“Look at that boat,” said Mark Frost, broaching. Mrs. Maurier directly behind him, shrieked:
“It’s the tug!” She turned and screamed down the companionway, “It’s the tug: the tug has come!” The others all chanted, “The tug! The tug!” Major Ayers exclaimed dramatically and opportunely:
“Ha, gone away!”
“It has come at last,” Mrs. Maurier shrieked. “It came while we were at lunch. Has anyone—” She roved her eyes about. “The captain — Has he been notified? Mr. Talliaferro—?”
“Surely,” Mr. Talliaferro agreed with polite alacrity, mounting the stairs and distintegrating his members with expedition. “I’ll summon the captain.”
So he rushed forward and the others came on deck and stared at the tug, and a gentle breeze blew offshore and they slapped intermittently at their exposed surfaces. Mr. Talliaferro shouted, “Captain! oh, Captain!” about the deck: he screamed it into the empty wheelhouse and returned. “He must be asleep,” he told them.
“We are off at last,” Mrs. Maurier intoned, “we can get off at last. The tug has come: I sent for it days and days ago. But we can get off, now. But the captain. . Where is the captain? He shouldn’t be asleep, at this time. Of all times for the captain to be asleep — Mr. Talliaferro—”
“But Gordon,” Mark Frost said, “how about—”
Miss Jameson clutched his arm. “Let’s get off, first,” she said.
“I called him,” Mr. Talliaferro reminded them. “He must be asleep in his room.”
“He must be asleep,” Mrs. Maurier repeated. “Will some gentleman—”
Mr. Talliaferro took his cue. “I’ll go,” he said.
“If you will be so kind,” Mrs. Maurier screamed after him. She stared again at the tug. “He should have been here, so we could be all ready to start,” she said fretfully. She waved her handkerchief at the tug: it ignored her.
“We might be getting everything ready, though,” Fairchild suggested. “We ought to have everything ready when they pull us off.”
“That’s so,” Mark Frost agreed. “We’d better run down and pack, hadn’t we?”
“Ah, we ain’t going back home yet. We’ve just started the cruise. Are we, folks?”
They all looked at the hostess. She roved her stricken eyes, but she said at last, bravely, “Why, no. No, of course not, if you don’t want to. . But the captain: we ought to be ready,” she repeated.
“Well, let’s get ready,” Mrs. Wiseman said.
“Nobody knows anything about boats except Fairchild,” Mark Frost said. Mr. Talliaferro returned, barren.
“Me?” Fairchild repeated. “Talliaferro’s been across the whole ocean. And there’s Major Ayers. All Britishers cut their teeth on anchor chains and marlinspikes.”
“And draw their toys with lubbers’ lines,” Mrs. Wiseman chanted. “It’s almost a poem. Finish it, someone.”
Mr. Talliaferro made a sound of alarm. “No: really, I—” Mrs. Maurier turned to Fairchild.
“Will you assume charge until the captain appears, Mr. Fairchild?”
“Mr. Fairchild,” Mr. Talliaferro parroted. “Mr. Fairchild is temporary captain, people. The captain doesn’t seem to be on board,” he whispered to Mrs. Maurier.
Fairchild glanced about with a sort of ludicrous helplessness. “What am I supposed to do?” he asked. “Jump overboard with a shovel and shovel the sand away?”
“A man who has reiterated his superiority as much as you have for the last week should never be at a loss for what to do,” Mrs. Wiseman told him. “We ladies have already thought of that. You are the one to think of something else.”
“Well, I’ve already thought of not jumping overboard and shoveling her off,” Fairchild answered, “but that don’t seem to help much, does it?”
“You ought to coil ropes or something like that,” Miss Jameson suggested. “That’s what they were always doing on all the ships I ever read about.”
“All right,” Fairchild agreed equably. “We’ll coil ropes, then. Where are the ropes?”
“That’s your trouble,” Mrs. Wiseman said. “You’re captain now.”
“Well, we’ll find some ropes and coil ’em.” He addressed Mrs. Maurier. “We have your permission to coil ropes?”
“No: really,” said Mrs. Maurier in her helpless astonished voice. “Isn’t there something we can do? Can’t we signal to them with a sheet? They may not know that this is the right boat.”
“Oh, they know, I guess. Anyway, we’ll coil ropes and be ready for them. Come on here, you men.” He named over his depleted watch and herded it forward. He herded it down to his cabin and nourished it with stimulants.
“We may coil the right rope, at that,” the Semitic man suggested. “Major Ayers ought to know something about boats: it should be in his British blood.”
Major Ayers didn’t think so. American boats have amphibious traits that are lacking in ours,” he explained. “Half the voyage on land, you know,” he explained tediously.
“Sure,” Fairchild agreed. He brought his watch above again and forward, where instinct told him the ropes should be. “I wonder where the captain is. Surely he ain’t drowned, do you reckon?”
“I guess not,” the Semitic man answered. “He gets paid for this. . There comes a boat.”
The boat came from the tug, and soon it came alongside and the captain came over the rail. A stranger followed him and they went below without haste, leaving Mrs. Maurier’s words like vain unmated birds in the air. “Let’s get ready, then,” Fairchild ordered his crew. “Let’s tie a rope to something.”
So they tied a rope to something, knotting it intricately, then Major Ayers discovered that they had tied it to a winch handle which fitted loosely into a socket and which would probably come out quite easily, once a strain came onto the rope. So they untied it and found something attached firmly to the deck, and they tied the rope to this, and after a while the captain and the stranger, clutching a short evil pipe, came back on deck and stood and watched them. “We’ve got the right rope,” Fairchild told his watch in an undertone, and they knotted the rope intricately and straightened up.
“How’s that, Cap?” Fairchild asked.
“All right,” the captain answered. “Can we trouble you for a match?”
Fairchild gave them a match. The stranger fired his pipe and they got into the tender and departed. They hadn’t got far when the one called Walter came out and called them, and they put about and returned for him. Then they went back to the tug. Fairchild’s watch had ceased work, and it gazed after the tender. After a time Fairchild said, “He said that was the right rope. So I guess we can quit.”
So they did, and went aft to where the ladies were; and presently the tender came bobbing back across the water. It came alongside again and a Negro, sweating gently and regularly, held it steady while the one called Walter and yet anotherstranger got aboard, bringing a rope that trailed away into the water behind them.
Everyone watched with interest while Walter and his companion made the line fast in the bows, after having removed Fairchild’s rope. Then Walter and his friend went below.
“Say,” Fairchild said suddenly, “do you reckon they’ve found our whisky?”
“I guess not,” the Semitic man assured him. “I hope not,” he amended; and they all returned in a body to stare down into the tender where the Negro sat without selfconsciousness, eating of a large grayish object. While they watched the Negro Walter and his companion returned, and the stranger bawled at the tug through his hands. A reply at last, and the other end of the line which they had recently brought aboard the yacht and made fast, slid down from the deck of the tug and plopped heavily into the water; and Walter and his companion drew it aboard the yacht and coiled it down, wet and dripping. Then they elbowed themselves to the rail, cast the rope into the tender and got in themselves, and the Negro stowed his strange edible object temporarily away and rowed back to the tug.