Drowned Gold/Chapter 27

HE tale itself is told; but the log runs in the waves, still whirling if the ship survives the storm. And those to whom the log-book is submitted when the voyage is complete demand many—perhaps minor—records of the cruise. A ship's master must satisfy the Board of Trade that his record may be kept clean and unsullied by neglect. So thus do I, a mariner, fill in my blank and waiting lines!

There was but a smudge of smoke on the horizon, a smudge that steadily diminished, when I stepped from the cabin on that day, and, looking eastward, knew that the Gretchen was steaming away to other fields. She never succeeded in reaching any earthly port. Whether by storm or accident she came to her end, no man knows. But she never entered a harbor, and sometimes, meditative, I strive to conjecture what must have been the end of those aboard her, including the man, nobleman by descent, mind you, who had robbed me of three years of happiness. All other interjections seem trivial now, so quickly does happiness heal ancient wounds.

That Marty had written me letters which I never received; that explanations had been possible, but were cut off by the change in my own life when I returned to the broad and open seas; that had I been less credulous, and possessed of purpose and daring to lead me across the world to find her and to have demanded my own, are all misfortunes gone their insignificant way into the vast realm of human errors and chances. What does matter, for the completion of my log-book, are a few more sentences easily written in but a few words, and yet to me important because they blend in a splendid summary of all that makes life worthy and dear.

We combined our forces, Marty and I, and raised the Esperanza and all her precious cargo; recovered both. Battered and old, she is still the favorite ship of the growing fleet that is ours, and when, sick of the land, we strike for the clean, wind-scoured, open spaces of the seas, bent upon strange destinations, we board her and come thus to our own. We cruise together to far and isolated isles, set like jewels in the girdle of romance, in placid and unfrequented seas. Once we had two guests, Monsieur Périgord and that man whose name is now widely known, Jimmy Martin. Monsieur Périgord no longer fares forth on earthly expeditions. I doubt not that in some place Beyond he lives, as he merited in this sphere, happily, the possessor of a great, loyal, and unselfish heart. There will be statues to his memory in the far lands of Périgord, and those places where the soul of France, human, tender, keeps alight the unquenchable fires upon her altar stones.

Jimmy Martin comes with us on these excursions of ours. He is bent, old, irascible, and argumentative. Nothing, save the fact that he is renowned, acclaimed, and affluent, is much different from what it was.

The smoke of the Esperanza Steamship Company is wafted wide. There is no sea upon which its blue, red, and white funnels are not familiar. Perhaps there are those who envy me my wealth; others who envy Rogers, the commodore of our line, his position; others who believe that Mike Cochrane does but little to merit his easy berth ashore; but none of them know as well as I that nothing is worth envying when compared with the priceless treasure of a woman's love and trust.

True, there flies upon the seven seas the flag of the line my father named; but there flies on the sea of my content a banner peerless, the flag of my heart that is raised loyally throughout sunrise and sunset, the flag that she commands, that wavers not nor lowers, that is mine to salute with constant wonder and enduring reverence, the one that idealizes and visualizes to me—my wife!

The log-book is dogeared by stress and storm and striving hands; but it is all that I can tender to those who read. It is unimportant; but it has this virtue, that I have given it as the best that I could give, and no man may do more in this, our great and mutual voyage, than to give until the cruise is done.