Mr. Beveridge's commiseration would have been wasted on Captain Boyd
Mayo that evening. The captain snapped off the light in the chart-room
as soon as they had departed, and there in the gloom he took his
happiness to his heart, even as he had taken her delicious self to his
breast. He put up his hands and pressed his face into the palms.
He inhaled the delicate, subtle fragrance--a mere suggestion of
perfume--the sweet ghost of her personality, which she had left behind.
Her touch still thrilled him, and the warmth of her last kiss was on his
lips.
Then he went out and climbed the ladder to the bridge. A peep over the
shoulder of the man at the wheel into the mellow glow under the hood of
the binnacle, showed him that the Olenia was on her course.
"It's a beautiful night, Mr. McGaw," he said to the mate, a stumpy
little man with bowed legs, who was pacing to and fro, measuring strides
with the regularity of a pendulum.
"It is that, sir!"
Mr. McGaw, before he answered, plainly had difficulty with something
which bulged in his cheek. He appeared, also, to be considerably
surprised by the captain's air of vivacious gaiety. His superior had
been moping around the ship for many days with melancholy spelled in
every line of his face.
"Yes, it's the most beautiful and perfect night I ever saw, Mr. McGaw."
There was triumph in the captain's buoyant tones.
"Must be allowed to be what they call a starry night for a ramble,"
admitted the mate, trying to find speech to fit the occasion.
"I will take the rest of this watch and the middle watch, Mr. McGaw,"
offered the captain. "I want to stay up to-night. I can't go to sleep."
The offer meant that Captain Mayo proposed to stay on duty until four
o'clock in the morning.
Mate McGaw fiddled a gnarled finger under his nose and tried to find
some words of protest. But Captain Mayo added a crisp command.
"Go below, Mr. McGaw, and take it easy. You can make it up to me some
time when there is no moon!" He laughed.
When all the cabin lights were out and he realized that she must be
asleep, he walked the bridge, exulting because her safety was in his
hands, but supremely exultant because she loved him and had told him so.
Obedience had been in the line of his training.
She had commanded him to live and love in the present, allowing the
future to take care of itself, and it afforded him a sense of sweet
companionship to obey her slightest wish when he was apart from
her. Therefore, he put aside all thoughts of Julius Marston and his
millions--Julius Marston, his master, owner of the yacht which swept on
under the moon--that frigid, silent man with the narrow strip of frosty
beard pointing his chin.