Chapter 1

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_ CHAPTER I

First day out.
Weather horrible, uncertain and squally, but interesting
Developments promised Feel fine.

SMITH'S LOG.

Several tugs were persuasively nudging the Clan Macgregor out from her pier. Beside the towering flanks of the sea-monster, newest and biggest of her species, they seemed absurdly inadequate to the job. But they made up for their insignificance by self-important and fussy puffings and pipings, while, like an elephant harried by terriers, the vast mass slowly swung outward toward the open. From the pier there arose a composite clamor of farewell.

The Tyro gazed down upon this lively scene with a feeling of loneliness. No portion of the ceremonial of parting appertained personally to him. He had had his fair fraction in the form of a crowd of enthusiastic friends who came to see him off on his maiden voyage. They, however, retired early, acting as escort to his tearful mother and sister who had given way to uncontrollable grief early in the proceedings, on a theory held, I believe, by the generality of womankind in the face of considerable evidence to the contrary, that a first-time voyager seldom if ever comes back alive. Lacking individual attention, the Tyro decided to appropriate a share of the communal. Therefore he bowed and waved indiscriminately, and was distinctly cheered up by a point-blank smile and handkerchief flutter from a piquant brunette who liked his looks. Most people liked his looks, particularly women.

In the foreground of the dock was an individual who apparently didn't. He was a fashionable and frantic oldish-young man, who had burst through the barrier and now jigged upon the pier-head in a manner not countenanced by the Society for Standardizing Ballroom Dances. At intervals he made gestures toward the Tyro as if striving, against unfair odds of distance, to sweep him from the surface of creation. As the Tyro had never before set eyes upon him, this was surprising. The solution of the mystery came from the crowd, close-pressed about the Tyro. It took the form of an unmistakable sniffle, and it somehow contrived to be indubitably and rather pitifully feminine. The Tyro turned.

At, or rather underneath, his left shoulder, and trying to peep over or past it, he beheld a small portion of a most woe-begone little face, heavily swathed against the nipping March wind. Through the beclouding veil he could dimly make out that the eyes were swollen, the cheeks were mottled; even the nose--with regret I state it--was red and puffy. An unsightly, melancholy little spectacle to which the Tyro's young heart went out in prompt pity. It had a habit of going out in friendly and helpful wise to forlorn and unconsidered people, to the kind of folk that nobody else had time to bother about.

"What a mess of a face, poor kiddy!" said the Tyro to himself.

From the mess came another sniffle and then a gurgle. The Tyro, with a lithe movement of his body, slipped aside from his position of vantage, and the pressure of the crowd brought the girl against the rail. Thereupon the Seven Saltatory Devils possessing the frame of the frantic and fashionable dock-dancer deserted it, yielding place to a demon of vocality.

"I think he's calling to you," said the Tyro in the girl's ear.

The girl shook her head with a vehemence which imparted not so much denial as an "I-don't-care-if-he-is" impression.

Stridently sounded the voice of distress from the pier. "Pilot-boat," it yelled, and repeated it. "Pilot! Pilot! Come--back--pilot-boat."

Again the girl shook her head, this time so violently that her hair--soft, curly, luxuriant hair--loosened and clouded about her forehead and ears. In a voice no more than a husky, tremulous whisper, which was too low even to be intended to carry across the widening water-space, and therefore manifestly purposed for the establishment of her own conviction, she said:

"I wo-won't. I _won't_. I WON'T!!!" At the third declaration she brought a saber-edged heel down square upon the most afflicted toe of a very sore foot which the Tyro had been nursing since a collision in the squash court some days previous. Involuntarily he uttered a cry of anguish, followed by a monosyllabic quotation from the original Anglo-Saxon. The girl turned upon him a baleful face, while the long-distance conversationalist on the dock reverted to his original possession and faded from sight in a series of involuted spasms.

"_What_ did you say?" she demanded, still in that hushed and catchy voice.

"'Hell,'" repeated the Tyro, in a tone of explication, "'is paved with good intentions.' It's a proverb."

"I know that as well as you do," she whispered resentfully. "But what has that to do with--with me?"

"Lord! What a vicious little spitfire it is," said he to himself. Then, aloud: "It was my good intention to remove that foot and substitute the other one, which is better able to sustain--"

"Was that your foot I stepped on?"

"It _was_. It is now a picturesque and obsolete ruin."

"It had no right to be there."

"But that's where I've always kept it," he protested, "right at the end of that leg."

"If you want me to say I'm sorry, I won't, I _won't_--I--"

"Help!" cried the Tyro. "One more of those 'won'ts' and I'm a cripple for life."

There was a convulsive movement of the features beneath the heavy veil, which the Tyro took to be the beginning of a smile. He was encouraged. The two young people were practically alone now, the crowd having moved forward for sight of a French liner sweeping proudly up the river. The girl turned her gaze upon the injured member.

"Did I really hurt you much?" she asked, still whispering.

"Not a bit," lied the Tyro manfully. "I just made that an excuse to get you to talk."

"Indeed!" The head tilted up, furnishing to the Tyro the distinct moulding, under the blurring fabric, of a determined and resentful chin. "Well, I can't talk. I can only whisper."

"Sore throat?"

"No."

"Well, it's none of my business," conceded the Tyro. "But you rather looked as if--as if you were in trouble, and I thought perhaps I could help you."

"I don't want any help. I'm all right." To prove which she began to cry again.

The Tyro led her over to a deck-chair and made her sit down. "Of course you are. You just sit there and think how all-right you are for five minutes and then you _will_ be all right."

"But I'm not going back. Never! Never!! _Nev-ver!!!_"

"Certainly not," said the Tyro soothingly.

"You speak to me as if I were a child!"

"So you are--almost."

"That's what they all think at home. That's why I'm--I'm running away from them," she wailed, in a fresh access of self-commiseration.

"Running away! To Europe?"

"Where did you think this ship was bound for?"

"But--all alone?" queried the other, thunderstruck.

"All alone?" She contrived to inform her whisper with a malicious mimicry of his dismay. "I suppose the girls you know take the whole family along when they run away. Idiot!"

"Go ahead!" he encouraged her. "Take it out on me. Relieve your feelings. You can't hurt mine."

"I haven't even got a maid with me," mourned the girl. "She got left. F-f-father will have a fu-fu-fit!"

"Father was practicing for it, according to my limited powers of observation, when last seen."

"What! Where did you see him?"

"Wasn't it father who was giving the commendable imitation of a whirling dervish on the pier-head?"

"Heavens, no! That's the--the man I'm running away from."

"The plot thickens. I thought it was your family you were eluding."

"Everybody! Everything! And I'm _never_ coming back. There's no way they can get me now, is there?"

A reiterated word of the convulsive howler on the dock had stuck in the Tyro's mind. "What about the pilot-boat?"

"Oh! Could they? What shall I do? I _won't_ go back. I'll jump overboard first. And you do nothing but stand there like a ninny."

"Many thanks, gentle maiden," returned her companion, unperturbed, "for this testimonial of confidence and esteem. With every inclination to aid and abet any crime or misdemeanor within reach, I nevertheless think I ought to be let in on the secret before I commit myself finally."

"It--it's that Thing on the dock."

"So you led me to infer."

"He wants to marry me."

"Well, America is the land of boundless ambitions," observed the young man politely.

"But they'll make me marry him if I stay," came the half-strangled whisper. "I'm engaged to him, I tell you."

"No; you didn't tell me anything of the sort. Why, he's old enough to be your father."

"Older!" she asseverated spitefully. "And hatefuller than he is old."

"Why do such a thing?"

"I didn't do it."

"Then he did it all himself? I thought it took two to make an engagement."

"It does. Father was the other one."

"Oh! Father is greatly impressed with our acrobatic friend's eligibility as son-in-law?"

"Well, of course, he's got plenty of money, and a splendid position, and all that. And I--I--I didn't exactly say 'No.' But when I saw it in the newspapers, all spread out for everybody to read--"

"Hello! It got into the papers, did it?"

"Yesterday morning. Father put it in; I _know_ he did. I cried all night, and this morning I had Marie pack my things, and I made a rush for this old ship, and they didn't have anything for me but a stuffy little hole 'way down in the hold somewhere, and I wish I were dead!"

"Oh, cheer up!" counseled the Tyro. "I've got an awfully decent stateroom--123 D, and if you want to change--"

"Why, I'm 129 D. That's the same kind of room in the same passage. Do you call _that_ fit to live in?"

Now the Tyro is a person of singularly equable temperament. But to have an offer which he had made only with self-sacrificing effort thus cavalierly received by a red-nosed, blear-eyed, impudent little chittermouse (thus, I must reluctantly admit, did he mentally characterize his new acquaintance), was just a bit too much.

"You don't have to accept the offer, you know," he assured her. "I only made it to be offensive. And as I've apparently been successful beyond my fondest hopes, I will now waft myself away."

There was some kind of struggle in which the lachrymose maiden's whole anatomy seemed involved, and then a gloved hand went out appealingly.

"Meaning that you're sorry?" inquired the Tyro sternly.

Some sounds there are which elude the efforts of the most onomatopoeic pen. Still, as nearly as may be--

"Buh!" said the damsel. "Buh--huh--_huh!_"

"Oh, in that case." The Tyro turned back.

There was a long pause, while the girl struggled for self-command, during which her squire had time to observe with some surprise that she had a white glove on her left hand and a tan one on her right, and that her apparel seemed to have been put on without due regard to the cardinal points of the compass. Through the veil she perceived and interpreted his appraisal.

"I'm a dowdy frump!" she lamented, half-voiced. "I dressed myself while Marie was packing. But you needn't be so--so supercilious about it."

"I'm not," protested he, conscience-stricken.

"You are! When you look at me that way I hate you! I'm not sorry I was nasty to you. I'm glad! I wish I'd been nastier!"

The Tyro bent upon her a fascinated but baleful regard. "Angel child," said he in sugared accents, "appease my curiosity. Answer me one question."

"I won't. What is it?"

"Did you ever have your ears boxed?"

"Never!" she said indignantly.

"I thought as much."

"You'd like to do it, perhaps."

"I'd love to. It would do me--I mean you--so much good."

"Maybe I'll let you if you'll help me get away. I know they'll find me!" At the prospect the melancholy one once more abandoned herself to the tragedy of existence. "And you don't do a thing but m-m-make fu-fu-fun of me."

Contrition softened the heart of the Tyro. "Oh, look here, Niobe," he began.

"My name _isn't_ Niobe!"

"Well, your nature's distinctly Niobish. I've got to call you something."

"You haven't! You haven't got to ever speak to me again. They'll find me, and catch me, and send me back, and I'll marry that--that _Creature_, if that's what you want."

This was the _argumentum ad hominem_ with a vengeance. "_I_ want? What on earth have I got to do with it?"

"Nothing! Nobody has anything to do with it. Nobody gives a--a--a _darn_ for me. Oh, I wish I were back home!"

"Now you're talking sense. The pilot-boat is your play."

"Oh! And you said you'd help me." And then the last barrier gave way, and the floods swept down and immersed speech for the moment.

"Oh, come! Brace up, little girl." His voice was all kindness now. "If you're really bound to get away--"

"I am," came the muffled voice.

"But have you got any place to go?"

"Yes."

"Where?"

"My married sister's in London."

"Truly?"

"I can show you a cablegram if you don't believe me."

"That's all right, then. I'll take a chance. Now for one deep, dark, and deadly plot. If the pilot-boat is after you, they'll look up your name and cabin on the passenger list."

"I didn't give my real name."

"Oho! Well, your father might wire a description."

"It's just the kind of thing he would do."

"Therefore you'd better change your clothes."

"No. I'd better not. This awful mess is a regular disguise for me."

"And if you could contrive to stop crying--"

"I'm going to cry," said the young lady, with conviction, "all the way over."

"You'll be a cheerful little shipmate!"

"Don't you concern yourself about that," she retorted. "After the pilot leaves, you needn't have me on your mind at all."

"Thank you. Well, suppose you join me over in yonder secluded corner of the deck in about two hours. Is there anybody on board that knows you?"

"How do I know? There might be."

"Then stay out of the way, and keep muffled up as you are now. Your own mother wouldn't recognize you through that veil. In fact I don't suppose I'd know you myself, but for your voice."

"Oh, I don't always whisper. But if I try to talk out loud my throat gets funny and I want to c-c-cry--"

"Quit it! Stop. Brace up, now. We'll bluff the thing through somehow. Just leave it to me and don't worry."

"And now," queried the Tyro of himself, as he watched the forlorn little figure out of sight, "what have I let myself in for this time?"

With a view to gathering information about the functions, habits, and capacities of a pilot-boat, he started down to the office and was seized upon the companionway by a grizzled and sunbaked man of fifty who greeted him joyously.

"Sandy! Is it yourself? Well met to you!"

"Hello, Dr. Alderson," returned the young man with warmth. "Going over? What luck for me!"

"Why? Need a chaperon?"

"A cicerone, anyway. It's my first trip, and I don't know a soul aboard."

"Oh, you'll know plenty before we're over. A maiden voyager is a sort of pet aboard ship, particularly if he's an unattached youth. My first was thirty years ago. This is my twenty-seventh."

"You must know all about ships, then. Tell me about the pilot."

"What about him? He's usually a gay old salt who hasn't been out of sight of land for--"

"That isn't what I want to know. Does he take people back with him?"

"Hello! What's this? Don't want to back out already, do you?"

"No. It isn't I."

"Somebody want to go back? That's easily arranged."

"No. They don't want to go back. Not if they can help it. But could word be got to the pilot to take any one off?"

"Oh, yes. If it were sent in time. A telegram to Quarantine would get him, up to an hour or so after we cast off. What's the mystery, Sandy?"

"Tell you later. Thanks, ever so much."

"I'll have you put at my table," called the other after him, as he descended the broad companionway.

So the pilot-boat scheme was feasible, then. If the unknown weeper's father had prompt notice--from the disciple of Terpsichore, for example--he might get word to the pilot and institute a search. Meditating upon the appearance and behavior of the dock-dancer, the Tyro decided that he'd go to any lengths to see the thing through just for the pleasure of frustrating him.

"Though what on earth he wants to marry her for, _I_ don't see," he thought. "She ought to marry an undertaker."

And he sat down to write his mother a pilot-boat letter, assuring her that he had thus far survived the perils of the deep and had already found a job as knight-errant to the homeliest and most lugubrious girl on the seven seas. At the warning call for the closing of the mails he hastened to the rendezvous on deck. She was there before him, still muffled up, still swollen of feature, and still, as he indignantly put it to himself, "blubbering."

Meantime there had reached the giant ship Clan Macgregor a message signed by a name of such power that the whole structure officially thrilled to it from top to bottom. The owner of the name demanded the instant return, intact and in good order, C.O.D., of a valuable daughter, preferably by pilot-boat, but, if necessary, by running the ship aground and sending said daughter ashore in a breeches-buoy, or by turning back and putting into dock again. In this assumption there was perhaps some hyperbole. But it was obvious from the stir of officialdom that the signer of the demand wanted his daughter very much and was accustomed to having his wants respectfully carried out. One feature of the message would have convinced the Tyro, had he seen it, of the fatuity of fatherhood. It described the fugitive as "very pretty."

The search was thorough, rigid, and quite unavailing. The reason why it was unavailing was this: At the moment when that portion of the chase to which the promenade deck was apportioned, consisting of the second officer, the purser, and two stewards, approached the secluded nook where the Tyro stood guardian above the feminine Fount of Tears, they beheld and heard only a young man admonishing a stricken girl in unmistakably fraternal terms:

"Now, Amy, you might just as well stop that sniveling. [The Tyro was taking a bit of revenge on the side.] You can't change your stateroom. There isn't another to be had on board. And if it's good enough for Mother, I think it ought to be good enough for you. Do have some gumption, Amy, and cut out the salty-tear business. Come on down and eat."

The pursuit passed on, and an hour later the pilot-boat chugged away passengerless; for even the mightiest cannot hold indefinitely an ocean liner setting out after a possible record. Almost at the moment that the man of power received a message stating positively that his daughter was not on the Clan Macgregor that perverse little person was saying to her preserver, who--foolish youth--had expected some expression of appreciation:--

"What do you mean by calling me Amy? I _hate_ the name."

"Short for 'amiability,' your most obvious quality."

"You're a perfect _pig_!" retorted the lady with conviction.

The Tyro made her a low bow. "Oh, pattern of all the graces," said he, "I accept and appreciate the appellation. The pig is a praiseworthy character. The pig suffereth long and is kind. The pig is humble, pious, a home-lover and a home-stayer. You never heard of a pig changing his heart and running away across the seas on twelve hours' notice, because things didn't go exactly to suit him. Did you, now? The pig is mild of temper and restrained of speech. He always thinks twice before he grunts. To those that use him gently the pig is friendly and affectionate. Gratitude makes its home in that soft bosom. Well has the poet sung:--

"How rarer than a serpent's tooth
It is to find a thankless pig!

"The pig does not grouch nor snap nor stamp upon the feet of the defenseless. Finally and above all, he does not give way to useless tears and make red the lovely pinkness of his shapely nose. Proud am I to be dubbed the Perfect Pig."

"_Oh!_" said the tearful damsel, and potential murder informed the monosyllable.

"See here," said the Tyro persuasively: "tell me, why are you so cross with me?"

"Because you pitied me."

"Anybody would. You look so helpless and miserable."

"I'm not muh-muh-miserable!"

"I beg your pardon. Of course you're not. Any one could see that."

"I _am_. But I don't care. I _won't_ be pitied. How dare you pity me! I hate people that--that go around pitying other people."

"I'll promise never to do it again. Only spare my life this time. Now I'm going to go away and stop bothering you. But if you find things getting too dull for you during the voyage, I'll be around somewhere within call. Good-bye, and good luck."

A little hand went out to him--impulsively.

"I _am_ sorry," came the whisper--it was almost free of tragic effect this time--"and I really think you--you're rather a dear."

The Tyro marched away in the righteous consciousness of having done his full duty by helpless and unattractive girlhood. The girl retired presently to her cabin, and made a fair start on her announced policy of crying all the way from America to Europe. When, however, the ship met with a playful little cross-sea and began to bobble and weave and splash about in the manner of our top-heavy leviathans of travel, she was impelled to take thought of her inner self, and presently sought the fresh and open air of the deck lest a worse thing befall her. There in a sheltered angle she snuggled deep in her chair, and presently, braced by the vivifying air, was by way of almost enjoying herself. And thither fate drove the Tyro, with relentless purpose, into her clutches.

With his friend Alderson, who had retrieved him late in the afternoon after he had unpacked, the Tyro was making rather uncertain weather of it along the jerking deck, when an unusually abrupt buck-jump executed by the Macgregor sent him reeling up against the cabin rail at the angle behind which the girl sheltered.

"Let's stop here for a minute," panted Alderson. "Haven't got my sea-legs yet." There was a pause. "Did I see you making yourself agreeable to a young person of the dangerous sex a couple of hours ago?"

"Agreeable? Well, judging by results, no. I doubt if Chesterfield himself could have made himself agreeable to Little Miss Grouch."

"Miss _Who_?"

"Little Miss Grouch. Don't know her real name. But that's good enough for descriptive purposes. She's the crossest little patch that ever grew up without being properly spanked."

"Where did you run across her?"

"Oh, she wrecked my pet toe with a guillotine heel because I ventured to sympathize with her."

"Oh," commented the experienced Alderson. "Sympathy isn't in much demand when one is seasick."

"It wasn't seasickness. It was weeps for the vanished fatherland; such blubbery weeps! Poor little girl!" mused the Tyro. "She isn't much bigger than a minute, and _so_ forlorn, and _so_ red-nosed, and _so_ homely, you couldn't help but--"

At this moment a drunken stagger on the part of the ship slewed the speaker halfway around. He found himself looking down upon a steamer-chair, wherein lay a bundle swathed in many rugs. From that bundle protruded a veiled face and the outline of a swollen nose, above which a pair of fixed eyes blazed, dimmed but malevolent, into his.

"Er--ah--oh," said the Tyro, moving hastily away. "If you'll excuse me I think I'll just step over the rail and speak to a fish I used to know."

"What's the matter?" inquired Alderson suspiciously, following him. "Not already!"

"Oh, no. Not that. Worse. That bundle almost under our feet when I spoke--that was Little Miss Grouch."

Alderson took a furtive glance. "She's all mummied up," he suggested; "maybe she didn't hear."

"Oh, yes, she did. Trust my luck for that. And I said she was homely. And she is. Oh, Lord, I wouldn't have hurt her poor little feelings for anything."

"Don't you be too sure about her being so homely. Any woman looks a fright when she's all bunged up from crying."

"What's the difference?" said the Tyro miserably. "A pretty girl don't like to be called homely any more than a homely one."

"There's where you're off, my son," returned Alderson. "She can summon her looking-glass as a witness in rebuttal."

"Anyway, I've put my foot in it up to the knee!"

"Oh, go up to-morrow when she's feeling better and tell her you were talking about the ship's cat."

"I'd show better sense by keeping out of her way altogether."

"You'll never be able to do that," said the sea-wise Alderson. "Try to avoid any one on shipboard and you'll bump into that particular person everywhere you go, from the engine-room to the forepeak. Ten to one she sits next to you at table."

"I'll have my seat changed," cried the other in panic. "I'll eat in my cabin. I'll fast for the week."

"You be a game sport and I'll help you out," promised his friend. "All hands to repel boarders! Here she comes!"

Little Miss Grouch bore down upon them with her much-maligned nose in the air. As she maneuvered to pass, the ship, which had reached the climax of its normal roll to port, paused, and then decided to go a couple of degrees farther; in consequence of which the young lady fled with a stifled cry of fury straight into the Tyro's waiting arms. Alderson, true to his promise, extracted her, set her on her way, and turned anxiously to his young friend.

"Did she bite you?" he inquired solicitously.

"No. You grabbed her just in time. This affair," he continued with profound and wretched conviction, "is going to be Fate with a capital F."

Meantime, in the seclusion of her cabin, the little lady was maturing the plot of deep and righteous wrath. "Wait till to-morrow," she muttered, hurling her apparel from her and diving into her bunk. "I'll show him," she added, giving the pillow a vicious poke. "He said I was homely! (Thump!) And red-nosed. (Plop!) And cross and ugly! (Whack!) And he called me Little Miss Grouch. And--and _gribble_ him!" pursued the maligned one, employing the dreadful anathema of her schoolgirl days. "He pitied me. Pitied! Me! Just wait. I'll be seasick and have it over with! And I'll cry until I haven't got another tear left. And then I'll fix _him_. He's got nice, clear gray eyes, too," concluded the little ogress with tigerish satisfaction. "Ouch! where's the bell!"

For several hours Little Miss Grouch carried out her programme faithfully and at some pains. Then there came to her the fairy godmother, Sleep, who banished the goblins, Grief and Temper, and worked her own marvelous witchery upon the weary girl to such fair purpose that she awoke in the morning transformed beyond all human, and more particularly all masculine, believing. One look in her glass assured her that the unfailing charm had worked.

She girded up her hair and went forth upon the war-path of her sex. _

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