Part 32

“I was thinking about the men who came and annoyed him. I can understand how he felt, because I am 'a 'native' myself.”

“I thought you were from outside.”

“My name is Boyd Mayo. I'm from Mayoport.”

She looked up at him with frank interest.

“My folks built this schooner,” he stated, with modest pride.

“I'm Polly Candage--I'm named for it.”

“It's too bad!” he blurted. “I don't mean to say but what the name is all right,” he explained, awkwardly, “but I don't think that either of us is particularly proud of this old hooker right at the present moment.” He went across the cabin and sat down on a transom and, tested the bump on the back of his head with cautious palm.

She did not reply, and he set his elbows on his knees and proceeded to nurse his private grouch in silence, quite excluding his companion from his thoughts. Now that he had been snatched so summarily from his hateful position on board the Olenia, his desire to leave her was not so keen. After Mayo's declaration to the owner, Marston might readily conclude that his skipper had deserted. His reputation and his license as a shipmaster were in jeopardy, and he had already had a bitter taste of Marston's intolerance of shortcomings. If Marston cared to bother about breaking such a humble citizen, malice had a handy weapon. But most of all was Mayo concerned with the view Alma Marston would take of the situation. She would either believe that he had fallen overboard in the skirmish with the attacking Polly or had deserted without warning--and in the case of a lover both suppositions were agonizing. His distress was so apparent that the girl, from her seat on the opposite transom, extended sympathy in the glances she dared to give him.

“How did you tear your coat so badly in the back?” she ventured at last.

“Spikes your excellent father left sticking out of his martingale,” he said, a sort of boyish resentment in his tones.

“Then it is only right that I should offer to mend it for you.”

She hurried to a locker, as if glad of an excuse to occupy herself. She produced her little sewing-basket and then came to him and held out her hand.

“Take it off, please.”

“You needn't trouble,” he expostulated, still gruff.

“I insist. Please let me do a little something to make up for the Polly's naughtiness.”

“It will be all right until I can get ashore--and perhaps I'll never have need to wear the coat again, anyway.”

“Won't you allow me to be doing something that will take my mind off my troubles, sir?” Then she snapped her finger into her palm and there was a spirit of matronly command in her voice, in spite of her youth. “I insist, I say! Take off your coat.”

He obeyed, a little grin crinkling at the corners of his mouth--a flicker of light in his general gloom. After he had placed the coat in her hands he sat down on the transom and watched her busy fingers. She worked deftly. She closed in the rents and then darned the raveled places with bits of the thread pulled from the coat itself.

“You are making it look almost as good as new.”

“A country girl must know how to patch and darn. The folks in the country haven't as many things to throw away as the city folks have.”

“But that--what you are doing--that's real art.”

“My aunt does dressmaking and I have helped her. And lately I have been working in a millinery-shop. Any girl ought to know how to use her needle.”

He remembered what Mr. Speed had said about the reason for her presence on the Polly. He cast a disparaging glance around the bare cabin and decided in his mind that Mr. Speed had reported truthfully and with full knowledge of the facts. Surely no girl would choose that sort of thing for a summer vacation.

She bent her head lower over her work and he was conscious of warmer sympathy for her; their troubled affairs of the heart were in similar plight. He felt an impulse to say something to console her and knew that he would welcome understanding and consolation from her; promptly he was afraid of his own tongue, and set curb upon all speech.

“A man never knows how far he may go in making fool talk when he gets started,” he reflected. “Feeling the way I do to-night, I'd better keep the conversation kedge well hooked.”

Now that her hands were busy, she did not find the silence embarrassing. Mayo returned to his ugly meditations.

After a time he was obliged to shift himself on the transom. The schooner was heeling in a manner which showed the thrust of wind. He glanced up and saw that the rain was smearing broad splashes on the dingy glass of the windows. The companion hatch was open, and when he cocked his ear, with mariner's interest in weather, he heard the wind gasping in the open space with a queer “guffle” in its tone.

Instinctively he began to look about the cabin for a barometer.