A LOVE PASSAGE

The mate was leaning against the side of the schooner, idly watching a few red-coated linesmen lounging on the Tower Quay. Careful mariners were getting out their side-lights, and careless lightermen were progressing by easy bumps from craft to craft on their way up the river. A tug, half burying itself in its own swell, rushed panting by, and a faint scream came from aboard an approaching skiff as it tossed in the wash.

“JESSICA ahoy!” bawled a voice from the skiff as she came rapidly alongside.

The mate, roused from his reverie, mechanically caught the line and made it fast, moving with alacrity as he saw that the captain’s daughter was one of the occupants. Before he had got over his surprise she was on deck with her boxes, and the captain was paying off the watermen.

“You’ve seen my daughter Hetty afore, haven’t you?” said the skipper. “She’s coming with us this trip. You’d better go down and make up her bed, Jack, in that spare bunk.”

“Ay, ay,” said the mate dutifully, moving off.

“Thank you, I’ll do it myself,” said the scandalised Hetty, stepping forward hastily.

“As you please,” said the skipper, leading the way below. “Let’s have a light on, Jack.”

The mate struck a match on his boot, and lit the lamp.

“There’s a few things in there’ll want moving,” said the skipper, as he opened the door. “I don’t know where we’re to keep the onions now, Jack.”

“We’ll find a place for ‘em,” said the mate confidently, as he drew out a sack and placed it on the table.

“I’m not going to sleep in there,” said the visitor decidedly, as she peered in. “Ugh! there’s a beetle. Ugh!”

“It’s quite dead,” said the mate reassuringly. “I’ve never seen a live beetle on this ship.”

“I want to go home,” said the girl. “You’ve no business to make me come when I don’t want to.”

“You should behave yourself then,” said her father magisterially. “What about sheets, Jack; and pillers?”

The mate sat on the table, and, grasping his chin, pondered. Then as his gaze fell upon the pretty, indignant face of the passenger, he lost the thread of his ideas.

“She’ll have to have some o’ my things for the present,” said the skipper.

“Why not,” said the mate, looking up again—“why not let her have your state-room?”

“‘Cos I want it myself,” replied the other calmly.

The mate blushed for him, and, the girl leaving them to arrange matters as they pleased, the two men, by borrowing here and contriving there, made up the bunk. The girl was standing by the galley when they went on deck again, an object of curious and respectful admiration to the crew, who had come on board in the meantime. She stayed on deck until the air began to blow fresher in the wider reaches, and then, with a brief good-night to her father, retired below.

“She made up her mind to come with us rather suddenly, didn’t she?” inquired the mate after she had gone.

“She didn’t make up her mind at all,” said the skipper; “we did it for her, me an’ the missus. It’s a plan on our part.”

“Wants strengthening?” said the mate suggestively.

“Well, the fact is,” said the skipper, “it’s like this, Jack; there’s a friend o’ mine, a provision dealer in a large way o’ business, wants to marry my girl, and me an’ the missus want him to marry her, so, o’ course, she wants to marry someone else. Me an’ ‘er mother we put our ‘eads together and decided for her to come away. When she’s at ‘ome, instead o’ being out with Towson, direckly her mother’s back’s turned she’s out with that young sprig of a clerk.”

“Nice-looking young feller, I s’pose?” said the mate somewhat anxiously.

“Not a bit of it,” said the other firmly. “Looks as though he had never had a good meal in his life. Now my friend Towson, he’s all right; he’s a man of about my own figger.”

“She’ll marry the clerk,” said the mate, with conviction.

“I’ll bet you she don’t,” said the skipper. “I’m an artful man, Jack, an’ I, generally speaking, get my own way. I couldn’t live with my missus peaceable if it wasn’t for management.”

The mate smiled safely in the darkness, the skipper’s management consisting chiefly of slavish obedience.

“I’ve got a cabinet fortygraph of him for the cabin mantel-piece, Jack,” continued the wily father. “He gave it to me o’ purpose. She’ll see that when she won’t see the clerk, an’ by-and-bye she’ll fall into our way of thinking. Anyway, she’s going to stay here till she does.”

“You know your way about, cap’n,” said the mate, in pretended admiration.

The skipper laid his finger on his nose, and winked at the mainmast. “There’s few can show me the way, Jack,” he answered softly; “very few. Now I want you to help me too; I want you to talk to her a great deal.”

“Ay, ay,” said the mate, winking at the mast in his turn.

“Admire the fortygraph on the mantel-piece,” said the skipper.

“I will,” said the other.

“Tell her about a lot o’ young girls you know as married young middle-aged men, an’ loved ‘em more an’ more every day of their lives,” continued the skipper.

“Not another word,” said the mate. “I know just what you want. She shan’t marry the clerk if I can help it.”

The other turned and gripped him warmly by the hand. “If ever you are a father your elf, Jack,” he said with emotion, “I hope as how somebody’ll stand by you as you’re standing by me.”

The mate was relieved the next day when he saw the portrait of Towson. He stroked his moustache, and felt that he gained in good looks every time he glanced at it.

Breakfast finished, the skipper, who had been on deck all night, retired to his bunk. The mate went on deck and took charge, watching with great interest the movements of the passenger as she peered into the galley and hotly assailed the cook’s method of washing up.

“Don’t you like the sea?” he inquired politely, as she came and sat on the cabin skylight.

Miss Alsen shook her head dismally. “I’ve got to it,” she remarked.

“Your father was saying something to me about it,” said the mate guardedly.

“Did he tell the cook and the cabin boy too?” inquired Miss Alsen, flushing somewhat. “What did he tell you?”

“Told me about a man named Towson,” said the mate, becoming intent on the sails, “and—another fellow.”

“I took a little notice of HIM just to spoil the other,” said the girl, “not that I cared for him. I can’t understand a girl caring for any man. Great, clumsy, ugly things.”

“You don’t like him then?” said the mate.

“Of course not,” said the girl, tossing her head.

“And yet they ‘ve sent you to sea to get out of his way,” said the mate meditatively. “Well, the best thing you can do”—His hardihood failed him at the pitch.

“Go on,” said the girl.

“Well, it’s this way,” said the mate, coughing; “they’ve sent you to sea to get you out of this fellow’s way, so if you fall in love with somebody on the ship they’ll send you home again.”

“So they will,” said the girl eagerly. “I’ll pretend to fall in love with that nice-looking sailor you call Harry. What a lark!”

“I shouldn’t do that,” said the mate gravely.

“Why not?” said the girl.

“‘Tisn’t discipline,” said the mate very firmly; “it wouldn’t do at all. He’s before the mast.”

“Oh, I see,” remarked Miss Alsen, smiling scornfully.

“I only mean pretend, of course,” said the mate, colouring. “Just to oblige you.”

“Of course,” said the girl calmly. “Well, how are we to be in love?”

The mate flushed darkly. “I don’t know much about such things,” he said at length; “but we’ll have to look at each other, and all that sort of thing, you know.”

“I don’t mind that,” said the girl.

“Then we’ll get on by degrees,” said the other. “I expect we shall both find it come easier after a time.”

“Anything to get home again,” said the girl, rising and walking slowly away.

The mate began his part of the love-making at once, and, fixing a gaze of concentrated love on the object of his regard, nearly ran down a smack. As he had prognosticated, it came easy to him, and other well-marked symptoms, such as loss of appetite and a partiality for bright colours, developed during the day. Between breakfast and tea he washed five times, and raised the ire of the skipper to a dangerous pitch by using the ship’s butter to remove tar from his fingers.

By ten o’clock that night he was far advanced in a profound melancholy. All the looking had been on his side, and, as he stood at the wheel keeping the schooner to her course, he felt a fellow-feeling for the hapless Towson, His meditations were interrupted by a slight figure which emerged from the companion, and, after a moment’s hesitation, came and took its old seat on the skylight.

“Calm and peaceful up here, isn’t it?” said he, after waiting some time for her to speak. “Stars are very bright to-night.”

“Don’t talk to me,” said Miss Alsen snappishly.

“Why doesn’t this nasty little ship keep still? I believe it’s you making her jump about like this.”

“Me?” said the mate in amazement.

“Yes, with that wheel.”

“I can assure you “—began the mate.

“Yes, I knew you’d say so,” said the girl.

“Come and steer yourself,” said the mate; “then you’ll see.”

Much to his surprise she came, and, leaning limply against the wheel, put her little hands on the spokes, while the mate explained the mysteries of the compass. As he warmed with his subject he ventured to put his hands on the same spokes, and, gradually becoming more venturesome, boldly supported her with his arm every time the schooner gave a lurch.

“Thank you,” said Miss Alsen, coldly extricating herself, as the male fancied another lurch was coming. “Good-night.”

She retired to the cabin as a dark figure, which was manfully knuckling the last remnant of sleep from its eyelids, stood before the mate, chuckling softly.

“Clear night,” said the seaman, as he took the wheel in his great paws.

“Beastly,” said the mate absently, and, stifling a sigh, went below and turned in.

He lay awake for a few minutes, and then, well satisfied with the day’s proceedings, turned over and fell asleep. He was pleased to discover, when he awoke, that the slight roll of the night before had disappeared, and that there was hardly any motion on the schooner. The passenger herself was already at the breakfast-table.

“Cap’n’s on deck, I s’pose?” said the mate, preparing to resume negotiations where they were broken off the night before. “I hope you feel better than you did last night.”

“Yes, thank you,” said she.

“You’ll make a good sailor in time,” said the mate.

“I hope not,” said Miss Alsen, who thought it time to quell a gleam of peculiar tenderness plainly apparent in the mate’s eyes. “I shouldn’t like to be a sailor even if I were a man.”

“Why not?” inquired the other.

“I don’t know,” said the girl meditatively; “but sailors are generally such scrubby little men, aren’t they?”

“SCUBBY?” repeated the mate, in a dazed voice.

“I’d sooner be a soldier,” she continued; “I like soldiers—they’re so manly. I wish there was one here now.”

“What for?” inquired the mate, in the manner of a sulky schoolboy.

“If there was a man like that here now,” said Miss Alsen thoughtfully, “I’d dare him to mustard old Towson’s nose.”

“Do what?” inquired the astonished mate.

“Mustard old Towson’s nose,” said Miss Alsen, glancing lightly from the cruet-stand to the portrait.