The Singing Monkey/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
HOWEVER on the morrow they ran out of the dirty weather and by Tuesday morning were in the sunny Mediterranean. Most of the time Vi avoided the upper bridge during the second mate's watches. Every morning he saluted her politely but made no venture to enter into conversation.
Vi had decided that although she had perhaps exceeded the bounds of etiquette in broaching such a subject he had shown himself a “bit of a pig” in taking her up so curtly, and after all as it was no business of hers he should be allowed to go to the devil or elsewhere in his own way and gait. Yet sometimes watching him, his figure and profile against the sky as he “took the sun” on the upper bridge, a thought did occur that it was a pity to let such a nice boy ruin his career. And strangely enough she did not notice for some while after that the rawness of the eyelids had disappeared and that he did not lisp.
Of course as soon as the Hesperus ceased to plunge and roll Claude Selwyn appeared on deck again, wan and pale and rather subdued. Most of the time he lounged in a deck-chair in the lee of the chart-house, smoking cigarets and absorbing champagne at every meal and often between. Vi would lie beside him reading and sometimes chatting rather amused at the growing of the braggadocio in him as his health returned.
“Have some fizz, Miss Kelvett?” he would always say when Chi Loo appeared with the golden-necked bottle. “Rippin' stuff.”
Vi accepted until once as she was raising the glass to her lips she caught the eyes of the second mate, who was superintending some men working on an awning near by. Deliberately he smiled. Vi blushed and was furious. She put down the glass.
Afterward, to Selwyn's astonishment, she refused to drink. “ impertinence,” she called it, losing her sense of humor. On the first opportunity she very haughtily returned the usual morning courtesy. Fortunately, she thought, second mates did not have their meals with the captain.
Selwyn's swagger grew to normal. To the captain he was condescendingly familiar, but to the officers he seldom spoke and obviously resented the fact that he was compelled to sit at table with a mere ship's mate; but to Vi he was talkative and very attentive, which rather tempted her for fun to make him fetch and carry for her.
He had had a commission in a Welsh corps, but regarding his movements in France he was so reticent that Vi shrewdly suspected that the hand of influence had kept him nearer to Paris or Boulogne than to the Flanders mud. However, he knew Paris and London from a moneyed point of view and his flippant descriptions and remarks were amusing enough to pass the time under a sky of blue on a violet sea.
According to his own account he was a bit of a gallant, and of his prowess he was apt to boast to a point beyond the canons of good taste. But to Vi after her shoulder rubbing with the world in the past four years such a small matter seemed rather silly than otherwise. And to tell the truth a small incident led her out of idle mischievousness to rather encourage him, for one afternoon as Selwyn was stroking his tiny mustaches with much gallantry in the middle of an account of life in war-time Paris she chanced to look up and beheld the Second leaning over the upper bridge, where obviously he could not help but hear, with a portentous frown of genuine anger on his face.
“Of all the impertinence!” exclaimed Vi, and laughed loudly, a hilarity Selwyn naturally credited to her appreciation of his story.
SO THEY chugged across the Mediterranean and through the Suez Canal. The weather was as hot as the proverbial Red Sea. In the lightest of crash gowns, Vi gave up even reading in the heat. A light breeze was dead astern so that they were denied even the air made by the speed of the tramp.
Selwyn, cursing fluently because there was not an ample supply of ice, tried to bribe Chi Loo to steal some from the cabin ice-chest for his champagne, of which he guzzled exceedingly, ignoring the advice of the captain that wine merely made him feel the heat more than ever.
At dinner one night Selwyn implored the captain and Vi to join him in his cups. The heat certainly was trying. Although the captain refused Vi laughingly consented to have some. Selwyn became more than usually jubilant.
But the Old Man was right. In such a heat wine, particularly sparkling wine, does have an abnormal effect. The grizzled mate, as soon as he had finished his food, apologized and departed to the bridge to release the second. As he entered the saloon Vi was raising her glass to her lips.
“Oh, Mr. Carnell,” she cried, her eyes sparkling, taken by a mischievous idea, “have a glass of wine. It will do you good.”
“Yes,” urged Selwyn hilariously, willing to support anything that Vi should propose, “come along. There's still some left—and anyway we'll have another. Hi, there! You yellow-eyed rabbit! Chi Loo!”
Carnell stood before his seat and eyed them both. Then he looked straight at Vi and said very solemnly and distinctly—
“Thank you very much indeed, Miss Kelvett, but I don't drink.”
“What!” gasped Vi, holding her glass in the air in her surprize. “What! You don't drink! Come, don't be absurd.”
“I am very sorry, but that is the truth,” he repeated gravely, and sat down.
“Come along,” urged Selwyn boisterously. “Don't be such a prig.”
“Thank you, no, sir,” responded Carnell quietly, and began to drink his soup.
As Vi resolutely refused to share another bottle they went on deck. They sat in their usual chairs near the chart-house and smoked, watching the stars like illuminated crystals. Vi was vaguely aware that Selwyn had become unusually quiet. The thump of the engines, the occasional clang of an iron away down in the belly of the ship or the harsh creak of a fireman twisting a ventilator in the vain attempt to catch some air for the stokehole were the only sounds.
Captain Kelvett, in white duck, came on deck. The glow of his cigar seemed like a golden insect attracted by Selwyn's. The Old Man poufed his disgust with the heat, and, remarking, “There's more air up top, I think,” mounted the bridge ladder.
“I hope it won't be as hot as this in Calcutta,” remarked Selwyn. “But we'll have a good time there. I'll make the beggars turn out and cart us all over India, what?”
“Really?” said Vi languidly. “That will be rather amusing.”
Again he was silent.
“I say!”
“What?”
“I wonder if you'd mind if I call you Vi? Do you?”
“I don't care what you call me,” said Vi, laughing lazily, “particularly in this heat.”
“Oh, don't say that. I mean it, you know.”
On her hand, resting on the canvas arm of the chair, his fingers closed. She raised the hand to light a fresh cigaret. He sighed and began to talk about what he would do in Calcutta again.
The bells of the watch clanged heavily on the hot air. The tall figure in white of the Second coming from his dinner below passed and went down to his quarters.
“I know!” exclaimed Selwyn, suddenly springing with unexpected agility to his feet. “Come along aft. There'll be more air there, and we can watch the phosphorus in the wake. Awfully jolly stuff although I've never seen it. Game?”
“If you like.”
Vi hesitated.
“Oh, I haven't enough energy to get up.”
“I'll help you!” And, bending, he caught her arms and almost lifted her on to her feet.
“Oh, you are clumsy!” she complained. “You've nearly crushed what blood I've left out of my arms.”
“Come on!” he laughed. “I'll carry you all the way there if you like.”
“No, thanks. You're too rough.”
THEY made their way off the bridge and across the iron deck, which retained the heat of the baking sun, behind the spare wheel-box, and leaned on the wooden taffrail by the log
“Yes,” agreed Vi after a minute, regarding the phosphorescent turmoil made by the propeller, “it certainly is wonderful. And what a funny row that thing makes there every few seconds. Bog log, isn't it?”
“Yes, I think so,” said Selwyn absently.
He moved closer and placed an arm lightly on her neck, saying:
“Oh, look at that fuss over there! Must be a fish or something.”
“Where?” demanded Vi, placing a foot on to a cross-stanchion to slide along the rail.
“No, not there. I mean— Vi!”
His arm tightened around her neck and suddenly forced her head back so that her mouth was free to his lips. With a smothered exclamation she tried to turn her head away.
For an instant in a tight grip he held her. Then with a force which surprized him she wrenched her shoulders free and effectively killed an amorous protest with a left-handed swing of the palm on his mouth.
“That for your impertinence!" ejaculated Vi furiously.
He slid a foot along the rail, almost losing his balance. For an instant he clasped his hand to his mouth and with a muffled oath launched himself straight at her. Vi was rather off her guard. He caught her around the neck again and under the left arm and forced her backward, muttering fiercely—
“I'll get you, you”
The last word was choked as two powerful hands closed around his throat. As he loosed his hold he was lifted into the air and literally flung across the deck into the scuppers. Gasping with rage, Vi nearly turned upon the tall form in white.
“Are you all right?” came Carnell's voice sharply.
“I— You—” spluttered Vi in astonishment. “Oh, thank— How did you come here?”
“I—I came to look at the log,” asserted Carnell. “Are you all right, Miss Kelvett?”
“I— Yes, thanks. Oh, thank you very much, Mr. Carnell,” she added more quietly. “I—I think the brute's torn my dress. Where is the creature? Oh, you didn't throw him overboard?”
“No, I don't think so. No; here he is.”
A quick step on the iron deck brought them round to face Selwyn, who stood with his fists clenched, staring through the darkness to identify his assailant.
“Oh, it's the second mate is it, you !” he said. “And who in asked you to interfere?”
“I did!” said Vi sharply.
“If you weren't a blooming mate I'd give you the thrashing you deserve, you hound,” he continued, ignoring Vi.
“I'm at your. service,” replied Carnell in a low voice, advancing a step.
“One does not fight with a common sailor,” sneered Selwyn. “I'll have you put in irons, my good fellow, and when we get to Calcutta I'll see you get a few months to teach you better manners, and by you won't sail on my ship again. Understand?”
“I'll have you put in irons—” began Carnell when a hand upon his arm stopped him.
Selwyn glared at him and then at Vi and, turning, limped off toward the bridge.
“I had better go now, Miss Kelvett. He won't dare say a word. But I think that I should hand the fellow over to the captain. He ought to be in irons for this. He forgets the law of the sea.”
“Oh, you mustn't do that!” exclaimed Vi, conscious that the man was trembling violently. “He— Don't you see, you may have hurt him and—and I think he was rather drunk too. I shouldn't have come here with him. But I thought—or rather, I didn't think—about it at all. No; please, Mr. Carnell, please, don't say a word; will you?”
“As you wish, Miss Kelvett. Beautiful women have privileges—and owner's sons, too, I suppose,” he added bitterly.