..."

"Three!"

"Yes. The first one I accidentally dropped overboard while looking for the Pilot-fish. Curse the Pilot-fish ... I say, curse him. It's all his fault. He has got this whole ship's company going all ways at once like a school o' gallied whales. I'll fix him. I'll lead him a chase. I'll wear him out, confound him, or know the reason why. Wants to follows us, does he? Right-o! I'll keep him on the trot till his tongue hangs out."

"How?" asked Cécile.

"By keepin' him on the move. We'll lead him a chase from Cape Race to Key West and never give him a chance to eat. Who wants to bet me that he'll be with us at the end of a fortnight? Come with us, Wood; you've got nothin' to do and I'll show you some fun; a sort of _chasse-à-courre_. Will you come?"

"Oh, do, Huntington," Paula cried. Wood glanced at Cécile.

"Do come, if it would amuse you," said she.

"Who wants to bet me that this chump will still be in the hunt two weeks from now?" cried Bell. "What! no takers?"

"Wait until we start," said Hermione.