"See here, you know you're quite wrong about the guiltiness of reading this. I'm sure she wouldn't mind. She's not that sort. Here we are menaced by the inferno of a mutiny. We are no better than mice waiting the pleasure of a cat, which means to crush them.... The atmosphere will drive us mad. This book is like a breeze off the heather.... I tell you it helps."
In abnormal times men entertain abnormal ideas and warped notions. I sat cross-legged on the deck beside him and stuffed tobacco into my pipe. I said nothing.
"It's all getting on my nerves. I'm losing my grip!" he admitted. "Last night I dreamed of a nasty row and all day a bit of rhyme has been running through my brain." He paused a moment, then quoted:
"''Twas a cutlass swipe or an ounce of lead Or a yawning hole in a battered head, And the scuppers glut with a rotting red.
"'And there they lay while the soggy skies Dreened all day long in upstaring eyes, At murk sunset and at foul sunrise.'"
He broke off and laughed at himself unsteadily.
"Get your mind off it," I commanded shortly. "Fetch out the blank-book. Let's read about her début party."
But the passage at which the book fell open dealt with a time prior to débuts. At the head of the page was pasted a newspaper clipping hinting at personalities but giving no names.
"One of the most beautiful and popular members of the younger set in the summer colony" had been capsized while sailing in the harbor. The youth who accompanied her had been seized with cramps and she had kept not only herself but her helpless escort above water until the tardy arrival of help. Beneath, in her own hand, was scrawled:
"Did they expect me to drown him? I had to stand by, of course. What else could a fellow do? But I spoiled a dress I look nice in. I'm sorry for that."
Appended to this was a postscript so badly written that it was hard to decipher. I could guess that her cheeks had colored as she wrote it.
"Maybe after all, I am a grandstander. I did get awfully tired--and I pretended that _he_ was looking on, and was swimming out to help me."
"By Jove" snorted Mansfield, "she's a ripping good sort. I wonder who she pretended was looking on."
But it was only after some searching that we found him duly catalogued, and even then she gave him no name. Yet in trailing him through the pages, we came to know her quite well, and to render sincere allegiance. She was not at all conventional. She was one of those rare discoveries upon which the prospector in life comes only when he strikes an El Dorado. She dared to think her own thoughts and did not grow into the stereotyped mold of imitation. We felt from the clean, instinctive courage of her tone and view-point that if ill chance had marooned her with us on this imperiled ship, she would bear herself more gallantly than we could hope to do, and that she would tread these filthy decks with no spots on the whiteness of her skirts.
