LITMIR.BIZ

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spirits, a bond unbreakable by death? That old idea was not new to him, he had played with it as a toy of the mind constructed for the mind to play with by the poets.

      The new thing was to find this idea in the mind of a young girl and to hear it expressed with such conviction.

      After a while he came forward and went up the steps to the bridge. Captain Lepine was in the chart room, the first officer was on the bridge and Bouvalot, an old navy quarter-master, had the wheel.

      “We have slowed down,” said the Prince.

      “Yes, monsieur,” replied the first officer, “we are getting close to land. We ought to sight Kerguelen at dawn.”

      “What do you think of the weather?”

      “I don’t think the weather will bother us much, monsieur, that blow had nothing behind it, and were it not for these fog patches I would ask nothing better; but then it’s Kerguelen—what can one expect!”

      “True,” said the other, “it’s a vile place, by all accounts, as far as weather is concerned.”

      He tapped at the door of the chart room and entered.

      The chart room of the Gaston de Paris was a pleasant change from the dark and damp of the bridge. A couch upholstered in red velvet ran along one side of it and on the couch with one leg up and a pipe in his mouth the captain was resting himself, a big man of the Southern French navy type, with a beard of burnt-up black that reached nearly to his eyes.

      The Prince, telling him not to move, sat down and lit a cigar. Then they fell into talk.

      Lepine was a sailor and nothing else. Had his character been cut out of cardboard the line of division between the sailor and the rest of the world could not have been more sharply marked. That was perhaps why the two men, though divided by a vast social gulf, were friends, almost chums.

      They talked for half an hour or so on all sorts of subjects connected with the ship.

      “By the way, Lepine,” said the Prince suddenly, “It has been the toss up of a sou that we are not now steering a course for New Amsterdam.”

      “And how is that, monsieur?”

      “Well, Mademoiselle de Bromsart proposed to me at dinner that we should alter our course, the idea came to her that some misfortune might happen to us off Kerguelen and, as you know, I am always anxious to please my guests—well, I called a quarter-master down. I was going to have sent for you.”

      “To alter our course?”

      “Yes, but Mademoiselle de Bromsart altered her mind. She refused to let me send for you.”

      “But what gave the young lady that idea?” asked the Captain.

      “That big ship we sighted before dinner.”

      “The three-master?”

      “Yes, there was something about it she did not like.”

      “Monsieur, what an idea—and what was wrong with it?”

      “Oh, it was just a fancy. The sea breeds fancies and superstitions, you know that, Lepine, for I believe you are superstitious yourself.”

      “Perhaps, monsieur; all sailors are, and I have had experiences. There are bad and good ships, just as there are bad and good men, of that I am sure. Perhaps that three-master was a bad ship.” Lepine laughed as though at his own words. “All the same,” he went on, “I don’t like warnings, especially off Kerguelen.”

      They left the chart house and came out on the bridge.

      The wind was still steady but the clouds had consolidated and the night was pitch black. On the bridge the Gaston de Paris seemed driving into a solid wall of ebony.

      The Prince after a glance into the binnacle was preparing to go down the bridge steps when a cry from the Look-out made him wheel round. Suddenly, and as if evolved by magic from the blackness, the vague spectre of a vast ship shewed up ahead on the port bow making to cross their course. Thundering along under full canvas without lights and seemingly blind, she seemed only a pistol shot away.

      Then the owner of the Gaston de Paris did what no owner ought ever to do: seeing Destruction and judging that by a bold stroke it might be out-leaped, he sprang to the engine room telegraph and flung the lever to full speed ahead.

CHAPTER IV

       Table of Contents

DISASTER

       Table of Contents

      Left alone, Mademoiselle de Bromsart finished the all but completed piece of embroidery in her lap. It did not take her five minutes. Then she held up the work and reviewed it with lips slightly pursed, then she rolled it up, rose, and went off to the state-room of Madame de Warens to bid her good-night.

      Madame was sitting up in her bunk reading Maurice Barres’ “Greco.” The air of the place was stifling with the fume of cigarettes, and the girl nearly choked as she closed the door and stood facing the old lady in the bunk.

      “Why don’t you smoke, then you wouldn’t mind it,” cried the latter, putting her book down and taking off her glasses. “No, I won’t have a port opened, d’you want me to be blown out of my bunk? Sit down.”

      “No, I won’t stay,” replied the other, “I just came to say good-night—and tell you something—He asked me to marry him.”

      “Who—Selm?”

      “Yes.”

      “And what did you say?”

      “I said ‘No.’ ”

      “Oh, you did?—and what’s the matter with him—I mean what’s the matter with you?”

      “How?”

      “How! The best match in Europe and you say ‘no’ to him—a man who could marry where he pleases and whom he pleased and you say ‘no.’ Good-looking, without vices, richer than many a crowned head, second only to the reigning families—and you say ‘no.’ ”

      The old lady was working herself up. This admirer of Anarchasis Clootz and dilletanti of Anarchism had lately possessed one supreme desire, the desire to have for niece the Princess Selm.

      “I thought you didn’t believe in all that,” said the girl.

      “All what?”

      “Titles, wealth and so forth.”

      “I believe in seeing you happy and well-placed. I was not thinking of myself—well, there, it’s done. There is no use in talking any more, for I know your disposition. You are hard, mademoiselle, that is your failing—without real heart. It is the modern disease. Well, that is all I have to say. I wish you good-night.”

      She put on her spectacles again.

      “Good-night,” said the other.

      She went out, closed the door, and entered her state-room.

      It was the same as Madame de Warens’ only larger, a place to fill the mind of the old-time seafarers with the wildest surprise, for here was everything that a mortal could demand in the way of comfort and nothing of the stuffy upholstery that the word “state-rooms” suggests to the mind of the ordinary traveller.

      The crimson velvet, so dear to the heart of the ship furnisher, was supplanted by ribbed silk, Persian rugs covered the floor, the metal fittings were of bronze, and worked, where possible, into sea designs: dolphins, sea-horses, and fucus. There was a writing-table that

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