The Trey o' Hearts/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII
The Counterfeiter
AT FOUR o'clock Alan was awakened by boot-heels pounding imperatively overhead, and tumbled on deck again, to stand both dog-watches. At eight o'clock, still aching with fatigue, he was free to return to his berth for another four-hour rest.
This time misguided consideration induced Barcus to let his crew sleep through the first afternoon watch. Six bells were ringing when, in drowsy consciousness that something had gone suddenly and radically wrong, Alan wakened. The steady onward urge of the little vessel had given place to wild rocking and pitching, while the song of the wind in the cordage was lost in the flapping and bellow of slack canvas.
For some reason evidently Barcus had found it necessary to bring the Seaventure up into the wind; but Alan could imagine no reason why he should have performed the maneuver in such lubberly fashion.
He was on deck almost before he rubbed the sleepiness from his eyes. His first glance discovered the wheel deserted, the woman with back to him standing at the taffrail, Barcus—nowhere to be seen. The second confirmed his surmise that the Seaventure had come up into the wind, and now was yawing off wildly into the trough of a stiff sea. A third showed him to his amazement a Gloucester fisherman—which they had overhauled with ease that morning and which now should have been well down the horizon astern—not two miles distant, and bearing directly down upon the smaller vessel.
Bewildered, he darted to the girl's side, demanding to know what was the matter. She turned to him a face he hardly recognized—but still he didn't understand. The interference was a thing unthinkable; his brain faltered when taxed to credit it. Only when he saw her tearing at the painter, striving to cast it off and with it the dory it dragged a hundred feet astern, and another glance discovered the head of Mr. Barcus rising over the stern of the tender as he strove to lift himself out of the water, did Alan appreciate what had happened.
It was with the feeling that all the world had gone mad, that he seized the girl and tore her away from the rail before she could unknot the painter.
"Rose!" he cried. "What's the matter with you? Don't you see what you're doing?"
She ceased to struggle and lay unresisting in his arms. "Let him go!" she muttered. "We don't want him—and he'll be picked up, right enough."
"But—what are you thinking of, Rose"
"Can't you say anything but 'Rose! Rose! Rose!' Is there no other name that means anything to you? It is intolerable! I love you no less than she—rather more—because I hate you, too! Can't you understand?"
Convulsively she freed herself. "Let me go!" she insisted. "Let me go!"
"Judith!" he cried, stupefied. "But—good Lord! how did you get aboard? Where's Rose?"
"Where you'll not find her again," the woman retorted. "Trust me for that!"
"What do you mean?" Then illumination came. "Do you mean it was you whom I brought aboard last night?"
"Who else?"
"You waylaid her in the hotel, substituted yourself for her!"
"Of course. Why not? When I saw her sleeping there—what else should I think of than to take her place with the man I love? I knew you'd never know the difference. I was mad enough to think I could stand being loved by you in her name! It was only to-day, when I'd had time to think, that I realized how impossible that was!"
A cry from over the stern roused Alan to fresh appreciation of the emergency. With scant consideration he hustled the woman below, and closed her in with the sliding latch, then sprang to the taffrail to lend a helping hand to Mr. Barcus, who was climbing aboard, after he had pulled the dory up under the stern by its painter. He came over the rail in a temper, bellowed a blasphemous command to take the wheel and swing the Seaventure off again upon her course, and then pulled himself together.
"I hope you'll pardon the impertinence," he suggested acidly, "but may I inquire if that bloody-minded vixen is your blushing bride to be?"
Alan shook a helpless head. "No—it's all a damnable mistake. She's her sister—I mean, the right girl's sister—and her precise double—fooled me—not quite right in the head, I'm afraid."
"You may well be afraid!" Mr. Barcus snapped, "D'you know what she did? Threw me overboard! Fact! Came on deck sweet as peaches, and all of a sudden whips out a gun, points it at my head, and orders me to luff into the wind. Before I could make sure I wasn't dreaming, she had fired twice—in the air—a signal to that fisherman astern there: at least, it answered with two hoots of its whistle and changed course to run up to us. Look how she's gained already!"
A glance showed the vessel within a mile and apparently bent on running them down.
"But how did she happen to throw you overboard?"
"Happen nothing!" Barcus roared. "She did it a' purpose! I had a notion to get that gun away before she did mischief with it, but when I knocked it out of her hand she flew at me like a wildcat, and before I knew what was up, I was slammed backward over the rail. God's mercy gave me a chance at the dory—and at that this giddy she-devil of yours was trying to cast me adrift!"
"I can't tell you how sorry I am," Alan responded gravely. "It's a hideous mix-up, and I'd no business dragging you into it"
"Amen to that!"
"There's more to tell—but one thing to be done first."
"And that?" Mr. Barcus inquired.
"To get rid of the lady," Alan announced firmly. "Those must be her people aboard that fisherman; and if we let her stop aboard she's certain to do something to cripple us—if she hasn't already; and if that boat ever overhauls us, I'm as good as done for—murdered. It sounds insane, but it's so."
"It doesn't sound insane to me, my friend," said Mr. Barcus ruefully, "not after the last half hour."
"Then take the wheel."
"What are you going to do?"
"Make the fisherman a present. You don't mind parting with the dory—if I pay for it?"
"Take it for nothing," Barcus grumbled.
He took Alan's place, watching him with a sardonic eye as he drew the tender in under the leeward quarter, made it fast, and reopened the companionway. As the girl came on deck, in a rage that only heightened her loveliness, Alan noted a glimmer of satisfaction in her glance astern as she recognized how well the fisherman had drawn up on them,
"Friends of yours, I infer?" Alan inquired.
Judith nodded: "I don't mind telling you she was ordered out of Gloucester by telegraph five minutes after you struck your bargain with this gentleman."
"It would be unkind of us to keep you longer from your friends," Alan observed. "And it will save trouble if you'll be good enough to step into the dory without a struggle."
Without a word, Judith swung herself overside into the dory. Immediately Alan cast off, and for some minutes there was silence between the two men while the tender dropped swiftly astern.
Then suddenly elevating his nose, Barcus sniffed. "Here," he said sharply, "relieve me for a minute, will you? I want to go forward and have a look at that motor."
In the time that he remained between decks the fisherman luffed, picked up the dory and its occupant, and came round again in chase of the Seaventure.
When Barcus reappeared it was with a grave face.
"What's the trouble now?"
"Nothing much, only your playful little friend has been up to another of her light-hearted tricks. … The drain-cocks of both fuel tanks have been opened, and there are upward of a hundred and fifty gallons of gasoline sloshing around in the bilge."
He cast a shrewd eye aloft and astern. "Stop where you are," he said, "and let her come up only when I give the word. I'm going to let out those reefs. We can stand more sail—and there's no telling how much longer the reef will keep going. It looks to me as if we were up against it—'specially if your lady friend isn't satisfied. Which, from the way that fisherman sticks to us, doesn't seem likely."