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Show """IBu Beis Amls Williams ' ' H tiff 'i jjk-J 1 w. 11 -. Service! CHAPTER I To sign a crew is one thing; to keep all hands aboard till sailing time is another. At dusk, Captain Keen moved the Sunset from the wharf out into the stream to wait for the morning tide. She was a full-rigged ship of three hundred and forty-seven tons burden, bound for the Fiji Islands to load with sandalwood sandal-wood for Chinese and Indian ports; but she was under charter to the Mission Board to carry certain freight and passengers from San Francisco to Honolulu and to the Marquesas, on the way. "I want to give the men overnight to sober off before the missionaries come aboard, Mr. Chase," Captain Keen told the mate as the ship swung to her anchor. "And another thing. As long as they're with us, I'll have no going ashore at Honolulu, or at the Islands, nor any native girls coming on the ship at all." The Reverend John Gale and Mrs. Gale were returning to their post in Micronesia after a year's leave at home; and the Reverend George McAusland went to serve his apprenticeship ap-prenticeship with them. McAusland was not a young man as years go, but his training for the ministry was only just concluded. He was rather rath-er small, and decidedly thin. He was, actually, thirty-eight years old. John Gale, since they met a day or two before, had studied his new assistant. as-sistant. He had some misgivings. McAusland seemed full of a restless earnestness; but the old minister knew that too much zeal could be as dangerous as too little. Aboardship, Mrs. Gale went to her cabin to settle her belongings there; but John Gale and McAusland stayed on deck to watch the business busi-ness of departure. "What decided you to become a missionary?" Gale asked. "Why, sir, at the Seminary I read a great deal about the mission to the Sandwich Islands, and I want to be like the men who led that work. They did so much, and everyone ev-eryone loved them." McAusland added humbly: "I want to help people, peo-ple, and to be loved. I'm pretty clumsy about it, though; about making mak-ing friends." The other suggested: "The trick is to like people. People like a man who seems to like them." He asked: "But what turned you toward the ministry, at your age?" McAusland answered frankly: "I'd killed a man, in Nevada City, in the mines." There may have been surprise sur-prise in the older man's quick glance, and an unspoken question, for the other explained: "I suppose I don't look like a man of violence;( but I lost my temper. He was drunk, and shooting at me, and I threw a pickaxe at him. It hit him in the head." John Gale thought he would have to readjust his estimates of this young man. "Wasn't that just an accident?" he suggested reassuringly. reassur-ingly. "I suppose a man is responsible even for his accidents," McAusland insisted. "He had no family. There was nothing I could do directly; but I wanted to find some way to atone." r- Captain Keen, one eye on his ship, joined them with some casual word. McAusland walked forward to watch them cat and fish the anchor, and John Gale looked after him, and after a moment he smiled and asked the Captain: "Would you take that young man for a" he hesitated, used McAus-land's McAus-land's own phrase "a man of violence?" vio-lence?" The Captain said wisely: "There's never any knowing. The quietest little man I ever knew killed four Malay pirates with a caps'an bar." "He and I are going to work together, to-gether, these next years," John Gale explained. "I'm trying to find out what sort of man he is." Captain Keen said: "You'll find out, presently. Being shut up on the tame ship with a man, you come to know him. The sea strips him down, wears him down till what's inside him shows through." The old minister nodded; and during dur-ing the days that followed, while the Sunset took her peaceful way across the peaceful sea, he sometimes some-times thought that McAusland was no more than an enthusiastic boy. The first morning at sea, he himself him-self came on deck to find the other bare-footed, his sober black trousers rolled up his thin shins, pushing a holystone up and down the planking plank-ing under the instruction of the sailor with the parrot. The sailor's name was Corkran; and the two were laughing together at McAus-land's McAus-land's awkwardness. The parrot watched George too, its head cocked, and presently it nipped Corkran's ear and said whcedlingly: "Mighty pretty. Mighty pretty!" Corkran laughed and clapped McAusland Mc-Ausland on the shoulder. "There, Reverence!" he said. "That's Pat's way of saying he takes to you." The friendship between these two developed rapidly. Corkran was an able seaman, above the level of his fellows in the forecastle; and he did his work so cheerfully and completely complete-ly that he had certain tacit privileges. privi-leges. Whenever he was on deck, he and George were apt to be together. to-gether. McAusland was intensely curious about ship's business. He worked under Corkran's instruction to learn the knots and bends and hitches, and how to seize and splice and serve. John Gale, observing the friendship friend-ship between McAusland and Cork-ran, Cork-ran, tried to understand its basis. He saw that when they were together, togeth-er, George was always the listener. The mate called Corkran to some duty; and George, turning, saw John Gale near them, and stopped beside him. "Corkran's a strange man," he said, and he colored in a slow way. "Most men are ashamed of their vices, but he brags about his. He's simply an animal." The older man suggested: "You can't always judge men by the way they talk, George." "I suppose not." McAusland laughed uncertainly. "And I like him, in spite of what he is," he admitted. ad-mitted. "I don't know why." One late afternoon, George, under Corkran's instruction, was learning to put an eye-splice in a discarded piece of eight-inch cable when the masthead man sighted the first distant dis-tant peaks above Honolulu. George laid down spike and maul and swarmed aloft to see for himself; and when presently he descended, She looked after him, her eyes sobered by hurt. dropping from the ratlines the last six or eight feet to the deck, he stepped on the marlinspike where he had left it. It rolled under him; and the result was a severely sprained ankle. John Gale bandaged the hurt; but in the morning when they were anchored McAusland was too lame to walk. The Sunset would lie in harbor overnight while Captain Keen lightered off the freight consigned con-signed to the Honolulu mission but Mr. and Mrs. Gale went to lodge with friends ashore, and they urged George, despite his lameness, to come along. When George decided to stay aboard, Mrs. Gale thought he was shyly relieved at having a valid excuse for avoiding a casual meeting with many strangers. Ashore, she and her husband found that two other passengers would board the Sunset here. One was Joseph Neargood, a tall young Mar-quesan Mar-quesan convert trained in the college col-lege at Oahu, going now to take his place in the native mission at Fatu-hiva. Fatu-hiva. The other was Mary Doncas-ter. Doncas-ter. Her father and mother had established es-tablished themselves twenty years ago on one of the smaller northern islands of the Marquesan group, which Ephraim Doncaster called Gilead. Mary was born there a year later, and lived there till when she was ten years old they sent her home to New Bedford to school. Now she was returning to them; and John Gale, when he had talked with her, approved Mary mightily. He and Mrs. Gale agreed between themselves that it would be good for McAusland to have the girl's company com-pany aboard the Sunset during the rest of the voyage to Gilead. When they were all rowed out to the ship next afternoon a little before sailing time, the old man looked forward to watching McAusland's face light with pleasure at first sight of Mary; but George was not on deck to greet them, and John Gale found him in his bunk with a slight temperature, presumably from the pain of his hurt George did not come to supper, so he did not see Mary till next morning. John Gale had told him she was aboard, but afraid of saying say-ing too much he said only: "She's the daughter of Ephraim Doncaster, the missionary at Gilead." George inattentively expected Mary to be like a younger edition of Mrs. Gale. Mrs. Gale was pretty as paper pa-per flowers under a glass case, with a pale and delicate beauty that would not disturb a man; but Mary was mightily disturbing, beautiful not with youth alone but already ripely. The ship's carpenter had fashioned a crutch for George out of a mop-handle and a block of timber cut to fit the minister's shoulder socket When George hobbled out into the cabin, the others were already al-ready at table, Mary sitting with her back to him; but John Gale greeted George as he appeared, and Mary turned to look up at him. The sun from the skylight fell full upon her countenance as she turned, and George stopped like a struck man, -shaken and trembling. She thought he would fall, and she rose quickly to help him, slim and yet warmly round in her tight bodice above loose full skirts of sober stuff. The button at her throat was unfastened; and George as his eyes fell before hers saw her smooth white throat. She touched his arm, steadying him; and John Gale spoke her name and his, and she said: "Here, I'll help you. Sit here." George said defensively: "I'm all right." He freed himself and sat down; but his arm where she had touched, it burned long after her fingers were removed. He sat beside be-side her at the table with Captain Keen at the head, but he could not look at her. He ate briefly, a little, with trembling hands, silent, so that his silence oppressed them all. Afterward Aft-erward he took refuge in his cabin again; and when next day, his ankle quickly healing, he was able to hobble hob-ble on deck, he walled himself behind be-hind an intense dignity. But if he was afraid of Mary, he was attracted to Joseph Neargood. The Marquesan was youthfully impressed im-pressed by his own consecration to the Mission work in which he would presently assume a place. McAusland, McAus-land, his own life committed fo lead the Island people to Christianity, saw in Neargood a fine example of what could be dona in that direction. The Sunset was five days out of Honolulu; and the day was lovely and serene, with a light steady breeze and a long easy swell so that the breast of ocean rose and fell as sweetly as the bosom of a sleeping woman. Two sailors on a stage slung over the side forward were scraping and painting, and Mary Doncaster and Mrs. Gele stood by the rail above the catheads, idly watching the men and watching the porpoises under the bow. Now and then as they talked together the sound of Mary's laughter rang out pleasantly. Captain Keen, near the two missionaries aft, cocked his head that way and chuckled. "We'll be sorry to say good-bye to Miss Doncaster," he remarked. "The girl has an honest, friendly sound in her laughing." Mary and the others were coming aft toward them; and George, always al-ways apt to avoid Mary, went forward for-ward along the other side of the deck. She looked after him, her eyes sobered by hurt; and a moment mo-ment later, when Mrs. Gale and Joseph Neargood had gone below, she smiled and said to John Gale: "I saw you talking with poor Mr. McAusland." He chuckled. "Now I wonder why you call him 'poor.' " "But isn't he? He might have so many things,-but he's afraid to take them." "Afraid?" "Well, at least sort of ashamed, and shy." "Ashamed of what?" The old man watched her with a lively interest "Ashamed of life, perhaps." The girl's cheeks were bright. "Don't you know people like that? Old maids who insist that there's something some-thing sinful in loving and marrying? People who persuade themselves that the things they want to do and don't dare do are really wrong; and who think everyone else is wicked for doing them?" He spoke in an affectionate amusement amuse-ment "So wise so young!" "I'm not so awfully young," Mary assured him. "I'm nineteen. Remember Re-member I lived on Gilead till I was ten, and the Island girls start having hav-ing babies when they're not much older than that." (TO BE CONTINUED) |