The third day out they were well below Formosa, which had been turned on a
wide arc. The sea was blue now, quiescent, waveless; there was only the
eternal roll. Still Jane could not help comparing the sea with the
situation--the devil was slumbering. What if he waked?
Time after time she tried to force her thoughts into the reality of this
remarkable cruise, but it was impossible. Romance was always smothering
her, edging her off, when she approached the sinister. Perhaps if she had
heard ribald songs, seen evidence of drunkenness; if the crew had loitered
about and been lacking in respect, she would have been able to grasp the
actuality; but so far the idea persisted that this could not be anything
more than a pleasure cruise. Piracy? Where was it?
So she measured her actions accordingly, read, played the phonograph, went
here and there over the yacht, often taking her stand in the bow and
peering down the cutwater to watch the antics of some humorous porpoise or
to follow the smother of spray where the flying fish broke. In fact, she
conducted herself exactly as she would have done on board a passenger
ship. There were moments when she was honestly bored.
Piracy! This was an established fact. Cunningham and his men had stepped
outside the pale of law in running off with the Wanderer. But piracy
without drunken disorder, piracy that wiped its feet on the doormat and
hung its hat on the rack! There was a touch of the true farce in it.
Hadn't Cunningham himself confessed that the whole affair was a joke?
Round two o'clock on the afternoon of the third day Jane, for the moment
alone in her chair, heard the phonograph--the sextet from Lucia. She left
her chair, looked down through the open transom and discovered Dennison
cranking the machine. He must have seen her shadow, for he glanced up
quickly.
He crooked a finger which said, "Come on down!" She made a negative sign
and withdrew her head.
Here she was again on the verge of wild laughter. Donizetti! Pirates!
Glass beads for which Cleigh had voyaged sixteen thousand miles! A father
and son who ignored each other! She choked down this desire to laugh,
because she was afraid it might end suddenly in hysteria and tears. She
returned to her chair, and there was the father arranging himself
comfortably. He had a book.
"Would you like me to read a while to you?" she offered.
"Will you? You see," he confessed, "I'm troubled with insomnia. If I read
by myself I only become interested in the book, but if someone reads aloud
it makes me drowsy."