Page:The Popular Magazine v72 n1 (1924-04-20).djvu/136

 with James he seemed to follow the leading of the other.

She dreaded what might happen at Havana if James took too many cocktails and talked too much.

Another thing was bothering her. James had exhibited to her, without knowing it, the fact that Cupid had been at work with him. The events of the voyage, the excitements, new duties and new surroundings had prevented Mr. Corder from developing on these lines, but he might begin to develop at any moment. He was a gun ready to be fired. She felt that, knew it by the sixth sense that tells a woman all about these things and the knowledge was like a grit in the eye.

Love was absolutely outside this business so fraught with terrible possibilities. Even had she cared for James the thought of philandering would have revolted her, but she did not care for him—at least in that way.

At noon that day, with the Selvages far astern, she took the sun, the first observation on a journey of three thousand miles across the Atlantic. The Dulcinea, which had spoken to them and received orders as to where they had to meet, was far ahead, a white wing on a sea breezed and desolate but blue as the Mediterranean.

HE north Atlantic, like the Bay, has a bad name got mostly from winter experiences on the Liverpool-New York passage. It has a cold name, too. But the north Atlantic below 40° is as beautiful as the Pacific, as blue, and more trustable.

They had no bad weather but a favoring wind that fell to a dead calm six days out, as if resting, and then resumed work blowing across the infinite distances of the swell from a sky hung on its sea line with white summer clouds. The nights were tremendous with stars, and one dawn coming on deck they saw away on the starboard beam a fairy cloud, pearly and pink tinged, diaphanous, yet hinting of solidity—Bermuda.

The Dulcinea had vanished from sight days before, had outsailed them. There was nothing in all that sea but the fairy island and a freighter so far off that its hull was almost down beneath the horizon.

They had changed their meeting place with the Dulcinea at the last moment. Great Bahama had been chosen at haphazard, but it was too far north of Rum Cay, at least farther than necessary, it was also not a good rendezvous from the point of secrecy.

Sheila, looking over the charts on the night they left Teneriffe, had suggested this and the others had agreed. The expedition, rushed from the moment of its inception, was like a bag packed in a hurry, and this important point turned up only at the last moment and James, for once in his life, was able to give advice that helped. He knew the whole Bahama bank and he had a long memory for places and soundings.

“You're right,” said James, “and Great Abaco is as bad. You get all sorts of schooners and boats from Nassau pottering round. We can't do better than meet off Turtle Island. There's good anchorage but no one's there and no one goes there, for there's nothing doing. There it is east of Eleuthera and north of Cat Island; there's no reefs to make bother and no chance of missing the Dulcinea, for the place isn't bigger than a dinner table. Shortt knows it—he was with me when I was there last. It's a good fishing center.”

“May there be yachts there?” asked Sheila.

“In the winter there might,” said James, “but not now.”

The change of rendezvous was given to the Dulcinee when they spoke her that night, but on the lovely morning when all calculation ought to have shown them Turtle Island dead ahead, the sea showed nothing.

The Baltrum was making ten knots; there were land gulls white in the flower-blue sky, but of land there was no trace.

Sheila felt a chill at the heart as the morning wore on and the Batrum sighing and sinking to the swell bravely made her way in face of the endless and unbroken azure. The ship had done her duty and the hands—only she had failed. Her navigation was at fault. But not much. Toward noon Larry who was on the lookout shouted: “Land!”

“Where away?” cried Sheila rising from the cabin hatch and running forward.

“There isn't any land,” said Larry, “but sure it's there right enough.” He pointed, not ahead, but away on the starboard bow and there, thready against the sky, showed the masts of an anchored vessel.