III
THE MAJOR – AND OTHERS

The first morning in blue water developed the fact that breakfast on the Andromeda was destined to be a broken meal. In the white-lacquered dining-saloon, only three members of the ship's company, Major Terwilliger, Madeleine Barclay's father, and Professor Sanford were at table, though Van Dyck and Billy Grisdale had been still earlier, had already breakfasted and had gone on deck.

As I took my place, the major, affecting the bluff heartiness which was merely a mask for an ease-loving, self-centered habit which never for a moment lost sight of the creature comforts, was trying, quite ineffectually, to draw Sanford into a discussion of the merits and demerits of certain French liqueurs – a subject upon which the clean-living, abstemious professor of mathematics was as poorly informed as any anchorite of the desert.

"Vermuth, now; a dash of vermuth in your morning bitters," the major expatiated; "there's nothing like it for an appetiser. I'm not saying anything against the modern cocktail, properly compounded; it has its place. But for a morning eye-opener it is crude. Believe me, a Frenchman knows the meaning of the word apéritif much better than we do."

"Yes?" said the professor, with a palpable effort to galvanize an interest which he was evidently far from feeling.

"Quite so," declared the major; after which he proceeded to enlarge upon American backwardness in the matter of picking and choosing among the potables, inveighing with all the warmth of a past master in the art of good living against the barbarism of taking one's liquor raw.

While the major was giving his alcoholic homily, and not omitting, meanwhile, to keep his plate well supplied with the crispest bits of bacon and the hottest of the rolls, I had an opportunity to observe the silent man whose place was opposite my own. Holly Barclay had changed greatly in the three years which had elapsed since I had last seen him in New York. I never knew – I do not yet know – what particular form his dissipation took, but it had left its indubitable record in the haggard face, the deep-sunken eyes, and in the womanish hands which trembled a bit in spite of an evident effort to hold them steady.

Fragmentary gossip of former days had said that Holly Barclay's bane was women; other whispers had it that it was the gaming table; still others that it was the larger gaming table of the Street. Whatever it was, it had apparently left him a rather ghastly wreck of a man; a prey, not to remorse, perhaps, but certainly to fear. And with the fear in the deep-set eyes there was a hint of childish petulance; the irritable humor of a man who has fought a losing battle with life and expects to be waited upon and coddled as a reward for his defeat and humiliation.

It was a relief to turn from this haggard wreck, and from the sham-hearty major, to the mild-eyed professor. Sanford I had known in the university, and a less self-conscious or more lovable man never lived. Deeply immersed in the natural sciences, which were his hobby, and absent-minded at times to a degree that put to shame the best efforts of the college-professor-joke makers, he was nevertheless the most human of men; a faculty member whose door was always hospitably open to the homesick Freshman, and whose influence for good in the lush field of the college campus was second only to that of his plain-featured, motherly wife.

"Ah, yes," he was saying, in answer to the major's eulogy of chartreuse as a cordial, "it is said to be a distillation from the leaves of Urtica pilulifera, the much-abused nettle, I believe. Those old Alpine monks had a wonderful knowledge of the scanty flora of the high altitudes where they built their monasteries. Which reminds me: I hope Bonteck will give us an opportunity to study some of the remarkable plant forms peculiar to the tropics before we return. It would be most enlightening to a stay-at-home like myself."

The major's facial expression was that of a person who has been basely betrayed into casting pearls before swine. That any one could be so benighted as to associate a divine cordial only with the crude materials out of which it might be made was quite beyond his powers of comprehension.

"Hum," he muttered, "I've always understood that the process of chartreuse-making was a secret that was most jealously guarded." And with that he let the pearl casting stop abruptly.

Here was a striking example, one would say, of the ill-assortment of our mixed ship's company manifesting itself at the introductory breakfast at sea. Throughout the meal Barclay said nothing to any of us. His few remarks were addressed to the serving steward, and they were all in the nature of complaints. His coffee was too weak, the bacon was too crisp, the cold meats were underdone. What with the gourmet appetite of the major, and Barclay's apparent lack of any appetite at all, the broken meal was anything but a feast of reason and a flow of soul, and I was glad to break away to the freedom of the decks.

Finding the after-deck untenanted, I strolled forward. The Andromeda was loafing along over a sea as calm as a mill-pond, and her course, as nearly as I could guess it from the position of the sun, was a little to the east of south. Van Dyck and Billy Grisdale were on the bridge, and one of the foreign-looking sailormen had the wheel. On the main-deck forward three members of the crew were swabbing down, and two others were polishing brass. As I paused at the rail in the shadow of the bridge overhang, Goff, the sailing-master, came stumping along. Though no one had as yet told me that he was a Gloucesterman, I took a shot at it.

"This is not much like cracking on with a schooner for the Banks, is it, Captain?" was the form the shot took; and the grizzled veteran of the sea stopped and looked me over with an eye militantly appraisive.

"What you know about the Banks?" he inquired hostilely.

"Little enough," I admitted. "One trip, made when I was a boy, in the schooner Maria Ann, of Gloucester, Captain Standifer."

"I want to know!" he said, thawing perceptibly. "Old Maria Ann's afloat yit, but Standifer's gone; run down in a dory in a fog." Then, lowering his voice: "You don't belong to this New York clanjamfry, do ye?"

"Not strictly speaking; I signed on in New Orleans."

"Know these waters putty middlin' well?"

"I've sailed them a few times."

"Friend o' Cap'n Van Dyck's, I cal'late?"

"As good a friend as he has on earth, I hope."

At this the old sea dog thrust an arm in mine and led me aft until we were out of earshot from the bridge.

"What d' ye know about this here winter cruise?" He fired the question at me belligerently.

"About its course and destination? Little or much, as you choose to put it. What should I know?"

He paid no attention to my question.

"Cap'n Van Dyck's all right, only he's too dum hardheaded," he confided. "Picked up his 'tween-decks lackeys in New York an' Havana. Don't like the looks o' some on 'em. If you're a friend of the Cap'n's, you keep a weather eye on that slick lookin' yaller boy that waits on table in the dinin'-saloon."

"How am I to keep an eye on him?" I asked.

"When you're eatin' with the folks, you keep 'em from talkin' about things that yaller boy hadn't ought to hear," he bit out, and with that he left me.

Here was a little mystery on our first day at sea. What was it, in particular, that the mulatto serving boy shouldn't hear? My mind went back to the talk of the previous evening, across the table in the dining-room of the New Orleans hotel. Now that I came to analyze it, I realized that it had been only cursorily explanatory on Van Dyck's part. While he seemed at the time to be perfectly frank with me, it occurred to me now that I had all along been conscious of certain reservations. A winter cruise in the Caribbean; for the ship's company a gathering of people whom he had threatened to know better before the cruise ended; these were about the only definite objects he had set forth.

But two things were pretty plainly evident. Goff was deeper in Van Dyck's confidence than I was; and, beyond this, the sailing-master was making the mistake of thinking that I knew as much as he did. It was no great matter, I thought. If the mulatto under-steward needed watching, I'd watch him, trusting to the future to reveal the reason – if any there were – why he should be watched.

Making my way to the awning-sheltered after-deck lounge, which was still untenanted, I picked out the easiest of the wicker chairs and sat down to fill my pipe for an after-breakfast smoke. Before the pipe had burned out, Ingerson put in his appearance, lighting a black cigar as he came up the cabin stair. If I had been free to select, he was the last man in our curious assortment whom I should have chosen as a tobacco companion, but short of a pointed retreat to some other part of the ship, there was no escape.

"Hello, Preble," he grunted, casting his gross body into a chair. "Monopolizing the view, are you? Seen anything of Madeleine?"

"Miss Barclay hadn't appeared when I breakfasted," I returned; and if I bore down a bit hard on the courtesy prefix it was because I hated to hear Madeleine's Christian name come so glibly off his tongue.

"How many days of this are we in for?" was his next attempt.

"That, I suppose, will be left to the wishes of the ship's company."

"All right," he grinned; "I guess I can stand it as long as Van Dyck can."

I stole a glance aside at his heavy featured, half-bestial face. It was the face of a man prematurely aged, or aging, by the simple process of giving free rein to his passions and appetites. Though he couldn't have been more than thirty-two or three, the telltale pouches were already forming under the bibulous eyes. Though I suppose he was fresh from his morning bath, I fancied I could detect the aroma of many and prolonged midnight carousals about him. Van Dyck's intimation that there was even a possibility of Madeleine Barclay's throwing herself away upon this gross piece of flesh came back to me with a tingling shock of repugnance. Surely she would never do such a thing of her own free will.