"It is easy to confess that which is already known," she murmured.
"Whether we are fated to live one day or fifty years, it will be all
the same to me, dear."
She lifted her face again to his, and would have returned the kisses he
gave her were it not that they lost their one-sided character this
time. It was an odd place for love-making, this darkened nook on the
deck of a disabled and beleaguered ship. But a man and a woman reck
little of time or locality when the call of love's spring-time sounds
in their ears. That magic summons can be heard but once, and it is
well with the world, for those two at least, while its ecstasy floods
the soul.
There was a chance that Joey might have been partly suffocated--though,
to all appearance, he meant to die a willing martyr--had not Suarez
leaned over the upper rail, and asked, in his grating accents, if he
heard the señor captain's voice below.
Elsie, all tremulous and rosy, and profoundly thankful for the
darkness, withdrew herself from Courtenay's embrace and answered the
Argentine.
"Ah," said Suarez, "I am glad you are there too, señorita. Will you
tell him that I am very hungry, and that I have not been relieved at
the proper time. I have been waiting half an hour or more."
"There!" cried the captain, squeezing Elsie's arm, "that comes of using
so many unnecessary explanations. I ought to have adopted the
recognized Jack Tar method and just grabbed you round the waist without
ceremony. I wonder where Boyle is. He and Christobal take the first
watch, and it must be two bells, or later. I will hunt them up.
Good-by, sweetheart. Meet you at supper in ten minutes."
It was a strange and peculiar fact that Boyle had cornered Christobal
in the saloon, and had insisted on telling him various remarkable
anecdotes concerning the one-legged skipper of the Flower of the
Ocean brig. It was still more odd that when Christobal yielded to a
fit of unwonted and melancholy silence after learning from Suarez that
the senor captain had been talking to the señorita for a very long time
on the promenade deck, Boyle should feel inclined to sing.
The chief officer's musical attainments were not of the highest, and
his repertory was archaic. But there must be some explanation of his
unwonted and melancholy chanting. He always spoke of Elsie with the
utmost admiration, and it was no secret that he rendered Courtenay a
sort of hero-worship hidden under the guise of an exaggerated belief in
the good luck which followed the captain of the Kansas in all his
doings. And then, with a chilling inspiration, Christobal knew why the
chief officer had caused him to miss the hour for relieving the watch.
Boyle had seen those two together, and had planned to leave them
undisturbed!