The Pirates' Treasure Chest (7 Gold Hunt Adventures & True Life Stories of Swashbucklers). Эдгар Аллан По

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СКАЧАТЬ which Miss Evelyn murmured. "Oh!" and inquired how long it would probably be before we reached the Bay of Panama.

      "Using only our canvas we may reach there to-morrow night, and we may not. We can't make very good time till we start the engines again," Blythe said.

      "And when are you going to start them?" Miss Berry asked.

      "Don't quite know. I'm shy of engineers. The only ones I have are on a vacation," Sam answered with a smile.

      They were not to enjoy one very long, however. About sunset the Argos began to rock gently on a sea no longer glassy.

      "Cap says we're going to have trouble," Yeager informed me. "When you get this sultry smell in the air and that queer look in the sky there is going to be something doing. She's going to begin to buck for fair."

      I noticed that Blythe was taking in sail and that the wind was rising.

      "Knock the irons off the Flemings and send Gallagher down into the engine room to stoke for them. We'll need more hands. This thing is going to hit us like a wall of wind soon," he told me.

      When I returned from the forecastle the sea had risen. As I was standing on the bridge a voice called my name. I looked down to see Evelyn on the promenade deck in a long, close-fitting waterproof coat, her hair flying a little wildly in the breeze. In the face upturned to mine was a very vivid interest.

      "We're in for it. There's going to be a real squall," she cried delightedly.

      I stepped down and tucked her arm under mine, for the deck was already tipping in the heavy run of seas.

      Most of our canvas was in, and the booming wind was humming through the rest with growing power. The Argos put her nose into the whitecaps and ran like a racer, for the engines were shaking the yacht as she plowed forward.

      The young woman turned to me an eager, mobile face into which the wind had whipped a rich color.

      "What would you take to be somewhere else? Back in your stuffy old law office, say?"

      The lurch of the staggering yacht threw her forward so that the lithe, supple body leaned against me and the breath of the dimpling lips was in my nostrils.

      Just an instant she lay there, with that smile of warm eyes and rose-leaf mouth to tantalize me, before she recovered and drew back.

      "Not for a thousand dollars a minute," I answered, a trumpet peal of indomitable happiness ringing in my heart.

      From the wheelhouse Blythe shouted a warning to be careful. His voice scarcely reached us through the singing of the wind. I nodded and took hold of the little hand that lay close to mine.

      "You must be a rich man to value the pleasure of the hour so highly," she answered lightly, with a look quick and questioning at me.

      The squall that had flung itself across the waters hit us in earnest now. We went down into the yawning troughs before us with drunken plunges and climbed the glassy hills beyond to be ready for another dive.

      "The richest man alive if last night was not a dream."

      Our fingers interlaced, palms kissing each other.

      "Does it seem to you a dream?" she asked, deep in a valley of the seas.

      From the top of the next comber I answered:

      "It did until you joined me here, but now I know you belong to me forever, both in the land of dreams and waking."

      "Did the storm teach you that?"

      I looked out at the flying scud and back at the storm-bewitched girl with laughter rippling from her throat and the wild joy of a rare moment in her eyes.

      "Yes, the storm. It brought you to my arms and your heart to mine."

      "I think it did, Jack; the wee corner of it that was not yours already."

      Her shy eyes fell and I drew her close to me. In the dusk that had fallen like a cloak over the ship her lips met mine with the sweetest surrender in the world.

      So in the clamorous storm our hearts found safe anchorage.

      Chapter XIX.

       Sense and Nonsense

       Table of Contents

      The squall passed as suddenly as it had swept upon us, and left in its wake a night of stars and moonbeat.

      Apparently there was no question of returning the mutineers to the irons from which we had freed them. Alderson, Smith, Neidlinger, and Higgins were grouped together on the forecastle deck in amiable chat.

      Blythe was still at the wheel, and our cheerful friend from the cattle country at the piano bawling out the identical chorus I had interrupted so ruthlessly just before the first blow of the mutiny was struck.

      He was lustily singing as Evelyn and I trod the deck.

      "Tom sings as if with conviction. I hope it may not be deep-rooted," I laughed.

      "If you mean me——"

      "I don't mean Miss Berry."

      To my surprise she took the words seriously.

      "It isn't so, Jack. Say it isn't so."

      "Does that mean that it is?" I asked.

      "No-o. Only I can't bear to think that our happiness will make anybody else unhappy."

      "It doesn't appear to be making him unhappy."

      "But he doesn't know—yet."

      "Then he's really serious? I wasn't quite sure."

      She sighed.

      "I wish he wasn't. How girls can like to make men fall in love with them I can't conceive. He's such a splendid fellow, too."

      "He's a man, every inch of him," I offered by way of comfort. "It won't hurt him to love a good woman even if he doesn't win her. He'll recover, but it will do him a lot of good first."

      "Would you feel so complacent if it were you?" she asked slyly, with a flash of merry eyes.

      We happened to be in the shadow of the smokestack. After the interlude I expounded my philosophy more at length.

      "He's young yet—at least his heart is. A man has to love a nice girl or two before he is educated to know the right one when he meets her. I don't pity Yeager—not a great deal, anyhow. It's life, you know," I concluded cheerfully.

      "Oh, I see. A man has to love a nice girl or two as an educative process." Her voice trailed into the rising inflection of a question. "Then the right girl ought to thank me for helping to prepare Mr. Yeager for her—if I am."

      "That's a point of view worth СКАЧАТЬ