mistaken, he does not belong to the yacht in any capacity. What does it mean? You may take it from me that it is unusual, I might almost say phenomenal, for a valuable steam–yacht in commission to be deserted in that manner.”
“But he admitted that ‘they,’ meaning Mr. and Mrs. Baumgartner, I suppose, would return early this evening?”
“I am sure he is right in that. But where are the twenty odd domestics and members of the crew? When Peter and I went ashore at ten o’clock to–day the Sans Souci was alive with people.”
“I only know that Mrs. Baumgartner seems to have been thoughtless where I am concerned,” said the girl, absorbed in her own troubles.
Nevertheless, she brightened considerably when Warden assisted her to reach the spotless deck of the Nancy. By dint of much scrubbing and polishing, that taut little cutter had no reason to shirk the vivid sunlight. At the beginning of the cruise she had been fitted with a new suit of sails and fresh cordage. For the rest, Peter, and Peter’s fourteen–year–old son “Chris,” roused now from sound sleep in the cabin by his father’s loud summons, kept brass fittings and woodwork in a spick–and–span condition that would bear comparison with the best–found yacht in the roadstead.
Miss Dane was accommodated with a camp chair aft, while Warden dived into the cabin to change his clothes. The boy, after a wide–eyed stare at his employer, was about to busy himself with tying up the dinghy, when Peter bade him be off and see to the stove if he wished to escape a rope–ending. Chris was hurt. He had not expected such a greeting from his revered parent; but he disappeared instantly, and Peter imagined that his offspring was thus prevented from investigating the mystery of the gourd, which he took good care to leave in the bottom of the boat.
As for the girl, her mind was occupied to the exclusion of all else by the strange combination of events that brought her a guest on board the Nancy. She was not so much perturbed by the absence of Mrs. Baumgartner as by Warden’s manifest disapproval of the lady. A railway return ticket, sufficient money in her purse to pay for a room in a hotel, and the existence of a friend of her mother’s in Portsmouth, a friend whose good offices might be invoked if necessary, made her independent. But she did not want to go back defeated to Oxfordshire. Her father’s carelessness had left her practically at the mercy of a stepmother, who enjoyed the revenue of a fair estate until death. The settlement was not to the liking of either woman, and Evelyn was goaded into an endeavor to escape from it by the knowledge that she was regarded as an interloper in a house that would ultimately come into her possession if she survived the second Mrs. Dane.
The well–paid appointment offered by the Baumgartners was apparently an opening sent by the gods. She had been strongly recommended for the post by a friend, and there seemed to be no reason whatever why it should not prove an ideal arrangement for both parties. Yet Warden, unmistakably a gentleman, if rather eccentric in his ways, evidently did not view the mining magnate’s family with favor. That was a displeasing fact. Though she had no personal experience of the section of society which dubs itself the “smart set,” she gathered that the Baumgartners belonged to it, and it was a risky undertaking for a young woman to constitute herself part and parcel of the household of one of its leading members.
Her somewhat serious reverie was interrupted by the grateful scent of cooking that came from a hidden region forward. Warden reappeared in dry clothing. The cut on his forehead was covered with a strip of sticking plaster. He was bare–headed, and a slight powdering of gray in his thick black hair made him look more than his age.
“Our glass and china are of the pilot pattern,” he explained, placing a laden tray on the deck, “but we balance deficiencies in these respects by a high tone in our cuisine. To–day’s luncheon consists of grilled chicken and bacon, followed by meringues and figs, while the claret was laid down last week in Plymouth.”
“I am so hungry that I can almost dispense with the glass and china,” she admitted. “But won’t you let me help? I am quite domesticated.”
“What? Would you rob the cook of his glory? You must eat and admire, and thank the kindly gales that wafted Peter to the Indian Ocean when he was putting in his sea service, because he learned there how to use charcoal in the galley instead of an abominable oil lamp.”
“I was born in India,” she said with delightful irrelevance.
“Ah, were your people in the army?”
“No. My father was in the Indian Marine. But he retired when I was two years old – soon after my mother’s death. I lost him eight years later, and, having lived thirteen years with a stepmother, I thought it high time to begin to earn my own living.”
She fancied that this brief biography might encourage him to speak of the Baumgartners, but Warden’s conversation did not run on conventional lines.
“I find your career most interesting,” he said. “Now that we know each other so well I want to hear more of you. Promise that you will write every month until early December, and report progress in your new surroundings. Here is my card. A letter to the Universities Club will always reach me.”
She read: – “Captain Arthur Warden, Deputy Commissioner, Nigeria Protectorate.”
“Why must I stop in December?” she asked, with a smile and a quick glance under her long eyelashes.
“Because I return to Nigeria about that date, and I shall then supply a new address.”
“Dear me! Are we arranging a regular correspondence?”
“Your effusions can be absolutely curt. Just the date and locality, and the one word ‘Happy’ or Miserable,’ as the case may be.”
The arrival of Chris with a grilled chicken created a diversion. Peter had to be summoned from the galley. He explained sheepishly that he thought the meal was of a ceremonious character. They feasted regally, and all went well until the unhappy Chris asked his father if the vegetable marrow was to be boiled for dinner.
“Wot marrer?” demanded Peter unguardedly.
“The big one in the dinghy.”
“By Jove, we have never given a thought to the calabash that created all the rumpus,” cried Warden. “What about that black face you saw on it, Miss Dane? I didn’t notice it afterwards. Did you?”
“No. I was too excited and frightened. Your son might bring it to us now, Mr. Evans.”
“Beggin’ your pardon, miss, we’ll leave it till you’ve finished lunch,” said Peter, regarding Chris with an eye that boded unutterable things.
“But why, most worthy mariner?” demanded Warden.
“’Cos it’s the ugliest phiz that ever grew on a nigger,” was the astonishing answer. “It gev’ me a fair turn, it did, an’ I’m a pretty tough subjec’. It’s enough to stop a clock. If the young leddy takes my advice she’ll bid me heave it overboard and let it go to the – well, to where it rightly belongs.”
“It’s only an old gourd,” exclaimed Evelyn, looking from one to the other in amused surprise.
“Peter,” said Warden, laughing, “you have whetted our curiosity with rare skill. Come, now. What is the joke?”
“I’m in reel earnest, sir – sink me if I ain’t. It’s – a terror, that’s wot it is.”
“Bless my soul, produce it, and let us examine this calabash of parts.”
“Not me!” growled Peter, hauling himself upright with amazing rapidity. “Believe me, sir, I ‘ope you won’t ‘ave the thing aboard the Nancy. Get forrard, you,” he went on, glaring at the open–mouthed Chris. “Start washin’ them plates, an’ keep yer silly mouth closed, or you’ll catch somethin’ you can’t eat.”
There could be no doubt that the usually placid and genial–spoken Peter was greatly perturbed. To avoid further questioning, he stumped off to his quarters in the fore part of the cutter, and swung himself out of sight, while the girl endeavored vainly to estimate how he could squeeze his huge bulk through so small a hatchway.
Warden