"You ought to think of your daughter's condition first, Captain Candage.
She needs a few comforts right away, and you won't find them on board a
fisherman."
He turned to the girt who sat on the keel, silent, looking away to sea.
She seemed to show a strange lack of interest in the yacht. Her pretty
face exhibited no emotion, but somehow she was a wistfully pathetic
figure as she sat there. Mayo's countenance showed much more concern
than she expressed when she faced about at the sound of his voice and
looked at him. Color came into his cheeks; there was embarrassment in
his eyes, a queer hesitancy in his tones.
"There is a young lady--there are several young ladies--but there is Mr.
Marston's daughter!" he faltered. "She is on the yacht. I--I know she
will do all she can for you. She will be good to you!" His eyes fell
under her frank and rather quizzical gaze.
"She might not care to be bothered with such a ragamuffin."
"I can speak for her!" he cried, eagerly. He was now even more disturbed
by the glance she gave him. He had read that women have intuition in
affairs of the heart.
"I am quite certain you can, Captain Mayo," she assured him, demurely.
"And I am grateful. But perhaps we'd be better off on board that other
vessel--father and the rest of us."
"I insist," he said, but he did not dare to meet her searching eyes. "I
insist!" he repeated, resuming the decisive manner which he had shown
before on board the Polly.
The Olenia, slowing down, had come close aboard, and her churning
screws pulled her to a standstill. Her crew sent a tender rattling down
from her port davits. As she rolled on the surge her brass rails caught
the sunlight in long flashes which fairly blinded the hollow eyes of
the castaways. The white canvas of bridge and awnings gleamed in snowy
purity. She was so near that Dolph smelled the savory scents from her
galley and began to "suffle" moisture in the corners of his mouth.
They who waited on the barnacled hulk of the Polly, faint with hunger,
bedraggled with brine, unkempt and wholly miserable after a night of
toils and vigil, felt like beggars at a palace gate as they surveyed her
immaculateness.
A sort of insolent opulence seemed to exude from her. Mayo, her captain
though he was, felt that suggestion of insolence more keenly than his
companions, for he had had bitter and recent experience with the moods
of Julius Marston.