Thrice Armed

Valentine lighted the lamp beneath the beams, for it was growing dark, and taking something from a box in the upper berth stood still a moment with it in his hands. They were scarred and hardened by physical toil, and the man was big and bronzed and very quiet, though every line of his face and figure was stamped with the wholesome vigor of the sea.

"I see you do not know," he said. "This is the letter Austerly sent me. As you will notice, it was at her request. She would not have minded your reading it."

Jimmy started as he saw that the envelope had a broad black edge, and his companion nodded gravely.

"Yes," he said, "there is neither tide nor fog where she has gone. There, at least, we are told, the sea is glassy."

Jimmy took the letter out of the envelope, and once or twice his eyes grew a trifle hazy as he read. Then he handed it back to Valentine, almost reverently.

"I am sorry," was all he said.

Valentine looked at him with the little grave smile still in his eyes. "I do not think there is any need for that. What had this world but pain to offer her? She has slipped away, but she has left something behind – something one can hold on by. What there is out yonder we do not know – but perhaps we shall not be sorry when we slip out beyond the shrouding mists some day."

Neither of them said much more, and shortly afterward Jimmy went back to the Shasta. Next morning he stood on his bridge watching the Sorata slide out of harbor. Valentine, sitting at her tiller, waved his hat to him, and Jimmy was glad that he had hurled a blast of the whistle after him when some months later he heard that the Sorata and her skipper had gone down together in a wild westerly gale.

In the meanwhile he proceeded to Vancouver, and after an interview with Jordan, who formally offered him command of the big new boat, took the first east-going train and reached Toronto five days later. An hour after he got there he hired a pulling skiff at the water-front, and drove her out with sturdy strokes into the blue lake across which a little cutter was creeping a mile or so away. He came up with her, hot and breathless, and the girl at the tiller rose quietly when he swung himself on deck, though there was a depth of tenderness in her eyes.

"Jimmy!" she said, "why didn't you tell me?"

Jimmy laughed. "You should have expected me," he said. "The six months are up."

Anthea turned to the young man and the girl who were sitting in the cockpit. "Captain Wheelock. My cousin Muriel, and Graham Hoyle."

The young man smiled at Jimmy, who was, however, conscious that the girl was surveying him with critical curiosity. Then she asked him a question concerning his journey, and they discussed the Canadian railroads for the next ten minutes, until she flashed a suggestive glance at the young man.

"What a beautiful morning for a row!" she said.

Hoyle rose to his feet. "I dare say I could pull you ashore in Captain Wheelock's boat," he said. "There's just wind enough to bring the yacht after us if he gets the topsail up."

Jimmy did not get the topsail up when they rowed away, but sat down on the coaming with his arm around Anthea's shoulder.

"I have just two weeks before I go north in our big new boat," he said. "It isn't very long, but I want to take you with me."

He was some little time overruling Anthea's objections one by one, and then she turned and looked up at him with a flush in her face.

"Jimmy," she said, "I suppose you realize that I haven't a dollar. Some provision was to have been made for me – but I felt I couldn't profit by the arrangement."

Jimmy laughed. "If it's any consolation to you, I haven't very much, either. Still, I think I'm going to get it. I was creeping through the blinding fog six months ago, but the mists have blown away and the sky is brightening to windward now."

Then he turned and pointed to the strip of dusky blue that moved across the gleaming lake. "If anything more is wanted, there's the fair wind."

They ran back before it under a blaze of sunshine with the little frothy ripples splashing merrily after them, and then Jimmy had to exert himself again before he could induce Anthea's aunt to believe that it was possible for her niece to be married at two weeks' notice. Still, he accomplished it, and on the fifteenth day he and Anthea Wheelock stood on the platform of a big dusty car as the Pacific express ran slowly into the station at Vancouver.

Leeson stood waiting with Forster, and Jordan was already running toward the car, but Jimmy's lips set tight when he saw Eleanor with Mrs. Forster. In a moment or two Jordan handed Anthea down, and then stood aside as Eleanor came impulsively forward. To her brother's astonishment, she laid her hand on Anthea's shoulder and kissed her on each cheek.

"Now," she said, "you will have to forgive me."

Jimmy did not hear what his wife said, for Mrs. Forster was greeting him, and then Leeson and the rancher seized him; but five minutes later Eleanor stood at his side.

"Yes," she said, "Anthea and I are going to be friends, and you daren't be angry any longer, Jimmy."

They had dropped a little behind the others, who were moving along the wharf, and Jimmy looked at her with a dry smile.

"I'm not," he said. "In fact, I don't think it was my temper that made things unpleasant all the time. Still – "

"You didn't expect me to change?"

Her brother said nothing, and she looked up at him with a softness in her eyes he never remembered seeing there.

"I'm going to marry Charley very soon," she said. "I couldn't have done that while I hated anybody, and, after all, it was Merril who roused – the wild cat – in me, and we have done with him altogether. They wouldn't have him back in Vancouver, but there's a land-boom somewhere in California, and Charley hears that he is already piling up money."

She stopped a moment, and thrust a folded paper into his hand. "That's yours, but Anthea must never see it. Charley didn't know I had it, and I meant to keep it in case Merril got rich again; but I don't want it now. Please destroy it, Jimmy."

Jimmy glanced at the paper, and his expression changed when he saw that it was the engineer's confession; but he laid his hand on his sister's arm and pressed it, for he understood what the fact that she had parted with that document signified. Then Leeson, who was a few paces in front of them, turned and pointed to a big steamer with a tier of white deck-houses lying out in the Inlet.

"The boat's waiting at the landing, and we'll go off," he said. "There's a kind of wedding-lunch ready on board her."

Jimmy said they had purposed going straight to the house he had commissioned Jordan to take for him, but the latter laughed, and Leeson chuckled dryly.

"We held a meeting over the question, and fixed it up that the house you wanted hadn't quite tone enough for the man who's to be Commodore of the Shasta fleet very soon," he said. "That's why we decided to put you into my big one on the rise. Guess there's not a prettier house around this city, but it has never been really lived in. I'm out most of every day, and only want two rooms. Now, there's no use protesting; it's all fixed ready, and you're going right in."

He turned, and touched Anthea's arm. "You'll stand by me. You can't afford to have your husband kick against the man with the most money in the Shasta Company."

Jimmy's protests were very feeble. It had been his one trouble that Anthea would have to live in a very different fashion from the one she had been accustomed to, and he was relieved when she thanked the old man.

Leeson smiled at her in a very kindly fashion. "Well," he said, "I've been lonely for the last eight years since the boy who should have had that house went down with my smartest boat, and I want to feel that there's somebody under the same roof with me who will keep me from growing too hard and old."

Then he stopped, and chuckled in his usual dry manner. "I was going to make Jordan the proposition – only I got to thinking and my nerve failed me. Guess I made my money hard in the free sealing days when we had trouble with everybody all the time, but I felt I'd sooner not offend Mrs. Jordan, and I might do it if I didn't fix things just as she told me. She's a clever woman – but I don't want to have her on my trail."

Eleanor only glanced at him in whimsical reproach, and they moved on, laughing, toward the waiting boat.

END