On the bow and on the stern, there showed in golden lettering the name:
Golden Dolphin
BOSTON
And the figurehead was a replica of the sign that swung above the door of the shop, a supple, twisting body armored with golden scales, set with outspread golden fins that clung like fingers to the stem of the ship, a flowing tail and the goblin-like head with its rounded forehead and protruding lips that kissed the foam, as the windful sails drove on the gallant vessel. Any ship-lover and sea-lover could readily replace the stand with curling waves, creaming at the stem and along the run to fan-like wake; ignore the background of antiques and visualize instead the flowing sea and bright horizon where cloud argosies sailed before the wind. But that was not what Jim Lyman, standing entranced with contracting pupils, with parted lips, beheld back of the graceful hull and tapering masts. To him the actuality of the model had suddenly blended with a vision, as pictures blend upon the film-screen, reality of the present with recollection of the past.
He saw a tropic tangle, rather—so completely did the fantasy enthrall him—he was in a tropic tangle, peering through the rank growth of brush; palms and broad-leaved trees shot up high crowns that interlocked to bar out the sunshine and rendered daylight into a green twilight shot with golden beams hardly thicker than a cord and blobs of amber mottling the verdant floor. All about a riot of green growth wattled together with vines and ground shrubbery. Orchids were a-swing, giving out waves of intoxicant perfume. Two great butterflies, scarlet and black, hovered about like protesting guardian spirits of the place to which he had unwittingly forced his way. In his ears were the faint swish of the breeze in the treetops, the hiss of surf on the nearby beach and its heavier drumming on the barrier reef.
Verdure had flung itself, writhing, tentacled, embracing the hull of a vessel as if the jungle claimed a prize and was striving to hide it from prior ownership or the envy of discoverers; a ship whose stem—battered a little but unbroken—bore the shape of a golden dolphin as figurehead. The dolphin was tarnished and half hidden by creepers, but sunlight spotted it with flecks of flame.
The masts, four of them, had gone by the board. One of them slanted from ground to smashed rail, cordage twining it like snakes, a handy ladder for a handy man.
Now at this point Jim took on double embodiment—scarcely triple, for he was quite unconscious of being in front of the porch-window. Still in the jungle, he saw, from the jungle, one Jim Lyman forcing his way through resistant boughs to a closer view of the jungle stranded ship. On the bows the name had been applied in metal letters. Some of them were missing. On the starboard bow he read:
G LDE D LP N
On the counter, in sunken carving, was the full legend:
Golden Dolphin
BOSTON
He saw himself climbing that angling mast, reaching the deck, disappearing. The sudden shutting off of all sunlight, the deepening of the green twilight to gloom, the switch of palmtops in strengthening wind, the signal of a recall gun, voices calling his name—all dimmed. Even the ship—now a model again—faded. Something else absorbed him, something made contact with his inner self, brought it back to the present with a strange sensation—the identical quickening of the spirit that had accompanied his first sight of the sign, yet deeper, more intimate.
At the back of the display someone was opening a French window from the inner room. Brocades had parted to the touch of a white hand, a girl’s face appearing, pale in the dusk, with luminous eyes, looking at Jim. The expression, emphasized by piquant eyebrows, registered surprise at what the owner read in Jim’s bemused gaze. A slightly amused smile came to the red lips, but there was no ridicule in it, only friendliness; a sort of intimacy, as if she, too, liked that ship’s model, and knowing he did, acknowledged the link between them.
She leaned forward. A slender arm, bare to the elbow, rounded, soft and white of skin, reached out and slim fingers took up a blue and white pitcher. Jug and girl disappeared through the brocades.
The spell was broken. Jim, self-convicted of staring, imagined he must have looked like a moonstruck fool. While every lass may love a sailor, it is not every sailor that loves every lass, despite the ballads. The sweetheart in every port is a calumny born of jealousy. Your blue water salt is perforce a hermit for long periods. If he has brains he becomes a bit of a philosopher. He learns to think while on watch; and the rolling sea, the roving clouds, the chanting winds, the sun, the moon and the stars rolling in their appointed courses, are all good teachers. Jim was a bit of a poet at heart. So is every true sailor. He had had his own dreams of the measure of a girl, but he had had few opportunities for metrical diversion. Also he was a bit flustered in their presence. He did not understand them, they were like fine lace to a carpet weaver, admirable but strange to his craft. The girl, so far, was but incidental to the main point. His jaw lines tensed as he went up the steps beneath the Dutch hood and through the door with the tinkling of an automatic bell. He half expected to see a customer inside in connection with the blue and white pitcher. And there would be the K. Whiting, proprietor. But the girl came forward to meet him out of shadows empty of other humanity though close set with furniture, tip-tables, chairs, sofas, standard lamps, and century-old belongings.
Jim’s eyes were good, dark or light. He saw that she had on a dress of deep blue, ocean blue, flicked with small dots of lighter blue. Her eyebrows again arched quizzically as Jim stood, hat in hand, lost for opening words.
“Mr. Whiting in?” he asked. Somehow the girl took his breath a bit. Cool and dainty, self reliant, but utterly feminine. A face so good to look at that he did not know whether she was pretty or not. Womanhood, that was what she represented to Jim, though she was young yet, young and sweet. She was disturbing. He had come in to see about the ship and she made his desire vacillating. His will struck for the original motive, therefore he asked to talk with a man.
“There is no Mr. Whiting—here,” she answered, a slight hesitancy before the last word, a fleeting shadow over her face. “I am the proprietor. You were looking at the ship? You are a sailor, aren’t you?”
This is what the girl saw:
A man who had boyhood in his eyes and about his mouth, though the first were steady, the second firm enough; a face tanned deep; eyes of gray with little traceries of sun and wind about them; aquiline nose; good forehead; brown hair that was a little sunburned here and there, plenty of it and the barest suggestion of a wave; tall—about six feet—a hundred and seventy pounds of solidity, chest like a barrel and a lean waist; clothes, blue serge, fairly new, well kept; hands, well kept, but hands that were used to work and showed it, hands held slightly curved inward as if ready to grasp a rope. Being a woman, she took this all in at a glance, while to Jim’s equal opportunity she was more or less a vague pleasantness. It was the combination of blue serge, the half open hands and the look in his eyes as he viewed the ship that had set him down as a sailor to the girl. She knew something of sailors. Also she knew that she liked Jim. Instinctively she felt that she could trust him. Women and dogs can do that at first sight—scent also, with the dogs. Man’s intuitions are less blunted. It is not so necessary for him to be attracted or warned through his senses; he has developed other ways of obtaining information, other ways of protection which often prove far less infallible.
“Yes, I am a sailor,” he said. “Was, at least. Hope to be so again. Is the ship for sale? I mean does it belong to somebody here or did you buy it outright to sell again?”
Something of his excitement had spread to the girl; the atmosphere in the shop, transformed from original parlors, dusky save for the lighter space by the door where they stood, was becoming charged with magnetism.
“Why do you ask?” she said.
“I’m not a purchaser—though I’d like to be if I could afford it and had a place to put it.” Subconsciously he was stalling, delaying the information that momentarily he more and more felt was going to start something. There was a knocking at the door of his inner self. Then he blurted it out.
“I’ve seen that ship before. Not the model but the ship itself, ashore in the bush on an island in the South Pacific.”