The absence of a chaperon puzzled him. The two other women at the table, a Mrs. Weston and her daughter, had evidently just met her, and the captain seemed to be the only one who had known her before. He called her "Bobby," and treated her with the easy familiarity of a big brother.
"Don't talk to me about Wyoming!" he was saying now, in answer to some boast of hers. "Anybody can have it that wants it. I make 'em a present of it, with Dakota thrown in. You remember, Bobby, the last time I was at the ranch? All hands on deck at two bells in the morning watch, a twenty-mile sail on a bucking bronco, then back to the ranch, where we shipped a cargo of food that would sink a tramp, A gallon or so of soup in the hold, a saddle of venison, a broiled antelope, and six vegetables in the forward hatchway, with three kinds of pie in the bunkers. It was a regular food jag three times a day. It took me just two weeks at sea to get over those two days on land."
Percival stirred uneasily. His tea and toast were long in coming, and a certain haunted look was dawning on his face. Through the port-holes he could see the deep-purple sky rising to give place to still deeper-purple sea as the ship rose with sickening regularity. He took an olive.
"Isn't there a good deal of motion?" asked Mrs. Weston, a delicate, appealing blonde, whose opinions were always tentative until they received the stamp of masculine approval.
"Motion!" thundered the captain, bringing down a huge tattooed fist on the table. "Isn't that like a woman? When I have ordered this calm weather especially for Mrs. Weston's benefit! I've a good mind to whistle for a hurricane."
"No, no, please!" she protested in mock terror.
Percival turned away from the foolish chatter. Matters of a deep and sinister nature occupied his mind. He felt within him wars and rumors of wars. He wished that the curtains would stop swinging out from the wall in that silly fashion. It was deuced uncanny to see them hang at an angle of twenty-five degrees, then slowly and mysteriously fall back into their places. He tried not to watch them, but it was even more dangerous to look at the man next him breaking soft-boiled eggs into a glass tumbler. He took another olive.
An electric fan overhead whirred incessantly, and the bright, flashing blades smote his eyes with diabolical precision. The circular motion, instead of cooling him, brought beads of perspiration to his brow.
"Who'll have some Chinese chow?" asked the captain. "I always order a dish or two the first night out. Can't give you any birds'-nest soup—"
A violent shudder passed over Percival, and he made a lightning calculation of the distance from the table to the stairway. In doing so he noted that it was a spiral stairway. Why in the name of heaven was everything round? The port-holes, the revolving-chairs, the electric fans, the plates, the olives—
At the thought of olives, all the pent-up possibilities became imminent certainties. He rose dizzily, collided with the Chinaman bringing his tea, and made blindly for the stairs. Half-way up, he staggered; each step rose to meet him, then fell away from his foot the moment he touched it. He grasped the baluster-rail, and stood wildly clinging, like a shipwrecked sailor to a mast. He was dazed, dumb, paralyzed with fear of the inevitable, and aware only of the burst of uncontrollable laughter that had followed his abrupt retreat. Somebody from above held out a succoring hand, at which he grasped frantically. Stumbling, half blind, this unfortunate victim to atmospheric conditions was guided up the remaining stops and out on deck, where he was anchored to the railing and kindly left to his fate.
III
CONVALESCENCE
During the monotonous days that followed, the Honorable Percival Hascombe discovered that the satisfaction of being exclusive is usually tempered by the discomfort of being bored. So lofty and forbidding had been his manner that no one had ventured to intrude even a casual good morning. A bachelor under thirty, with a competence of such dimensions that it had entailed incompetency, and a doting family that danced attendance upon his every whim, he was figuratively as well as literally at sea in this new environment. At times he faltered in his stern determination not to allow any one to become acquainted with him. It was only the fear that any leniency might result in undue liberty on the part of some aggressive American that caused him to preserve his deep seclusion.
Bored, blasé, blighted, he had one more affliction to endure. The young person had gotten hopelessly on his nerves; in fact, she was the most disturbing object on the horizon. She played shuffle-board in front of his chair when he wanted to read; she practised new dance-steps with the first officer when he wanted to sleep; she caused him to lift his unwilling eyes a dozen times an hour by her endless circuits of the deck. She was on terms of friendship with everybody on board except himself, including the second class and steerage. There seemed no end to her activities, no limit to her enthusiasm. The more she attracted his unwilling attention, the more persistently he ignored her.
As the time passed and danger of intrusion lessened, his ennui increased. One dull, humid day, when the whole world resembled a dripping sponge, Percival reached the limit of his endurance. The canvas was down, and nothing could be seen but long vistas of slippery decks, with barefooted Chinese sailors everlastingly mopping and slopping about in the wet. He had counted the five hundred and fiftieth raindrop that clung to the red life-belt at the rail when he saw the young Scotchman next him look at his watch.
"What time do you make it?" asked Percival, and his voice sounded almost strange to him.
"Eleven," said the man, getting to his feet; "aboot time for the fun to begin in the bathing-tank."
Ordinarily Percival would have allowed the conversation to end there, but he felt now that he would be risking his sanity if he sat there any longer counting raindrops.
"What's taking place?" he asked listlessly.
"The usual morning diversion: the captain's daughter is teaching a couple of bairns to swim."
"Surely they won't go in on a beastly day like this!"
"I'll be bound they do. Shall we go find out?"
Forward a number of people were already hanging over the rail, highly diverted at what was taking place in the big canvas tank on the deck below. Percival, looking down, beheld the young person standing on the lower rung of a ladder, coaxing a small boy to jump from the platform above. Now, on several occasions in the past Percival had met Disillusion face to face in a bathing-suit. A certain attenuated memory of the faithless Hortense made him wince even yet. But the round and graceful figure poised in dancing impatience on the ladder-rung defied criticism. Much as he disapproved of the public exhibition, he could not check a breath of admiration.
The small boy shivering on the platform vibrated between courage and fear; then, urged by the shouts from above, and lured by that sparkling face and those outstretched arms below, he leaped. Shrieks of laughter followed as his fat little body spanked the water, and was quickly righted and deposited, gasping, but victorious, on a life-buoy. Then the small girl must dive, and after that all three must splash and jump and float and swim like a trio of mad young porpoises.
The Honorable Percival was a good swimmer himself, and his interest kindled as he watched the perfect ease with which the young person handled herself in the narrow confines of the tank.