Barter (Rowland)/Part 2

I Asked Him if He Was the Owner. “Reckon So," He Answered. “How Come You All Run in Here?”

VII

THE next three days were fair, with variable breezes sometimes freshened for a few hours, then fell light again, but enabled us in a general way to keep our course. I was cutting across to make our next landfall at the lighthouse off the shoals of what is known as the False Cape, some fifteen miles northeast of Canaveral.

The pleasant temperature and smooth sea made cruising a delight, and with the four of us all sailor folk the work was negligible. Nothing more was said about our mission, supposed or actual, this topic, as if by tacit mutual consent being taboo.

Then out of a clear day came the second complication and from the same source. We had been standing away all day close-hauled on the starboard tack, with a fresh sou'westerly breeze, and toward sunset I had decided to put about, when Allaire, who had been studying the chart, asked abruptly, “Aren't you getting pretty well offshore, Pom?”

“Yes; but I don't like to make short tacks on a long run. Sometimes a shift of the wind lets you swing back on your course.”

“Where were you going after dropping me?” she asked.

“South,” I answered.

This vague answer fired the bomb.

“Well, then, you can keep on going south, because I'm going with you.”

We were standing by the wheel, Cyril steering, and as I glanced at him I did not miss the sudden flare of eagerness in his eyes.

“That's not in the agreement," I said.

“What agreement?" she demanded. “I didn't know there was any except that I was to get a third share.”

“Call it an understanding then,"' I said.

“Call it what you like,” she retorted; “there was nothing mentioned about my going with you or staying home. I like Mrs. Fairchild and I've decided to stay with her. I'll go ashore when she goes ashore.”

Now what was I to say to this? I could not claim that Allaire was in the way or in any manner impeded our activities any more than did Mrs. Fairchild. On the contrary, she was a help rather than a hindrance, taking her daytime trick at the wheel and assisting with the commissary. Cyril and I stood watch and watch at night, no lookout being kept or needed on so small a vessel in that clear weather. So here I was, up a tree.

Allaire, finding me at a loss, followed up her decision by saying, “I think you are most discourteous and unkind. I haven't bothered you, have I?”

“Not until this moment.”

“Then why do you want to put me ashore—all alone and nearly broke in that millionaire gift shop of a Palm Beach? Why should I spend what little money I've got when there's plenty of room here aboard my own schooner? Time enough to land me when you start to take on cargo. Don't you think so, Cyril?”

Cyril gave me a stricken look, then said eagerly, with the resourcefulness of the born adventurer, “You bet I do, Miss Forsyth. We've got a lot of cruising ahead before we can hope to load booze.”

“What do you mean?” Allaire asked.

Cyril took a running dive into a fresh sea of deceit.

“Well, you see, Miss Forsyth, we've got everything but money, and you've got to have money to buy booze.”

Allaire's lids narrowed. “I understood your plan was to trade these goods aboard for a cargo of rum,” she said.

“Ah, that's just it. We didn't tell you everything about this scheme for fear you might get discouraged.”

He looked at me for sanction, but I merely shrugged.

“What's the game, Pom?” Allaire asked in her hard bridge-playing voice.

“Just what Cyril says,” I snapped.

“But he said a few days ago that he knew where he could trade all this stuff down below for rum.”

“So I can, Miss Forsyth,” Cyril said eagerly; “but what price, that sort of nigger rum? The big money is all in the imported stuff—whisky, liqueurs and even champagne. When your carrying capacity is limited, there's no sense in loading up with low-priced stuff.”

“Then how do you propose to go about it?” Allaire demanded. “It begins to look to me as if I'd been fooled.”

“Well, then it looks to me,” I said, “as if you'd had a good chance to save your money and live practically for nothing and have a good time doing it. And you can keep on having it indefinitely so long as you don't kick up a fuss.”

“It seems to me that I wouldn't have had all those things if I hadn't come aboard. What are you up to anyhow?”

“Well, it's like this,” I said: “We're a little syndicate starting in to operate without capital. To get this we've got to do some trading first. You supply the schooner, Mrs. Fairchild supplies the trade stuff, Cyril supplies the knowledge of how to go about it and I sail the boat. Cyril and I have also managed to dig up about a thousand dollars between us; but some of that has been already spent for equipment that we couldn't trade in, cleaning and painting the schooner and some nautical instruments and other gear, and we are going to need what's left to run on until we get a chance to trade off the stuff we've got aboard for tropical products that we can market at a profit in the North.”

Allaire looked at me as if I had been the black sheep of the family just forced to confess that I had purloined the bonds from safe deposit and bought a wildcat with the proceeds.

“Then you mean to say that you've got to make this crazy voyage before you can even hope to start earning something?”

“Cyril,” I called desperately, and he joined us, looking worried and a bit scared, “will you please explain to Miss Forsyth our plans for trying to make a stake at barter before we can hope to tackle anything that promises more and quicker and riskier money?”

Cyril responded valiantly to this passing of the buck. With eager words and vigorous gestures, he outlined briefly our scheme. Allaire listened with a frozen face.

“I think I understand,” she said. “It's struck me several times that Mrs. Fairchild and Cyril were on the point of telling me something. But I suppose their respect for you as an officer and gentleman kept them quiet. It takes that sort. I believe you told me the other day that when you got your cargo of rum aboard you would have means of defending it. Perfectly true—when you did. And I never saw through it all. Well, I am a fool.”

“My eye!” Cyril murmured. “Serves us right for holding out.”

“I'm not blaming you, Cyril, nor Mrs. Fairchild. You both wanted to put your cards on the table that first day at Beach City. Mr. Stirling sidetracked you. Like a fool, I jumped to the conclusion that he was trying to keep it possible for me to swear honestly under oath that I had never been informed about the use to which my schooner was to be put in case you got into any trouble. And I thought it splendid of him, and refrained from asking questions.”

Cyril threw out his hands.

“It was all my fault, Miss Forsyth.”

“It was nothing of the sort. You and Mrs. Fairchild protested from the very start against my being tricked. You've been protesting ever since. But this officer and gentleman, war veteran and former friend of mine managed to persuade you to hold your tongues.” She turned to me with a yellow blaze in her eyes. “Is that true, or isn't it?”

“Absolutely true,'” I answered.

“Well, I'm glad that at least you've got enough manhood left in that empty shell of yours to admit it. What do you think of yourself anyhow?”

“Just at this moment my mind is on something else,” I answered. “I am more interested in the dirty look of the sky. The hurricane season is not yet over, and I think that we had better postpone our individual affairs and get out of this.”

“Yes,” said Allaire, “let's talk about the weather. Swell coming up and glass going down, with smoky sunrise and sunset tints. Last night the moon had a silver ring, and tonight no moon we see.'”

“All of which is exact, like your description of myself, but more important just now. If I let you fool yourself, it was for your own good. As a rum runner, this little schooner would last about as long as a mullet in a school of barracuda. Worked our way, we three are betting all we've got in the world she'll earn some safe and honest money.”

“Especially safe,” Allaire said.

“Yes, while we happen to be shipmates. But that won't be for long. I will deliver you and your boat at Palm Beach, when you can make what arrangements you like with Mrs. Fairchild and Cyril. I'll take what's left of my stake and beat it—call it a bad bet. And if we don't get in or out of here, it's apt to be a worse one.”

VIII

THE whole position was absurd. A girl of Allaire's position and antecedents, who should have been the one to stand out against unlawful traffic, angry and disappointed because the ones of whom it might have been expected desired to keep within the law and to keep her within it.

But as the night wore on I found other and more immediate cares for consideration. The earlier indications of a change in the weather for the worse had got past me unobserved. Until the morning of that day the thermometer had been above the normal, with cool, bright, pleasant weather and a long swell running in from the southeast. There had been the high, light, feathery, cirrus clouds radiating from the lighter zone on the horizon that might betoken the center of a coming cyclonic disturbance. It was, as I had said, getting toward the end of the hurricane season, this in the Northern Hemisphere from June to October inclusive.

The relative frequency of hurricanes, according to my chart, was six for June, July four, August twenty-five, September thirty-two and October thirty-one, and it was now the twenty-fifth of October, so that there would be nothing abnormal about our catching one.

Looking now at the barometer, I found that it had dropped another tenth since four o'clock. It was therefore necessary for us to do one of two things—run for some small snug harbor or else get well to sea to ride it out.

This second course would be decidedly unpleasant. As we were at this time only about sixty miles due north of the Little Bahama Bank with protecting shoals and islands, it seemed to me that we ought to fetch into good shelter before the gale broke. The coast of Florida was too far away, and of all places I did not want to be caught at the mouth of the Florida Strait.

Wherefore I told Cyril to start the motor and, with the aid of that and a damp easterly breeze that held fairly fresh, I laid a course for the Little Bahama Bank, planning to run in behind the keys and anchor. It is in such cases that even a partisan for sail is glad of a motor drilling along, for as the night wore on the fickle breeze went all round the compass, with light rain squalls, and the glass kept sagging steadily down.

No mistake about these symptoms now, and it was with tremendous relief that in the gray, forbidding daylight I managed to wedge in between a couple of small islands and let go two anchors, straddling them out in three fathoms of water. A good snug berth even should the wind whip round and come back at us, in which case the worst that could happen would be to jam us up into the shallows in still water.

I doubted, though, that I was just where I had wanted to get; possibly farther to the westward. The gray morning showed then that the nearest island, only about three furlongs away, was inhabited, for a thin swirl of smoke was rising above the trees that I was surprised to see growing there on such low sand keys.

The look of the place did not seem to tally with the chart, and I was inclined to think that I had blundered, in which doubt I was correct. But at least we were in good shelter.

Having got everything snug aboard, I went below for a nap, and on coming up a couple of hours later I found Allaire on deck. She chose to ignore her flare-up of the day before. A wise procedure when shipmates aboard a small boat.

“Good morning, Pom. Where are we?”

“Somewhere in the Bahamas,” I answered. “Looks to me as if my navigation was like my business methods—a bit crooked in spots.”

Illustration (unusable): “It's Plain I'm Shacked to a Brute, Cyril. Good-by. Don't Give Up the Ship”

“Well, I suppose that both are subject to error now and then. Sorry to have lost my temper yesterday. I've got no faith in this scheme of yours, but I'd like to give it a try. Time enough to grouse when we crash.”

I met this qualified apology halfway.

“All right then, let's consider the case postponed. Perhaps you're right. Cyril may be as far off on his barter calculations as I seem to have been on my reckonings. But since I've muddled through to a good snug berth, maybe he will muddle through to a good bargain, somehow, sometime, somewhere.”

Allaire nodded.

“There's a hit or miss about this columbiad that has its spice of romance. I see a house over there in the trees. Let's go over and see if we can't swap off a powder puff for a crate of oranges.”

The rain squalls were already whipping past, but I hauled the motor dinghy alongside and we shoved off. The two others were still asleep. Drawing near the island, we saw a dilapidated jetty, and then through the trees discovered to our surprise the dingy white columns of a big old house set back in pines that looked as if they had once been planted in orderly arrangement.

“Inconceivable that anybody should want to live in a place like this,” I said

As we walked up toward the house there rose suddenly the dismal baying of a hound, a lugubrious rather than threatening note, sounding through the wind in the trees and the rain that was now crashing down like the alarm bell of a very old church. Then the dog appeared. A huge Spanish bloodhound, gaunt but heavy and low hung. It circled us in a wide arc, giving voice from time to time, but furtive and cowering. It was white with age about the muzzle and acted as if blind, or nearly so.

“Cheerful looking brute,” I said.

“The whole place looks like the dreary echo of a drearier past,” said Allaire.

We noticed then as we proceeded certain evidences of a bygone elegance hard to explain in so remote and dismal a locality. The half-dead trees were parked in formal fashion, with here and there statues or fragments of them in marble, some on pedestals that had settled askew, some fallen and broken. The plump legs of a Diana stuck out from a clump of bay. A Hermes, leaning backward, but still holding his caduceus, gave an expression of struggling like Laocoon, in the coils of a big twisted grapevine. Moss had grown over what had once been brick paths bordered with blocks of coral stone that must have been brought there from a distance. Through a vista in the trees we saw a ruined fountain choked with vines, and near it a frangipani in blossom. The exotic perfume of this and other flowering shrubs and trees, jasmine and orange blossoms, gave a pervasive odor, sweet, yet in that mournful place, depressing, like the odor of flowers on a bier. A tumble-down wall that inclosed what might have been stables, if one could imagine any use for horses on what seemed to be an island not more than half a mile across. This also was covered with red hibiscus and bougainvillea that must also have been imported.

Seeing nobody, we made our way round the end of the house, which was flanked by a broad veranda of which the planking had in spots completely rotted away, to leave cavernous gaps. The rain leaked down through the roof, and splashed woefully here and there. Some dark furry animal that might have been a cat or a raccoon whisked into a crevice between the long flat English bricks of the foundation.

The old hound had ceased his clamor and was now stalking forlornly behind us, drawing gradually closer, head raised, long ears back and drooping, and we saw that both his eyes were clouded.

“Gay sort of place, Pom,” said Allaire. “When we get rich trading we might buy it and turn it into a Southern winter resort.”

This flippant speech cheered me a little, as did also the general appearance of Allaire, who was buttoned from chin to ankles in a thin light-yellow slicker, sou'wester to match and hunting boots.

The ramshackle old mansion—for it was nothing less—seemed to be double-fronted, though the lagoon side on which we had approached would have been considered the rear, as on passing round we discovered a more formal and imposing façade with big bleached wooden columns that upheld a portico.

The ground stretched out with scarcely any declivity to the wide sandy beach of what must have been a sound, as there was no big swell breaking on it, and we could see the white surf curling over a bar about a mile offshore. A flock of flamingos feeding there rose and winged their heavy way down the beach, then turned south toward the Little Bahama Bank.

So far the only sign of occupation had been the smoke swirling up from a big brick chimney, and of which we caught the spicy aromatic odor. We went up some stone steps to an imposing door on which was a huge bronze knocker shaped like a dolphin.

With the curious constraint one feels at breaking the silent and abysmal gloom of such a bleached shell of earlier pomp, I struck this sharply, when the old hound, squatting in the rain that came straight down in this sheltered lee, supplemented the announcement by a deep and solemn bay.

Then, as the reverberations from the knocker died away, the door swung open and we were confronted by a very old negro in the tarnished livery of other days that was yet neatly brushed and cleaned, and suggested the idea that our presence had been discovered and our call expected. The face of this old man was not lined or fissured, but its entire skin surface was a complexity of the finest wrinkles radiating in all directions, and his deep-sunken eyes that were still bright and keen had a white arcus senilis, wider than any I had ever seen, around the iris, and giving to the pupil an expression of peering out through a peephole. His wool also was thick, the hue of white wood ashes, as if powdered, which perhaps it was.

He bowed low, making some sort of inarticulate mumble which by its sound suggested a cleft palate, though there was no evidence of such in the shape of his lip, then stood back and motioned us to enter. We did so, and found ourselves in a spacious hall, dark under the conditions of the weather, but of pleasing proportions, and from the rear of which a broad stair wound up to a gallery. The gloom of this interior was enhanced by the wainscoting that seemed to be of mahogany or teak or possibly Flemish oak. The balustrade was of wrought iron, thin rods supporting a polished rail; and the newel post a Corinthian column, and on its top a cannon ball that might have been used in one of the Parrott guns with which Fort Sumter hurled defiance at the Star of the West. Over the mantel were fastened a pair of old seventeenth-century cutlasses.

Allaire nudged me.

“Look, Pom! A genuine Gobelin or I'm no judge of tapestries.”

“No doubt you're right,” I answered, “because if that mirror with the beveled center glass and the Sèvres plaques inlaid isn't a museum piece, then a former fad of mine was time wasted.”

The ancient butler showed us into an adjoining room. We entered it to find a spacious salon of the same pleasing proportions as the entrance hall, but curious in its structure. What appeared to be the knee timbers of some old frigate supported the floor above, at both sides of an enormous fireplace and directly opposite.

But these oak knees were carven, mermaid caryatids, from which I guessed that they had come from the ward-room of some ancient ship of the line, a tremendous seagoing fighting swell that might even antedate the Revolutionary War.

We discovered then that the whole room had been built from the wreckage of a ship. Its ceiling beams had the spring of carlings; not the ordinary deck beams, but slightly curved, such as might have supported the roof of what was known on the early Spanish galleons as the casa and on French vessels of the epoch as the château; in plain English, the house built on the poop deck.

A single glance around showed the other fittings also to be of ship origin, even to the flooring, which was not parquet but cabin deck. I leaned down and saw that the crevices between the narrow planks—mahogany, I thought—were beveled, and that some morsels of pitch still adhered to them; also here and there a wisp of oakum.

And down on this relic of early magnificence trickled here and there water, leaking through from the floor above, over which there must have been a roof that, even if at one time impermeably constructed of split cypress, could scarcely have been expected to last as might the interior of which it formed the carapace.

The old butler had withdrawn; and as there was nobody to be seen, we walked over to the big fireplace, in which smoldered some pieces of driftwood, a blaze superfluous so far as warmth was needed, but laid apparently for decorative purposes. That old house could not have been dried out if it had been set afire, but hissed itself away in steam.

The stately room was nearly bare, and just as a stately ship come in from a long and stormy voyage with stark evidences of repair and renovation to rig and hull, just so did this old parlor show the stress of past adversities. But there was this difference: That the ship might be conceived as having reached her port at last, while this whole residence appeared still to be derelict. It was not even a wreck stripped, finished, left to the mercy of wind or wave or lying gauntly on some uncharted reef.

But the owner had either scorned or been too slothful to make cheap or shoddy substitutions for treasures sacrificed. Instead of availing himself of the funds certainly to be had from the sale of such articles as the beautiful tapestry and mirror, and two of the magnificent prelate's chairs of painted leather, shoved into corners out of the drip of rain, to purchase cheaper articles that might in some way fill the voids, he had left them yawning except where physical necessity demanded service.

From the ceiling in the center of the room, where we could imagine a great luster of sparkling crystal prisms to have hung, there dangled now one of the big brass quarter lanterns that might have swung from the high poop of a galleon, and even this tarnished and battered makeshift seemed empty. It was inconceivable that any individual could be so indifferent to decay as not at least to repair the roof that covered him with the proceeds of the sale of some precious object, if only for the preservation of what still remained.

But while waiting for the appearance of whatever sort of hermit might still inhabit the place, our examination of it was rudely interrupted by such a rushing and a roaring of wind that sounded as if a breaking tidal wave was sweeping over us. The old house shook and shuddered and shrieked in anguish from the salients exposed. Protected by the enormous live oaks, it could have received the shock of no more than the whorls and eddies of the wind; but such was the force of this as to give in that first blast a compression of the eardrums, as when one drops in an express elevator, or a train plunges into the tunnel under the bed of a river.

The ashes from the fireplace swirled out into the room. Parts of the house seemed pelted by flying débris, some of it torn away perhaps from the structure itself and whirling in the vortex. A fine mist drove in through the shuttered windows.

I had not counted on anything so sudden as this. The hurricane had broken on us with full fury. So terrifying was the shrieking clamor of it that Allaire fell back against me as if sent reeling from a physical violence. Perhaps it actually was that, as the sudden changing of tensions in such a disturbance works curious freaks, suggesting unknown forces in operation, possible vacuum pockets interspersed with areas of tremendous pressure expanding like explosions. Not even thunderbolts can be so terrifying as these uncanny freaks of atmospheric equilibrium tormented and struggling.

“Look! Oh, look!” Allaire gasped. “The chairs are walking!”

It was true. The great chairs appeared to be moving out from their dark corners as if imbued with life and motion or propelled by invisible hands. Worse than that, there seemed to be a horrid undulatory movement to the outer wall of the house, and its complainings were those of a wooden sailing ship writhing in a cross sea. No doubt, like the ship, its construction was treenailed, or trunneled, as sailors say—put together with wooden pegs. The old lantern swung and oscillated.

My first thought, of course, was for the schooner. I ran out into the darkened hall, then down to the end of it and up the stairs to the first landing, where there was a small window of heavy glass, set in a bronze casement, the whole evidently taken from the stern transom of a ship. Even through the rain that beat on this I could see the shallow waters of the bay frothing and boiling. But the hurricane was beating directly in on the jetty where we had landed, or what had been that flimsy structure, for there was nothing now left of it but a few stakes.

I could not see the schooner, of course; but I did see our skiff, which had been blown out of the water bodily up onto the bank and was lying capsized in a mass of rhododendrons. It was difficult to see how the ramshackle old house managed to resist such terrific forces. But a moment's reflection told me that since it must already have withstood many such in its long tenure, it might reasonably be counted on to hold its anchorage. Also, it was probable, I thought, that the blast of wind was in some way shunted upward over it, just as when we stand on the bridge of a ship in a gale, protected by the weather strip that comes only chest high and piles the wind up over one's head.

No ground tackle would stand such a strain, of course. But dragging astern, the keel would jam in the slowly shelving bottom, and the loose surface water might be merely lashed over the vessel with no damage, for the little bay was too small and the water too shallow to admit of any pounding sea. It seemed rather as if the contents of the lagoon might be blown out of it, as one might blow the tea out of a saucer.

Allaire had followed me and now clung to my arm.

“Oh, Pom, did you ever see anything like it?”

“Never! Good job we put in here.”

“Do you think the house will stand? Hadn't we better get out?”

“No; we might get hit by something. The wind seems to strike the bay and glance up. That accounts for the missing shingles on the roof.”

“What can this place be? What sort of people live here?”

“I can't imagine. Let's try to hunt 'em out.”

We started then to make a search of the house. Going along the gallery, we tried all the doors, but found them locked; or, to judge from their solid resistance, nailed. There were only the two stories and an attic. Coming finally to a front room on the most sheltered corner, we found this to be on the latch. It was a spacious room, bare except for a big four-poster bed with a canopy of faded brocade, a beautiful secretaire of Dutch marquetry, a big Jacobean armchair and a Louis XVI dressing table of bois sculpté, with the gold leaf tarnished and worn off in spots.

On one side of the room was a chaise longue in three parts and larger than any I had ever seen, the upholstery of the finest old worked needle-point; and over this was thrown one of those priceless coverlets made of the separate breasts of a multitude of eider ducks, so fine and dense and soft as to be in texture between fur and feathers. On the stained, discolored wall hung a mirror of bombé glass in a Florentine frame.

“My word!” Allaire whispered. “This room alone would assay at about a hundred thousand dollars.”

“Don't tell me that this old carpet is Aubusson,” I said.

“It is, though. That rare early rose, if you were to put a vacuum cleaner on it! Only a connoisseur could see through the dinginess and stains of all this stuff.”

“And the house falling apart,” I said. “But where's the owner, and what's to prevent some pirate putting in here and helping himself to a fortune, though not one person in a thousand would recognize it as such?”

Leaving these riddles unsolved, we continued our search. But the place was abandoned, temporarily at least, unless the furtive proprietor had nailed himself up in some room.

The first squall whirled furiously off, though the wind still blew with cyclonic force. Looking out through a momentary brightening, I was relieved to see the Tinker—lying about where she had been, though slued a little and with a slight list that told of her having taken the ground. But there was still no chance of our getting off to her, and I wondered a little when that would be.

We went and found the old butler in the kitchen, a sort of cookhouse in the rear and built also of heavy ships' timbers with solid oaken knees. He appeared to be preparing some sort of food in an iron pot with three legs; pepper pot perhaps. He looked up at us with a sort of simian grimace no doubt intended for a smile. But he could not speak; seemed unable to make more than the most inarticulate of mumbles. To all our questions he answered with little nods and what we took for reassuring gestures of his apish hands.

It was a relief at any rate to know that the schooner was safe, though hard aground. The latter did not worry me, as I thought it probable that she would float as the pressure of the wind eased or its direction changed to drive the water back in again.

I went out then and struggled down to inspect our dinghy, and was not surprised to find that it had been badly strained and opened up along the garboard strake, so that it would take some considerable repair to make it float again. There was no other boat that I could discover; but even if there had been, I did not believe that we would be able to get off aboard the schooner that day.

Allaire had stayed in the house and I did not tell her we might have to be its guests for the night. Apparently the proprietor had gone off somewhere and was prevented from returning, if indeed he intended to return shortly. I had no idea as to where the nearest neighbors might be found. We had not intended to visit this part of the Bahamas, and my chart was the small-scale one of the Atlantic Coast from Halifax to Haiti.

That furious day wore through in some fashion. The old butler, as if taking it for granted that we were to be respectfully entertained, offered the best afforded by the establishment. At about midday he served us the food that we had seen him preparing, which proved to be, as I thought, a pepper pot of sorts, though it would have needed an analytic chemist to discover the ingredients. It was appetizing, well seasoned and rich, with gumbo and rice; and with it he served us baked yams and a sort of spoon dish, coffee; also ship biscuits and guava jelly.

He also set before us an old silver-mounted decanter of excellent wine that Allaire pronounced Chambertin.

“Our mysterious host does himself not so badly,” I said, making an effort at cheer.

Allaire did not respond to this. Not only was the constant roar of the wind and creaking of the house getting on her nerves but also, I imagined, the slim prospect of getting back aboard the schooner for the night.

Presently she asked, “How are we going to get off aboard, Pom?”

“I'm afraid we can't until Cyril is able to come in for us, Allaire.”

“Well, I'm not going to spend the night in the fearful place if I have to swim for it!”

“There is no use swimming for it unless the wind eases,” I told her. “It would be like trying to swim up Niagara.”

Then, as I had expected, the early twilight was cut off abruptly and the night came down with a sudden increase in the fury of the wind, or perhaps it was the gloom that made it seem that way.

The old butler had built up the fire with pitch-pine knots and by the light of it and a hurricane lantern he served us a supper of fish, cold smoked ham and salad, with a bowl of oranges and bananas.

“Why does he take this trouble with us?” Allaire asked. “One might think that whoever owns this fearful place had gone off leaving orders that guests were expected and to be entertained.”

“Not likely,” I said. “Put it down to old colonial hospitality, the taking it for granted that visitors must be cared for.”

Then after supper came the question of our accommodations for the night.

“The sooner you go to sleep,” I said to Allaire, “the sooner you'll get the night over with. There's that big four-poster and the eider coverlet. You'd better connect with them both.”

“How about you?” she asked.

“I'll stretch out here by the fire.”

But Allaire, though brave enough by day, now found herself unable to face the terrors of that big ghostly room and the fearful noises caused by the fury of the storm. I pointed out that, on the whole, these were better than utter silence would have been or a hush through which might come noises eerie and strange and inexplicable. Those made by the wind had at least no mystery about them.

I went up with Allaire and a candle, but she would not hear of my going down again.

“You camp over on that chaise longue,” she said. “I'd go off my head if I were to wake up and find myself alone.”

The night wore on in some fashion, both of us sleeping fitfully, I think, though Allaire never made a sound, while I at least did not snore. Then, a little after midnight, I was awakened by a sudden profound hush more disturbing in its contrast than the roaring of the hurricane. It awoke Allaire also.

“The wind has stopped,” she cried.

“Yes, we must have got just the skirt of this, the felly of the wheel as one might say, which, of course, is turning faster.”

“Perhaps it's the storm center,” she suggested.

“I don't think so. It's too utterly still. But we can soon tell.”

We waited, when it finally became evident that the wind was not going to begin again. In the relief from this tension we both dropped off to sleep, more restfully on Allaire's part; though I woke at the end of an hour, having the schooner on my mind. I got up and looked out to discover that the sky had completely cleared and shone with a multitude of very brilliant stars. Either we had been struck, as I had said, by the mere rim of the hurricane, or else it had actually been more in the nature of a violent squall.

I got to thinking then about the treasures that the old place contained, and wondering who and what the owner could be and why he chose to live isolated in the ruins of this former grandeur when he had the means for comfortable existence in some more cheerful surroundings.

It looked to me as if long years ago some great ship of the line had been cast ashore there and much of the wreckage saved by the keymen of the region, who, before the establishment of lighthouses, had been wreckers and pirates more or less, known to display false lights and then cut off vessels in distress.

I remembered the story of a governor-general of the Bahamas, who in making his annual tour of inspection had asked these folk what he could best do for the improvement of their conditions, when their naïve answer had been, “Take away these accursed lights that have ruined us.”

Dropping finally to sleep, I was awakened by a glow of rosy light streaming through the eastern windows and Allaire stirring about.

“Good morning, Pom,” she said. “This looks a little better.”

I sprang up and there came at that moment a hail from outside. It was Cyril, who had come ashore in the dory. I ran down and out to ask how they had fared aboard.

“It was pretty bad,” he said, “but there's no damage to speak of. We're hard aground, but I think we can warp off on the high tide.”

“There's only a couple of feet of it,” I said.

“Well, it was low when we went up and then the wind shifted. The dinghy's going to take some carpentering.”

The old butler, true to form, served us coffee and biscuits and fruit. Cyril had already breakfasted, and went back to bring in Mrs. Fairchild.

I said to Allaire, “When we go we'll reward this old man with some of our trade stuff.”

“I don't think we need to be in any hurry to go, Pom.”

“Why not?”

“Well, here's a Golconda of wonderful things. Since this has degenerated into a trading voyage, we might start here.”

I shook my head.

“This place is under a hundred miles to Palm Beach inlet, and whoever owns it must be entirely aware of the value of his things.”

“I'm not so sure. If he did, I think he'd mend his roof, and I doubt if anybody knows about it. We came in his absence and there was nothing for old Pompey to do but take us in.” She had named him Pompey, which seemed most apt. “Perhaps if the master had been here our reception would have been less hospitable. There's no telling what wonderful things may be in all these locked rooms; and the chances are, I think, that he keeps the other doors locked too. Besides, this is entirely off all the water routes.”

“Well,” I said, “if he feels inclined to trade, our whole stock in trade, with the boat thrown in, wouldn't fetch half the value of this room alone.”

Seen by daylight, there was a wild and abandoned beauty about the place. Some turkeys and chickens were scratching about. The old hound was sunning himself on the rotted porch.

We spent the morning in getting the Tinker off the ground. Cyril was nearly right about her floating on the flood tide, though it needed some shifting of heavy cargo forward and heavy work at the windlass to warp her clear. This took us until noon, when the scanty tide was at full flood.

Allaire now insisted that we remain at least another day in the hope of meeting the owner of the mysterious old place, and her argument was sound.

“If you were to come on a heap of treasure, guarded only by a dumb old negro and a blind old hound, you wouldn't sail off without finding out who owned it and what he intended to do with it eventually,” she said, “and that's practically the situation here. We might be able to make some sort of a trade, if only for the dishes we ate from. That was a willow platter, and the big Staffordshire plates were signed by Heath. He might care to do a little business; and even if he doesn't, it would be worth our while to find out something about it all.”

We decided therefore to wait. Allaire and I made another effort to get some information from old Pompey, but he merely clucked and nodded and grimaced, waving his hands in a vague way toward the coast of Florida, from which we imagined that his master must have gone over to the mainland, though when he might be expected to return there was no means of finding out.

Exploring the key, we found it to be like many scattered along the northeastern fringe of the bank; but unlike the rest of them, it had been planted years ago in fruit and flowering trees brought there from some other place, many of which had endured. It looked to me as if loam had been brought also and spread in the hollows of the hammock ground about the house. The water was from a huge cistern.

After luncheon Cyril and I were working at the dinghy, when we looked up to see a squat sloop-rigged tub that might have been a sponger coming into the lagoon at a good clip under power. That would be the hermit, I thought, back from a run to the mainland.

But this guess proved wrong. There came ashore in a flat-bottomed skiff a florid red-haired man and a boy of about sixteen. The man, who was passably well dressed, appeared to be surprised to find us there.

He spoke with the inflection of a longshore Floridian, agreeably enough, but warily. I asked him if he was the owner.

“Reckon so,” he answered. “How come you-all run in here? Kinder off the route.”

I briefly explained the situation. At this moment Allaire and Mrs. Fairchild came up, when Allaire took further explanation upon herself, giving it a twist that seemed to me entirely unnecessary.

“We're what you might call seagoing sun hunters,” she said. “But if we found a place we liked we might buy it and keep it for a winter home.”

“Well, there's lots of nice prop'ty over on the mainland, ma'am. I got some shore lots I'd sell cheap. This here's too lonesome for any but a hermit like what used to own it.”

“Who was he?” I asked.

“Nobody seems to know just how the fust one come to settle here. He died way back in the '50's and he'd lived here then as I could remember. Some say he was a pirate, but I remember hearin' grandpaw tell as how he was skipper of a big British ship that piled up on the reef in a hurricane, bound back to England from Havana. This old house was built partly out of her timbers. But so long as I can remember, old Captain Crookshank has hung out here. He died only a coupla weeks ago. I come out to take possession.”

Allaire's eyes shone.

“Then he left the property to you?”

“Yes, ma'am; that is, in the line of business. He come into my store one day nearly a year ago and says, says he, 'Mr. Sanders, I need some supplies and I ain't got no more money, so I tell you what I'll do, I'll make over all my prop'ty to you when I die and have the deed drawn up now if you'll engage to bring me off a hundred dollars' worth of stores every three months.' He was pretty old and poo'ly, and I didn't reckon he could last more than a year or two longer, so I agreed. He showed me what was in the house, and while it ain't wuth much, I reckoned I hadn't oughter lose anything to speak of. He had an old deed datin' way back nigh on to a hundred years, but the lawyer said it was all shipshape and proper.”

I glanced at Allaire and didn't like the hard expression of her face, It was that gaming-table face again.

“Then you've come now to get the stuff?” she asked.

“Yes, ma'am, what I can carry, and what seems like it might be wuth totin' away. Been inside?”

“Yes. It's just an old ruin.”

“That's what. There's some old beds and chairs and things, but the carpets is all wore out and most of the rooms empty. The dining-room table is sorta quaint and old-fashioned, but it's pow'ful heavy. I thought I'd sorta wreck the place and sell it maybe for junk.”

“What do you value the whole thing at, just as it stands?” Allaire asked.

“Well, I don't know. These here keys ain't got much value, and I dunno if it would be wuth while to cut out them live oaks.”

“We like it for just what most people would object to,” Allaire said—“its lonesomeness, and the house might be patched up for a few hundred dollars.”

“Yes, ma'am, the frame of it is right If she was reroofed and patched up a mite, she'd last a long time yet. I suttenly hadn't counted on makin' no trade, though, when I come out here. I gotta store at Jupiter Inlet. It beats me that anybody'd want to live here, Let's go take a look inside.”

We made our way up to the house. As we walked along, Allaire asked, “Hasn't anybody ever been out here?”

“Nobody but me that I know of, ma'am. The old cap'n was right shy. If he see anybody comin', he'd go in and lock the door. Some folks 'lowed he might be hidin' out for somethin', but I never took no stock in that.”

“How about his old servant?” I asked.

“Oh, he's been here long as anybody can remember. Must be over a hundred years old. Nothin' to do but just leave him here to dry up and blow away.”

We went into the house.

Mr. Sanders surveyed the priceless tapestry, the beautiful old pieces, then shook his head.

“Nothin' here you could give away, I reckon,” he said. “I've heard tell some folks sets a heap o' store on suchlike old trash, but I reckon this here's too far gone.”

He picked up one of the chipped Staffordshire plates, glanced at it contemptuously and scaled it into the fireplace, where it broke. Allaire suppressed a scream.

“Oh, don't, Mr. Sanders! Just think how many years these old things have been eaten from!”

Sanders laughed.

“There now, ma'am It looks like you was one of them people I just mentioned, sorta romanticlike. Well, I'm a practical business man myself. If you take a fancy to any of this stuff you can have it at your own price.”

I felt a little dizzy. So also did Allaire, for she turned quite pale.

“We haven't but very little money, Mr. Sanders, but we've got a lot of stuff aboard our boat that you might like to trade for.”

“What sorta stuff?” he asked.

“Oh, all sorts. One of our party, Mrs. Fairchild, is the widow of a retired sea captain. He left her a ship chandler's store at Beach City, but its trade was ruined by a new modern one that opened up down by the wharf. Then she tried dealing in notions, and was doing fairly well, when they started a big five-and-ten-cent store just across the street. That killed her business, so she weeded out the best of her stock and we loaded it aboard our boat, thinking that we might be able to trade it off down South here, if we found a place to locate.”

“That was a funny idea,” Sanders said; “but it sounds sorta sensible too. What all you got?”

“The sort of things that ought to have some standard value anywhere,” Allaire answered easily. “A few small marine motors in good condition, and rope and wire and some mixed hardware and paints and oils, and a few small anchors and boat fittings, blocks and things. Mrs. Fairchild can tell you better than I can.”

It struck me that Sanders' small green eyes showed a gleam of interest. Perhaps, as a storekeeper and dealer in such commodities as Allaire had shrewdly mentioned, it struck him that here might be the chance to make a good trade after all. An odd party of Northerners who for some reason had seen fit to pool their resources and seek winter sanctuary in the South. Still, he was puzzled.

“I don't quite get you folks. How come you happen to fetch up way out here?”

“Any port in a storm,” I quoted, “especially one like this last. We were pretty well offshore and this was the nearest shelter, so I ran in.”

“You see, Mr. Sanders,” said Allaire, “Mr, Stirling was a naval-reserve officer during the war, and since then he's been assistant superintendent in his uncle's boiler factory in New Jersey. But a little while ago he had a nervous breakdown from the noise, mostly his uncle's noise, and had to give up his job. So we got him for our sailing master.”

“I see.” Sanders looked blanker than ever. “The schooner was the prop'ty of Mrs. Fairchild?”

“No, she belonged to my brother, who died two years ago,” Allaire explained. “She's been lying idle, and as I had planned coming South for the winter, I thought we all might as well get some good of her. I met Mrs. Fairchild through Mr. Stirling one day when I was in Beach City.”

Sanders nodded, like a man to whom all has been made clear. But he did not look the part. Allaire assisted him a little further.

“Mrs. Fairchild was going to sell out her stock for what it might fetch, but her store manager, Mr. Whitecliff”—she looked at Cyril—“told her that she might as well give it away. But he thought that down South here she might be able to trade it off for something like its value, if not in money, then for a cottage site or something of the sort.”

Sanders looked a little less bewildered.

“Well, mebbe he was right.” He glanced around appraisingly at the desolation on all sides. “Or if it was a key you all fancied ——”

“We never thought about a key,” Allaire said; “but it's struck Mr. Stirling and me that something might be done with this place.”

“Well, come to think about it ——” Sanders began, then petered out. It was evident that his imagination was not up to saying offhand what could be done with it, unless to touch a match to it. Mrs. Fairchild and Cyril were looking at Allaire with the fascinated expression of two children watching a fairy that might reveal itself for some few moments to their astonished eyes, and not quite sure whether it was a good fairy or a bad one.

“It's so picturesque,” Allaire explained, “and so remote from the cares and bothers of ordinary daily life.”

“Sure is, miss,” Sanders admitted. “No close neighbors to pester a body.”

“There, I see you get my meaning, Mr. Sanders. Now I've got a friend who would love to have a key like this”—Allaire looked round at the fearful place with a rapt expression—“a poetic waste of sea and sky and sand.”

“Well, there ain't no accountin' for tastes, miss.” Sanders' patience and discretion were beginning to slip a cog or two. “Now about this here stock you was speakin' of—these yere motors and things.”

“Oh, yes!” Allaire came back to earth again. “If you happen to feel like trading off this lovely romantic spot for some of those things, I think I could make an arrangement with the others. I'm sure that I could sell it to my friend at a little profit. He's very rich and wants some sort of base to put into when cruising on his yacht.”

Sanders glanced at me as if to say, “Hasn't this childishness one far enough?” But I laughed and said, “Miss Forsyth knows what she's talking about. I think she could sell her friend an orange grove at the North Pole, sight unseen.”

He raised his bushy red eyebrows and for the first time a gleam of understanding shone in his small sun-reddened eyes.

“Oh, o' course, if it's like that, let's go out and take a look at that stuff of yours, miss.”

IX

WE ALL went off aboard the Tinker, when there ensued a transaction in barter such as probably had not occurred on that coast since the early Spanish voyagers traded off their beads and gayly colored prints and hawk bells for nuggets of virgin gold, if ever they did that in the Bahamas. We left it all to Allaire, and whatever may have been the emotions of the two others, I found myself torn between avarice and honesty.

There was, however, this compensating feature: That Sanders himself was not entitled to it. Either the old captain did not know the market for the objects that surrounded him, or else he had grown attached to each and every one that remained and desired that they should continue to surround him until his death. His predecessor might have known about it, or it might be merely that his ship when wrecked had been carrying out these articles of furniture for the colonial palace of some high official or early rich planter.

It was possible that the ship had come to grief in just such an outer fringe of hurricane as had just swept the place—been caught too close in through some fault of her master from which he knew he could not be exculpated, so that he had preferred to maroon himself for the rest of his days on that desolate spot rather than return to ruin and disgrace.

Who his successor had been was impossible to say; possibly his son; or he might have drifted in or been picked up, a sort of sea waif.

At any rate the first inhabitant had evidently purchased the key from the colonial government of his day, since the title had been searched and passed on, as Sanders assured us. It was probable that even in the case of any flaw, his long tenure must have established a valid claim that none would attempt to contest.

So here was opportunity fairly clamoring on the hatch, and I could not help but wonder what man or woman in our position would have failed to seize it. If Sanders was satisfied with his bargain, what more was he entitled to? It was not a case of bread on the waters, as if his inheritance had resulted from disinterested kindness. He had told us frankly that he had made the bargain because he did not think the present holder could last much longer and there might be a slight profit in it. It had cost him only about three hundred dollars.

Allaire, now assuming the rôle of owner, exhibited a false naïveté of which Sanders most obviously tried to take advantage. He saw in her a sentimentalist who had taken a fancy to what he considered the veriest rubbish, and it must have seemed to him from our noninterference with Allaire's bargaining that she was the spoiled child of the family or the one to hold the purse strings.

I had not the face to take part in this transaction. I left it to Allaire, and before the sun got low that capable young woman had finished by making a sweeping trade of the stuff for which we had swapped the stock in Mrs. Fairchild's store for the entire contents of that old barrack of a house, and a six months' option on the purchase of the whole key at a purchase price of five thousand dollars. A very good radio set was the price of the option.

Sanders could not conceal the fact that he considered himself to have made a splendid bargain, and was a little apologetic.

“You see, it's like this, folks,” he said: “When me and the old captain made that agreement there was two things I couldn't reckon on. For all I knew he might have hung on for years, ten or fifteen yet, me keepin' him supplied at the rate of four hundred dollars a year. And of course it never entered my head that somebody might come along and take a fancy to the place.”

“Of course not, Mr. Sanders,” Allaire agreed. “And there was always the chance that the old house might burn down or blow away.”

“That's right, ma'am. Besides, this here out-of-the-way island prop'ty ain't like real estate ashore. It's only got a value for some party that hankers to be off the beaten track, or a rich man such as you was speakin' of that's got his yacht and wants to come here with a party of friends to take his comfort like they see fit, and nothin' to hinder.”

“Yes,” I said ne 'no danger of being raided out on a sand bar like this.”

“Well, I sure hope that Miss Forsyth may be able to make a little turnover. I handle right smart of real estate on the mainland, and this here is out of my line. But it strikes me that before trying to sell it you better spend a little money and fix it up a mite. Just as she stands, it's enough to scare a body away.”

“It certainly would me,” Mrs. Fairchild said somberly. The good woman had held her peace throughout the transaction, but was plainly upset about it.

“I think,” said Allaire, “that Mr. Sanders might as well load this stuff aboard his boat and take it back with him. You could go along, Pom, to make sure that the deed is all in order and to get the option drawn up.”

“That's a good idee, ma'am,” Sanders agreed. “Before I signed my agreement with the old captain I made sure that his title was clear. My l'yer sent the papers to Nassau, and the report was that so far as they were able to discover the ownership couldn't be assailed. But for your own satisfaction, you better do what you say.”

He got in the dory then and went over to bring his sloop alongside. As soon as he had gone, Mrs. Fairchild gave voice to her long-suppressed emotions. She desired to be shown, for which she was scarcely to be blamed, having seen the equivalent of her whole stock in trade calmly swapped off by the high-handed Allaire for what must have looked to the good woman like the dingy, shabby contents of a fearsome old ruin of a dilapidated frame house stuck out on an unheard-of key of the scattered multitude in the Bahamas.

Allaire patiently explained the situation, calling on my amateur but fairly expert knowledge of antique furniture for corroboration.

“At a conservative estimate, the stuff in that house would fetch at any auction a hundred thousand dollars,” she said. “But if properly handled, it might sell for twice that amount. I have helped my friends buy such things, and I know.”

“How about the duty?” I asked.

“It's not dutiable. The main thing now is to get it loaded aboard and out of here before anybody on the mainland tips off Sanders. He is going to boast a little about his trade, and that might rouse a curiosity that could ruin everything. I'm not worrying about the deed for this island. Undisputed possession for about a hundred years is deed enough. But I want to get a legally attested bill of sale for all this old stuff and then get it away from here before anybody comes nosing round. That's why I think one of you ought to go ashore and stick to Sanders until it's drawn.”

“Why not go yourself, Miss Forsyth?” asked Mrs. Fairchild.

“Too much risk of my being seen and recognized, and people wondering what I am up to. About half my friends are over there.”

“The person to go with Sanders,” I said, “is Mrs. Fairchild. To begin with, this stuff is really hers. Most of it was traded for what came out of her shop. Sanders understands it that way, and can make the deed out to her. But here's another point: Allaire is right in saying that we ought to get it away from here before anybody sees fit to butt in, and that's going to be some job. Cyril and I will have to do some intensive furniture moving.”

“Right, Mr. Stirling,' Cyril agreed. “What if this Sanders spills the beans to some bloky in the know? He might decide to bring him off for a look-see before going through with it.”

“But how am I to get back here?” Mrs. Fairchild wailed.

“You had better not try to come back,” I said. “Just get your receipt and the option, then take the first train to New York and wait for us there. We will get the stuff aboard, then beat it North as fast as wind and gasoline can take us.”

The poor woman looked distressed and a little dazed. She was about to make another protest, but Allaire forestalled her in that limpid unanswerable tone of hers.

“Here's the point, Mrs. Fairchild: The object of this voyage was barter, and now we've tumbled on such a chance as we will never get again. So let's go while the going's good. Antique dealers and their scouts have raked this country and Europe with a fine-toothed comb. Motor cars have made that possible, until there's scarcely anything worth having left. Or, where there is, the owners are educated in values. Doing it in a boat is a new departure, and though we didn't count on that, yet here it is. So let's make the best of it.”

“Yes,” I said, “and if we slam it through, then we'll have a proper stake to do it better next time.”

“Oh, dear,” sighed Mrs. Fairchild. “Well, if that's the way you all feel about it ——”

“Here comes Sanders with his sloop,” Cyril said.

We unshipped the skylight, rigged a whip, then snaked out the proceeds of Sanders' trade and lowered them aboard his bulky motor sloop. Not much of a job, what with Cyril, Sanders, Sanders' lumpish son and his boatman and pilot, a powerful Bahaman negro with the distinguished name of McIntosh.

The moon was full, and as the sea was smooth and weather indications fixed fair, Sanders decided to start immediately on his run back to Jupiter. It was then about nine p.m., and he figured to fetch in before ten next morning.

Mrs. Fairchild bade us a rather strained farewell, not that she resented our decision, but because the whole performance impressed her as being irregular to the point of disreputable, I think, and she was the soul of old-fashioned respectability.

“And here you are, out here without a chaperon,” she said to Allaire.

“Business women can't bother with chaperons, Mrs. Fairchild, however much they sometimes need them. But I think I'm safe enough, don't you?”

“I think you would be safe 'most anywhere, Miss Forsyth—safe for you, that is. Some women and girls are naturally that way.” And with this final shot she went over the side.

X

FOR about an hour after Sanders' squat tub had waddled out to sea, we three sat on deck talking future plans. It was a fine night, but hot, without a breath of air stirring, and would be stuffy below. The moon was full and very bright, almost overhead.

Allaire was saying, “This whole thing has been so easy so far that I'm almost afraid there must be a joker to crop out somewhere,” when Cyril, whose senses were uncommonly acute, suddenly slanted his head as if to listen.

We were all silent. Then, as if one had placed a stethoscope to the bosom of the sea, there came sounds like the deep, muffled beating of its heart. I caught it intermittently at first, as did Allaire, for she exclaimed, “They are coming back! Mrs. Fairchild must have lost her nerve, or perhaps I had better say changed her mind.”

Cyril shook his head.

“That's not Sanders' jolly old churn. It's got a quicker beat.”

“Who then?”

“Perhaps a passing boat. Perhaps—the joker.”

But a few moments assured us that it was not a passing boat. The beat of the exhaust was growing more distinct, and had a sort of bubbling sound. Directly to the westward, about half a mile distant, there was another low key with broken dunes and a patch of low scrubby trees—cedars, I think. This sinister visitor sounded to be just the other side of these. Then, as we stared in that direction, two slender masts moved out from behind them, the hull still hidden by the sedge-covered dunes.

“That beggar is coming here,” Cyril said quietly, “otherwise he'd not be in so close. This bally place ain't so private as we'd thought.”

For several moments we watched those ominous spars moving steadily along. Then I rose and hauled the dory alongside.

“What now, Pom?”

Allaire's voice was husky with foreboding, as if a pirate were coming in. But then we had reason to know that the old freebooting days had turned back on us again. Here we were, two men and a girl, in that desolate abandoned place, and a good many thousand dollars' worth of property over in that old shell of which the battered roof was now silvered in the right moonlight.

“That fellow's coming in, I think. What his errand may be I can't guess, but it might be somebody who knows the value of that stuff and has learned that the old captain has died. I'm going ashore.”

“I'll go with you,” said Allaire.

“Perhaps that might be better. Cyril had better stay aboard. Let's say we bought the property a week ago and expect a working gang out here tomorrow.”

“That's a good plan,” Cyril agreed. “And there's something else you might say, Mr. Stirling, if you'll excuse me for suggesting it.”

“I can guess, Cyril. That Miss Forsyth is Mrs. Stirling.”

“What?” gasped Allaire.

“It would give us more class, and that's always important. Here's our lay: We are a young married couple who have cruised South on their boat to look for just some such paradis à deux as this. We learned that Sanders had come into possession of the place, just as he told us, and bought it from him. We are expecting the contractor and labor gang that he's to send over to put the place in order under our direction. Cyril is our sailing master. Got all that?”

Allaire nodded, then gave a stifled laugh.

“Why not let Cyril marry us and be done with it? I believe a sailing master has the right.”

“'Fraid there isn't time,” I said. “Look, he's rounding to turn in.”

“But I've got no wedding ring.”

“Here then.” I slipped the signet off my little finger. “If you should have to meet these unexpected guests you can turn the shield inside. It's no joke, Allaire. The tougher the crowd, the less respect for a girl whose papers aren't in order. That kills the morale of your position.”

“All right. Let's hope it doesn't kill my own.” She held out her hand, then, as I slipped the ring on the proper finger. “I Allaire, take thee, Pom ——”

“Be still,” I interrupted, for somehow this sent a quiver through me. “It's plain that Mrs. Fairchild was right when she made that parting wise crack.”

Cyril's big luminous eyes were fastened on us with a curious expression, less amused than glowing, eager, as if anticipating romance not so far away. There was a good deal of the dramatic about this boy. I gave the dory painter a savage tug, yanked the boat in, then scrambled down and held out my hand to Allaire.

“Get aboard. Hurry!”

She stepped aboard, then glanced back at Cyril, who was staring owlishly at us.

“It's plain I'm shackled to a brute, Cyril. Good-by. Don't give up the ship.”

Feeling more of a fool than I had for years, I picked up an oar, dropped it into the chock in the stern board and started to scull in to the jetty. As we reached it the schooner was pushing slowly and cautiously in through the narrow channel between the two keys, a leadsman in the chains singing out the soundings in a harsh cockney voice. “And a 'arf—fower ——”

I helped Allaire onto the jetty, when we walked back under the shadow of a pine and stood watching. The schooner was a trim enough little vessel of the Gloucester or Boston fishing class, rather small as they build them now, spoon-bowed, with short bowsprit and pole masts with no topmasts, or baldhead, as fishermen say. She was painted black and deep-laden, and it was not difficult to guess her cargo.

Allaire now made a guess of her own:

“I think I get it, Pom. This key is a depot from which to supply a stretch of the coast opposite. Shouldn't wonder but what brother Sanders had a little side line.”

“Perhaps, but I doubt it. If he was working that sort of graft, he wouldn't have wanted to turn over the place to us.”

“Well, it might be others then. Bimini is pretty closely watched. It would be a cinch to distribute from here.”

“Then here's your chance,” I said grimly. “Looks as if your luck had turned. Everything seems to be coming your way.”

“Why, yes, darn it, just when I'd got converted to lawful trade!”

“Well, if you think you would like this unlawful sort better, all you've got to do is to tell the skipper that you've got an option on the island and would listen to a proposition. First carry your antiques North and market 'em, then come back here and be queen of the Bahama Boozeneers. Carry out your first idea.”

“Serve you right if I did,” she flashed.

“Then go to it,” I said. “I shan't stop you.”

“Will you come in too?”

“I? Just about as quick as if this were two hundred years ago, and I were the sort of broken gentleman I am now, and put in here for shelter as I have, and met up with a gang of filthy buccaneers who offered me a captain's billet.”

“But you've bought liquor from bootleggers, haven't you?'

“Yes; and I'd have bought dried beef from the buccaneers if I'd needed it as badly as I've known myself to need a drink. But I would never have turned one myself. Listen, Allaire! There are some of us who don't believe in certain arbitrary laws and don't obey them strictly as regards what we consider to be our personal necessities. But it's a long way from that to purveying illicit wares for money. I might go to a race track and surreptitiously back my horse, or look into a gambling house and throw a twenty on the red. But I would not make a book or run a gambling dive. If I've got to be legislated into the virtue of abstention, whether I like it or not, then let them go ahead and put us all on that high involuntary plane.”

“I see,” said Allaire. “You would not expect a man to obey a law that forbade him to kiss his wife on Sunday, but would recommend an enforcement of a law for locking all the wives up over Sunday.”

“Oh, I'd do that anyhow,” I snapped. “Look, they've anchored just astern of us.”

The schooner had let go her anchor when the water shoaled to four fathoms, and now as she tailed out astern of the Tinker I was surprised to see that there was not much difference in size. She was too small for a Grand Banker, but a very tidy, able-looking little vessel, built perhaps for lobstering or inshore mackerel and herring seining.

We could now hear Cyril's voice talking with somebody aboard her, but were unable to catch the words. The conversation sounded amicable, though there was the sort of intonation to the voice from the stranger that suggested the Englishman of patrician class questioning a servant. Curt, and with a brusque rising inflection at the end of short interrogatory clauses. The inflection proclaimed the nationality beyond all doubt.

“Sounds like some swell of the Royal Yacht Squadron gone in for trade,” I said.

“Yes, or a British naval officer that's lost his billet and turned rank. He would spot Cyril's Bare-mooda accent and talk to him as if he were a sweep. Let's go back out there, Pom.”

“We will if you like,” I said; “but after hearing that swank talk I feel we ought to guard our tapestries more than ever.”

“When dealing with gentlemen one can't be too careful,” Allaire agreed. “From the tone of his voice, I'd say that he could tell a Gobelin from a piece of theater curtain.”

“Well, let's go out and ask him the news from Nassau,” I said. “We are supposed to have been marooned about a week.”

“And how long have we been married?” Allaire murmured, and slipped her arm behind me, her hand on the farther shoulder.

“Long enough to have got over the pawing stage,” I snapped, “and this is a poor time and place for mocking badinage. Come on then, let's go.”

“Wait, they're coming in.”

We heard the whining of sheaves, then a boat hit the water with a splash.

“Jump down, one of ye!” barked the peremptory voice. “Handle your oars!”

“That sounds ex-R. N.,” I said. “We'd better go up to the house.”

(TO BE CONTINUED)