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COPYRIGHT, 1954, BY KATHRENE PINKERTON

first edition

CHAPTER 1

Royal Browne stood in the wheelhouse door of the Argosy and watched the men carrying the crates, boxes and cartons aboard. As on their first voyage three years ago, and every voyage since, she wondered where they could possibly stow all the trade goods, but she knew they would, knew the peddler boat would sail from Vancouver on its usual cruise up the British Columbia coast with everything in order.

Pete, the head trucker, knew where everything should go, heavy hardware on the afterdeck, dry goods and fragile freight in the deckhouse, and from past experience he understood everything must be stowed compactly if all were to be under shelter. He didn’t waste an inch of space, and he made sure his helpers wasted none.

Royal checked the invoices as the stuff came aboard and left the rest to Pete. He liked it better that way, liked to share in the excitement and the elation of a ship’s departure, for he believed in happy sailings and was proud of his part in seeing that they were.

“That’s the lot, Mate,” he said and handed her the slips to sign. He’d called her mate when he loaded them for their first departure, and she smiled, remembering how it pleased her, and thinking too how funny she must have been—a fourteen-year-old, all hands and feet and trying so hard to be nautical and efficient. Now Pete looked at her and grinned. “You’re so growed up I’d better begin calling you first officer.” She started to protest, and then he added so apologetically she knew he hated to say it, “Mind signing Cap’n Dan’s name on the slips? Those smart boys in the office are always looking for something to yell about and the skipper’s always signed the receipt before.”

“Of course I don’t mind,” she said. “He’d have been here except he had to go up town for the ship’s papers.”

“Tell him hello for me. And give my best to your kid brother. What’s he doing now? Haven’t seen him the last few trips.”

“Wally? I thought you knew he was living with some friends at Deep Inlet. But you’ll see him on our fall trip. He’s finished grade school and we’ll pick him up on our way north.”

“That’s fine! He’s a smart kid. Has more savvy about gas engines than a lot of men around here. Well, let’s get going. Got two more boats to load and I never held up a sailing yet.” He paused at the door of the deckhouse. “Good thing we didn’t have another of those big boxes. Don’t know where we would have put it. But you and Cap’n got the biggest job of all ahead, unshucking all this stuff.”

She looked in the deckhouse, crammed almost to the top. “That’s not work,” she said. “That’s fun.”

Pete’s laugh was disbelieving as he started down the float with a rattling hand truck, but she hadn’t expected him to understand what it meant to see on board the things she and her father had spent two weeks buying. Each purchase had to be weighed against another to make sure it was wise. Their money had to be spread thin, yet they were always conscious of the customers, old friends, who were depending on them. Knowing the Argosy must not fail them only made it harder to resist enticing buys. And now those sealed cartons and boxes looked so fateful. She could hardly wait to get them open and make sure their mistakes had not been big ones.

Pete and his helpers got into their truck and waved. As it roared away the float seemed quiet. Even the inevitable waterfront loiterers apparently concluded the excitement was over and moved away. There were always a few loungers on the float but the warm May sun had brought out more today than usual. One stopped beside the Argosy.

“Excuse me, Miss, but isn’t this the old Falmouth?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Did you know her?”

“Saw her a few times. Friend of mine owned the boat-works where she laid. Didn’t recognize her at first with that painted deckhouse. Falmouth’s used to be bright work. As I recall, she was solid teak.”

“And China built!” Royal added proudly.

“Sure, I remember! Belonged to some English family. She laid in Coal Harbor for a long time. I asked my friend what happened to her and he told me an actor bought her. Fellow with a couple of young ’uns.”

“That was us! Danforth Browne’s my father.”

“You don’t say! And I’ve been trying to figure this craft out.” He laughed. “I might have guessed it. Let’s see, it was along in twenty-two you bought her, wasn’t it?”

She nodded. “Three years ago last March.”

“Have to do much to her?”

“Quite a bit. But we were ready to start north in May.” She smiled as she recalled the thrill of their first departure. They’d been so jubilant, and so confident. Even the fact that she and Wally were sailing under a skipper who knew as little about the sea as did his crew had seemed a matter of small importance, for to them the Argosy was more than a boat. It was their home, their first, and it meant a settled future after years of being nomads. All this had come about because Danforth Browne chanced to see the Falmouth. It seemed a happy accident had changed misfortune into fresh adventure.

“Oh,” the stranger said. “You folks live up the coast?”

“We live in the boat,” Royal said. “It’s our home.” The fact had seemed obvious but he only looked more baffled.

“So? Would you mind telling what you do with all that stuff? I can’t figure it out.”

“The Argosy’s a peddler boat. I thought you knew it. Everyone around this float knows us. We always tie up here.”

“Peddlers’ boat! That’s one thing I didn’t think of. So the old Falmouth’s gone into trade!” He chuckled. “First peddler craft I ever heard of, so maybe I wasn’t too dumb.”

“We’re the only one on the coast. It’s the reason my father bought her,” and she added proudly, “It was his idea.” She wanted him to know that an actor buying an old yacht hadn’t been as fantastic as his tone implied. He seemed impressed and was even more so when she told him they cruised from Vancouver to Seymour Inlet, halfway to Alaska.

“Takes in a lot of tricky coastline.” His tone paid such real respect her manner warmed. “And I bet you didn’t know much about this coast when you bought the Falmouth.”

“I’d never even seen it,” she admitted, and was about to add, “nor any other coast,” but thought she shouldn’t lower her mate’s standing. “What made you so sure?”

“Your dad’s English, isn’t he?” She nodded. “Thought so from the name. My dad was too. I’m Canadian myself but I took you to be an American.”

“My mother was, and my brother and I were born in the States.”

“Funny how you can always spot ’em. Doesn’t make sense. It’s all the same continent but Americans don’t know what a grand coast we got up here.”

“And it is so beautiful!” she said.

“Nothing in the world to touch it for scenery. A Norwegian fisherman told me even those fiords they’re so proud of can’t compare with our inlets.” She wondered if he was possibly in coastwise service, although he didn’t speak like a seaman. So many men on shore leave hung around the floats on a busman’s holiday. She was about to ask when he made it unnecessary. “Never been farther north than Princess Louise,” he confessed. “Isn’t that something to see! Pacific running right into the mountains! And every mountain rising out of the sea. Most of ’em snow-capped. It’s hard to believe.” He shook his head. “Had a crick in my neck from just staring up at ’em. Some day I’m going to see more of that country. Maybe if I’d been as smart as your father I’d have thought of a way to own a boat and make a living too. From the freight you took aboard you must be doing all right?”

“We are,” she said, and trusted her tone carried real conviction. He’d been so impressed that her father had even thought of a peddler boat she wouldn’t want him to suspect their prospects were not as good as the bulky freight suggested. Unpacked, it wouldn’t yield half the stock they ought to carry. “And we have our regular customers,” she added.

“You be gone all summer?”

“Yes. We come to Vancouver on buying trips spring and fall.”

“That’s the way to live! Funny I should have run into the old Falmouth again. I sort of took a fancy to her. Don’t build them this way nowadays. Only reason I didn’t know her was the black hull and painted deckhouse.”

“We couldn’t keep up all that white paint and bright work,” she said.

“Course not. She used to carry a crew of three and a captain besides.” He stopped beside the bow and looked back. “I don’t know but I like her better this way. Looks like she earns her living.” He waved. “A fine summer to you. And tell that skipper-dad of yours I’ll be watching for you in the fall. He must be quite a fellow.”

She watched him walk away. He was different from the usual float visitors who always asked the same old questions. And he’d known the Falmouth! That would be as the yacht was when Royal first saw her. A day she would never forget, and she thought of how she’d felt, frightened and wondering, and yet excited, and how deep down left a hope she hardly dared acknowledge.

What would it be like to waken week after week and month after month and know she was in her own room, in her own home? Through all her years, almost fourteen of them, she’d known only dingy hotels and even dingier theatrical boarding houses. She’d known so many. And day coaches and railway stations that smelled of coal and unwashed people!

It had been that way since she could remember, just as her first recollection was of being carried on stage in her mother’s arms, blinking at the shadowy people beyond the footlights. When she was four she had a walk-on part. She remembered the little parasol she carried and what a fuss the others in the company made over her.

One woman hugged her. “Isn’t she a little doll! And born for the footlights! Some day, Olga, you’ll be very proud of her.”

“Yes,” her mother said. “But she doesn’t have to be an actor just because her parents are.”

Young as she was, Royal was aware of a strange tone in her mother’s voice, yet she knew her mother was pleased with the way she’d played the part. Her mother had sat up nights to make the ruffled dress, and she washed and ironed it after each performance. Nothing was ever too much trouble for her children. She was proud of them and always saying what a good baby Wally was. Even when he had to sleep backstage because there was no other place to leave him he’d wake up, smiling, to be carried home.

For a long time all this seemed only natural. But later when Royal went to school, which she did whenever her father and mother had a season in stock, or even between engagements, she discovered children of stage people were different. Other families didn’t live in rooming houses and cook on gas plates. They were settled people. To them moving was a great event, not a certainty. Other girls dressed differently, too. Until then Royal had found it exciting to wear cut-down dresses inherited from her mother or another member of the company, but now she became aware of looking odd. She never admitted this for she already knew about the hard times, lean months arriving almost without warning. But if these times ever frightened her mother she never showed it. It was difficult to imagine her mother fearful or ever doubting for an instant Danforth Browne’s vision of their future in which just around the corner always lay a dazzling change of fortune.

It couldn’t be otherwise with Danforth Browne. Adversity never crippled his buoyant spirit. Even hardship wore the romance of adventure, for he knew how swiftly fortune turned. Minor successes, trouping in England, had carried him to America in the years when a stage presence and an English accent won a place in repertory companies, and prosperity lay just ahead. In the succeeding years of stock and traveling companies he had never lost the vision or the hope. Reverses were only springboards for glorious triumphs in the future. Confident, at times flamboyant, and always dramatic, he was an exciting person to his family, and he made being a Browne so thrillingly different that Royal only pitied the children of other fathers, hum-drum and plodding, with no gift for the magic of brave dreams.

After her mother’s death the tie between the three was closer. Perhaps Royal and Wally felt the need to carry on the stoutness of her spirit because lean times became more frequent. Later motion pictures wrecked many small repertory companies, though Danforth Browne refused to admit it was anything but a temporary evil. With his unique capacity to do the unexpected he announced one day he’d been remembered in an uncle’s will. The bequest was only a thousand pounds but he spoke of it rather grandly as “coming into money” and appeared to take the legacy very much for granted, although neither Royal nor Wally had ever heard him mention an Uncle Matthew.

“Always admired the old boy,” he said. “Bit gruff at times, but keen as a whip. Haven’t seen him since I was a lad. Knew he liked me. Was a favorite with him.” Their father handed them the lawyer’s letter, watched them read it, and was gratified by their amazement and delight. He replaced the letter carefully in the long legal envelope and said, “Family means a lot to those old fellows. We’ll have to invest this in your future.”

“You mean buy something?” Wally asked. “Like—like a house of our own?”

His father nodded. “What your mother and I always intended. Get a little place somewhere for you young ’uns to grow up in. Of course,” he added after a moment, “it’s nothing to rush into. Takes some planning. Besides, there’s no telling when this lawyer chap will send on the money. Death taxes, and all that sort of thing, and in the old country courts take their time.” He sounded almost relieved by the delay.

Wally looked startled. He’d expected the immediate action with which his father always flung himself into a fresh project. Then Wally offered a few ideas of his own. He’d known one actor with a chicken farm and another who raised tomatoes. “Gives them a place to live in summers anyway,” he concluded wistfully.

“It’s a good idea,” his father agreed absently, and dropped the subject.

Royal said nothing. She knew so well what he was thinking. A little place somewhere was an old, old dream of every actor. She had heard it for so many years and from so many stage folk, and she knew how seldom it became a reality. For them it would be even harder. A settled home could come only if Danforth Browne gave up the stage and found a new way to earn a living in the staid, prosaic, work-a-day world he’d never known, and wouldn’t like. She was sure he considered this his duty, and was equally sure it held no alluring prospects.

Three months later the repertory company was playing in Spokane when to everyone’s astonishment the check arrived. Danforth Browne was as gratified as his children but said he’d have to play out the season. “Business is tough enough without having the lead quit on them.” He spoke as a man who was answering the stern call of duty, then softened the blow by adding, “But that’ll give us more time to think this over.”

Later in Tacoma he bought a poultry magazine and read it dutifully from cover to cover, but it was evident he found both eggs and hens depressing. Their next engagement, two weeks in Seattle, proved the worst of a bad season. The company played to empty seats while motion picture houses were packed. Even Danforth Browne became morose as he marveled that the public no longer appreciated or even knew real acting, but he said this with sorrow, and not as a man who was eager for escape.

Then in Vancouver, after the third night’s performance, the manager skipped and left the company stranded. Had it not been for Uncle Matthew, the Brownes would have had to beg or borrow or somehow find the money to get them back to booking agents. But for the first time they prepared to meet what was becoming a much too familiar crisis. The legacy was a life line, and it was also something more, a command, almost like the bony finger of Uncle Matthew pointing out unpalatable facts. At least Royal wondered if her father didn’t feel so, for he looked anything but cheerful as he departed to see the rest of the company off on a steamship.

Afterwards Royal and Wally didn’t talk much. She washed a blouse and sewed on buttons. Wally, turning the pages of an old magazine, suddenly looked up.

“Dad will find something he wants to do,” he said. “It’s only because this came so sudden.” Then he flushed. It wasn’t the answer, and he knew it. Always before Danforth Browne had risen to the unexpected. Wally returned to his magazine, but after a moment he burst out, “Gosh, Royal! He never ran out of ideas before! Remember that summer when the stock company closed and he got a job making speeches for the real estate company? Had everybody laughing and they bought lots like crazy. And how tickled he was! He had a fine time! Wait and see. He’ll think of something.” Wally’s voice grew confident. “Besides, it isn’t as though we wanted a big place. And I could earn money. There’s always things for kids to do.”

It was two hours past the steamship’s departure time when Danforth Browne rushed in. “Get your hats on,” he said. “Something I want to show you.”

He refused to answer questions as he took them to the waterfront where fishing boats, work boats and other small craft were moored at floats. He hurried them out on a long pier and stopped beside the Falmouth, dirty, its paint peeling and upperworks weatherbeaten.

“Sixty-five feet long and solid teak!” he exulted. “And what a bargain! Wait till you see the inside. She’s a yacht! A real one! Like they used to build.”

They went aboard. He already knew her history. The salesman had admitted she’d been on the market for a long time. She was sound but too unwieldy to be operated without a crew and too old-fashioned to attract buyers who could afford one. But to Danforth Browne she had the appeal of true magnificence. She was a dazzling solution to their need of a settled home.

He was ablaze with his sudden inspiration. “Idea just hit me as I happened to walk past. Who’d want a poultry farm when he could live aboard a yacht like this? Salesman chap says the engine’s as sound as the ship. Can do eight miles an hour.” He chuckled. “Fellow said knots and I had to ask him what he meant. Guess we’ll have to brush up on sea talk.”

Royal and Wally stared at him, and then at each other, a little breathless. No one but so inspired a person as their father would have thought of a home afloat. That his only encounter with salt water had been on an ocean liner, that they’d never operated even a row boat, seemed a trivial detail. They knew they could take the sea in the same stride they’d taken so many other things in their eventful lives. They knew too that this idea of a settled home, like so many other enchanting ideas, might prove to be only another visionary scheme of an ever-buoyant nature. This didn’t spoil the thrill of the moment as he led them through the ship, pointing out paneling, buffets, lockers, dining table, transom berths in the deckhouse, three staterooms, and crew’s quarters.

“Cost a fortune to build a yacht like this,” he said. “Everything the finest to be had!” The aura of past splendor had softened the bitterness of a forced retreat. Once again disaster had proved to be a triumph. “No scrimping on this ship. Even the hardware’s solid bronze.”

They spent hours inspecting the ship. Wally went first to the engine room with its array of tools. Royal exclaimed over the galley lockers where cups swung on hooks and the deep-slotted compartments held china decorated with the yacht’s insignia.

“And the owners are selling her completely found,” Danforth Browne said. “Bring aboard our clothes, clean her up a bit, and we’re ready to go.”

They considered staterooms. The master cabin should of course be assigned the captain. The larger of the two staterooms amidships was given to Royal, and Wally said he preferred the smaller on the port side, next to the bathroom. Crew’s quarters, reached by a hatch on the foredeck, appeared wasted but Wally was sure they could find some use for it. They spent a long time in the deckhouse which served double duty as dining room and lounge. The pilot house was forward. Royal stood behind the wheel and tried to imagine being in command of such a ship.

It was a wonderful excursion into the magic world of make-believe. They began to realize this the first evening as they talked ways and means. There couldn’t possibly be any hope of owning such a home. They were certain of it two evenings later after hours on the waterfront asking about the coast north. Danforth Browne’s idea of revenue in passenger service had been exploded. Logging was the main occupation, and on that rugged shoreline, hemmed between mountains and the sea, waterways were the only roads and gasboats were as common as roofs on houses. No man could live in the country unless he owned one.

“You’d starve to death waiting for a paid passenger,” the captain of a coastal steamer snorted. They’d heard this opinion before but this skipper seemed the most annoyed by the fantastic notion. He ended further arguments by pointing out that even in the rare occasion of need of transportation, anyone would be desperate indeed to travel with a man who knew nothing about gales, fogs, reefs or currents, had never seen a tide table and probably couldn’t read a chart. “Takes more than a boat to make a skipper,” he said. “You’d better save your money.”

That evening no one spoke about the Falmouth and next morning Danforth Browne set off alone. He returned in late afternoon, as jaunty and as jubilant as they’d ever seen him.

“If you’re hoping to be discouraged you can always find dull-witted people anxious to oblige,” he began. “But today I did my own thinking.” He meant he’d used his natural friendliness when he’d encountered a logger who had come to Vancouver to sell a boom of logs. “Fellow had only two days in town to celebrate his sale and he had to spend one of them shopping for his neighbors. Of course I offered to help.” They’d selected hats for three women, shoes in assorted sizes for the children of two families, dresses for their mothers and kitchenware for several bachelors. “Cleaned up the whole list in a morning! Never saw a man so grateful. Insisted on taking me to lunch and I’ve been with him ever since.”

He stopped to untie a roll of charts and spread them carefully on the floor.

“Look at this stretch of coastline!” he exclaimed. “Hundreds of miles! The Inside Passage to Alaska! Mainland on one side. Vancouver Island on the other. Channels and bays and harbors and thousands of islands! Why, those fellows along the waterfront don’t begin to know what the country’s like. Mountains rising straight from sea’s edge! Feet in salt water and their heads in the clouds! The chap said you could moor an ocean liner alongside and step ashore. And these long blue patches are called inlets where the Pacific runs right among the mountains. Turn and twist and go up for miles! Nothing like it in the world!”

The three knelt on the floor. Wally and Royal watched their father’s forefinger moving across the charts with fascinated wonder, but they knew the really dramatic news was to follow. Danforth Browne had never thrown a scene.

“And people live all along that coast,” he said. “In the bays and on the islands and up these inlets. Of course they own gasboats! Have to use them to call on neighbors or run to a little store to meet the coastwise steamers, get their weekly mail and pick up groceries. But they don’t come down to Vancouver! May go a couple of years without seeing a city store where they can buy things like that logger shopped for today. And there’s our chance! It’s been waiting for some man with the wit to see it. So I bought the Falmouth. Call it a peddler boat or a store afloat. I don’t care. It’s a settled home and a way to make a living.”

Next morning they took possession. Danforth Browne’s first official act as captain was to change the yacht’s name to Argosy. He knew this reference to the treasure ships of old might be lost upon their future customers, but it afforded him great pleasure, and to his crew the new name seemed inspired, a thrilling pledge to their new mission.

All that was three years ago, yet Royal knew she’d never forget the ecstatic weeks which followed. She was still lost in those memories when her father walked down the float. She smiled as she watched him. He wasn’t really handsome, but he had an alive and vital air. Tall and broad shouldered, his hair only beginning to gray at the temples, he was distinguished. And, trim and smart in his blue yachting jacket, he looked completely the master of a vessel.

He came on board, grinned at the crammed deckhouse and walked forward. “Took me a bit longer than I’d expected,” he said. “Ran into a couple of skippers at the custom’s office who used to know the Falmouth.” The explanation was hardly necessary, since he never went anywhere without running into someone. “Everything set to pull out?”

“Even the tide,” she said. “I’ll throw the lines off.”

As they left the harbor she stood in the wheelhouse, watching the city fade behind them, and answering the traffic signals of the big ships and the small ships. Captain Dan always assumed other skippers would guess his intentions. He chuckled when a freighter bellowed a reproach as the Argosy started to cross its bow.

“All right!” he said. “Have it your way. No need to get so wrought up about it.”

A half hour later they were through the Lion’s Gate. To Royal this narrow passage, with the surging tide, a high cliff on one side and a snow-peaked mountain on the other always seemed the real point of departure. They turned north, and her spirits soared. Once again the Argosy was stocked and a season lay before them.

CHAPTER 2

Royal was alone in the pilot house. As she stood lightly balanced against the lift of the Argosy her slender body had a look of competence. It was a wonderful day to be at the wheel of a ship. Estero Channel was a sparkling ribbon, blue and gem crested. Sunshine glittered on the snow peaks of the mountains. An afternoon westerly drove the sea in curling combers and the soft hiss of their passing came through the open doors of the wheelhouse. On such a perfect day she could feel only sorry for people who must live ashore. Houses stood so still. A ship was free.

In the distance she could just see the blue-shadowed slit in the coastal range which marked Deep Inlet. They’d be in by midafternoon and Wally would be aboard. In the two weeks since they’d left Vancouver she’d been getting more and more eager for the moment. This spring it was a real homecoming, not like the vacation of the previous summer. “Joining ship,” Wally had called it when he wrote he’d finished school, and now she gave the foredeck and wheelhouse a last inspection to make certain everything was shipshape. Wally loved the Argosy and would want to see it gleaming.

They’d spent the morning cleaning ship. Decks were scrubbed, ropes coiled, windows washed, the last of the freight stowed in lockers. Even the big ship’s bell was given an unaccustomed polish, and from the clatter and banging in the engine room below, apparently work was still going on. Her trick had been over for half an hour and the captain, to whom sea formalities were precious, was always punctilious in change of watches. Nothing less than a major project could explain his absence. Finally he appeared, looking immensely pleased with himself.

“In all that racket I didn’t hear it strike two bells,” he said.

“And no wonder!” she laughed. “I thought you were rebuilding the place.”

“Put in a couple of shelves,” he said. Ordinarily he never used a hammer except under protest, and she looked her astonishment. “I had to find some place to put all that junk,” he explained righteously. “Now it’s shipshape and when I’m finished, it will be so clean Wally can eat off the floor.”

“He doesn’t usually,” she said, and smiled. It seemed only fair to remind him that he was the only person who had been guilty of making the engine room a tuck hole for all the odds and ends he didn’t have time to put away.

The captain chuckled. “You didn’t suppose I was going to let Wally see that clutter, did you? He’d be sure we’d neglected his precious motor. Probably think so anyway,” and he stared unhappily at the black trail of their exhaust. “Wish I knew what makes us smoke. Might be something I could fix before we got in.”

From Captain Dan, this was indeed desperate. The Argosy had been smoking for ten days but the captain was a firm believer in letting well enough alone. To tinker with a motor still capable of turning over would seem not only presumptuous folly but an unjustified rebuke to the benevolent Providence he was certain looked after all seafarers. He had proved the existence of this kindly spirit many times, and to the awed wonder of more cautious skippers. A few who had watched him nonchalantly sail over submerged reefs, hitting by chance the only spot in the jagged barrier which permitted a safe passage, or had seen him cut hidden pinnacle rocks by a hair’s breadth, stoutly maintained he had a strange sixth sense. But a majority held the theory that Captain Dan was allowed to travel with his hand in the Almighty’s pocket because Heaven took care of people who couldn’t take care of themselves.

“Don’t ever let that guardian angel you got working as an unpaid hand get the idea you don’t need him,” a tug boat skipper warned them the day he had watched the captain go through a tidal rapids as serenely as if it were a mill pond. “The old boy above might think it was safe to turn his head and look away some time.”

The Argosy’s crew had been even more impressed by their father’s miraculous gift of daring the sea to do its worst and always coming off scatheless. They often wished they shared it, but, try as they might, they were never quite able to capture his tranquil spirit and test the magic spell. They envied the gift and knew its value, for it had made the Argosy a happy ship. Other boats were ruled by the inexorables—departure hours, currents, wind, fog, time and tide in dangerous narrows—but these tyrants never laid their heavy hands on the peddler boat.

Now Royal was almost shocked to hear the captain even consider doing anything about the motor. She felt a little sorry for him.

“Wally would be disappointed if there wasn’t something he could fix,” she said. “Remember last summer and how anxious he was to get at the slack in the steering chain?”

The captain brightened. “Of course,” he said. “He’ll want to know he’s needed. Any lad hates to feel at loose ends.” He looked back at their smoky trail with the air of a man who had achieved a triumph. “Give him something to get his teeth into. A boy’s looking for it when all of a sudden school’s behind him. I remember how it was with me.” He went to the door and stared at the stretch of Estero Sound for a long time, and Royal knew he was thinking of those early years in England, the years of which she really knew so little, not even how he’d happened to become an actor.

Suddenly he emptied his pipe, put it in a pocket and asked if she’d mind keeping the wheel a bit longer. “Want to finish up below,” he said. “Shouldn’t be more than half an hour.”

“Don’t hurry,” she said. “I’ll take her through the entrance. There’ll be plenty of time to change my clothes and lay out stock on our run up the inlet.”

Preparations would be more elaborate than usual. With three families living in the same cove, the Argosy should have a full display of spring stock. And she wanted to look well for Wally. It wasn’t every day a boy came home. In the beginning of their life afloat they hadn’t thought he’d have to go away to school. Captain Dan had no doubts of his ability to carry on their education. Proud of his own in a good English public school, he’d stocked the Argosy with books and prepared to discourse eloquently on English classics and the history of the British Empire, but had encountered unexpected difficulty in recalling the routine of the lower forms. Instruction in the exact subjects, arithmetic and science, which Wally liked, was sagging badly, and only the captain’s determination that his son should not be the first Browne to be uneducated made him persevere.

Since boarding school was obviously beyond their income, there appeared to be no solution until a handlogger from Basket Bay arrived in a dilapidated gasboat and asked to borrow Wally for the winter’s term. He explained he’d recently married a widow and by pooling their offspring he was now head of a family of seven children, all of school age. If he could get an eighth, the province was compelled to supply a teacher. The existence of such a law astonished and delighted Captain Dan. Not only did it solve his problem but he could help a neighbor.

Wally was not convinced so quickly. The neglected gasboat and its shabby owner did not look promising. Wally even doubted so ineffectual an individual could be a handlogger, that he would have either the skill or the spirit such work required.

A handlogger was exactly what the word implied, a man who logs by hand, and the steep forested mountainsides made this unique method possible. Most always he worked alone, and strangely he didn’t pick out small timber but the largest trees, the bigger the better. It was heavy toil. First he carried an ax, a long crosscut saw, a springboard, wedges, a sledge and rossing irons, his lunch and a jug of water, five hundred feet up a mountain to a huge tree, six feet in diameter. Unaided, he felled it exactly on the line he had determined so that it smashed down and ripped its way through the forest below to its eventual plunge into the sea. It was exacting work, for if the tree hung, the logger faced one or two long days of heavy toil and danger. A “stumper,” a tree which never stopped from stump to water, was his goal. It was thrilling when he succeeded.

Royal had watched the amazing spectacle several times and was entranced by the delicacy and precision with which a tiny man hurled a fifteen-ton giant on its downward flight. She was inclined to agree with Wally that this stranger couldn’t be a successful handlogger, but eventually Wally admitted first impressions should not stand between him and opportunity. He agreed to be in Basket Bay when school opened.

But he kept a line of retreat open, and later as he departed on the coastal steamship for Basket Bay he said, “Remember I’m just trying out this scheme.”

For six weeks Wally endured an unkempt home, poor food, a shrewish woman and a quarrelsome brood, and from the poor prospects of the handlogging operation it looked as though things would rapidly get worse. Even the teacher lost heart and regarded Wally’s abrupt departure as a deliverance. But Wally had recognized the possibilities of the loan arrangement and the following summer when Ben Logan acquired two partners, each with families, Wally counted heads and offered to be the magical eighth pupil at Deep Inlet.

“Then you could get a teacher,” he told Mary Logan, adding quickly, “that is, if you don’t mind my living with you. I’d try not to be too much bother.”

To Mary Logan, with two sons she’d been trying to teach, Wally was a benefactor. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. She’d known of the law but had seen no way to meet the conditions.

“She really meant it when she said she was tickled I’d thought about their borrowing me,” Wally assured his family when he told about it later. “It’ll be grand living with them. Young Ben and I are going to bunk together.”

No one was more gratified than Captain Dan. He had felt some remorse over his quick acceptance of the handlogger’s offer and now this happy outcome put it in a better light. “I’d have been only too glad to do a favor for that Basket Bay chap if he’d tried to give you a decent place,” he said. “But this is helping good friends. And there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for Mary Logan.”

To Wally it had meant companionship and a second home, and now Royal wondered if he didn’t dread to leave it, wondered too if he was eager to be back aboard the Argosy and if a peddler boat could possibly be as exciting now that he was fourteen as it had been when he was younger. She’d thought of this before but today, alone in the wheelhouse, the question nagged her with real insistence. Yet she wondered that it did. Wally loved the Argosy, always had, and he didn’t have to finish school this spring. No one had ever thought he would be able to make up all the work he’d missed in those broken terms. To do it he must have studied very hard, must have wanted to be home.

It had been a long while since she and Wally’d had a real talk. They’d missed the Christmas vacation when ten days of southeasters kept the peddler boat storm-bound and they’d not been able to run to Deep Inlet. Reasoning all this out reassured her and she told herself sternly not to conjure up misgivings.

Wally was coming home, and she should be only glad.

Royal rounded Twin Peak Point into the final reach of the upper channel where the forested mountains rose sheer to form a background for the spring display of waterfalls. This year heavy winter snows made them more exciting than ever. Falls drained from every snowfield, so many she couldn’t begin to count them, each different, each lovely, all rushing seaward. Some were roistering cascades, hurtling off mountain shoulders, descending in great foaming leaps with joyful abandon. Others were long white shafts gleaming against the dark green of the forest, so beautiful she caught her breath in ecstacy. Some sought a furtive passage, revealed their path only in flashing dots and dashes, as they scurried from one cover to another. A few started bravely from the heights as slender silver pencils, only to be transformed into a rainbow mist falling softly to the sea.

Royal leaned out of the open window of the wheelhouse, absorbed. This splendor fitted so wonderfully into the magic of the day. The filmy falls had never seemed more beautiful, more joyous. She had always watched for them, marveled at them and in the first spring afloat she and Wally would count them, but never had they captured her imagination as now. Quite suddenly, they held new meaning as she thought that they, even more than ships, were free. Leaving the mantle of the snowfields, they were off, fresh and eager, each bound on its separate destiny. She gloried for them. The idea was strangely exciting, and she wondered she’d never realized before how thrilling they were. Mountain shoulders, hidden valleys, steep-walled canyons, heavy forests—nothing kept them from the sea.

She’d been steering mechanically, and then as an eddy caught the bow she looked around to find she was actually in the entrance. She swung hard over, wishing she had paid closer attention to the course instead of dreaming about waterfalls. The tide was against her and the full current caught the port bow, turned her to starboard, turned her so far Royal had a brief moment of panic. Quickly she eased the throttle, drifted back, then with full power hit through the narrow passage. As she rounded Hazard Rock a second eddy caught her, and for a moment it was as if giant hands were strangling the motor. Then suddenly it was free and she was sailing into Deep Inlet.

It was well named. A slender ribbon of the sea parted the mountains to make a way for the Argosy. Above was the lofty grandeur of glittering peaks. Below was the sunlit channel. Bold cliffs, mossed in bronze, rose sheer at either side. It was breathtaking. Even after three years of inlets, Royal was still caught by the marvel of sailing through what was once a mountain canyon. It had been in ancient times, long before the last glacial period, when the outer range of coastal mountains had tilted seaward, and this vast upheaval of the earth had left a dramatic record. She was always more aware of it in such places as Deep Inlet, and now, as she followed the twisting channel, mountains closed behind her. Even the entrance was hidden. They were in a detached fragment, cut off from the outer ocean, but still a part of it. The sea declared this, declared it was an invader, not a prisoner, by the tang of salt water, the sharp mark of high tide on the shoreline and a sense of movement. Here was only one of thousands of hidden notches it penetrated, and it was very beautiful.

She heard her father come on deck and a moment later he entered the wheelhouse.

“That engine room was a bigger job than I’d counted on,” he said as he took the wheel. “And I had to get ready for our landing.” He always wore his blue jacket when calling on customers, but today he was in whites besides, even a fresh top on his yachting cap. “Don’t suppose the young fellow will notice what I broke out in his honor,” he grumbled a bit sheepishly. “It took me a good half hour.”

“Well worth it for such a handsome skipper,” she said. He was actually resplendent and she gave him an approving pat before she left to open the lockers.

The display had become her job. She liked to arrange it and take pains to make the showroom attractive with clothing on one side, household articles on the other and the pretty things, scarfs and purses, bright belts and costume jewelry, on the long table where store-hungry women could browse. Today, with so many customers, she brought out all the stock, even things she knew they wouldn’t buy but would enjoy looking at. Their friends always liked to see what they’d found in the city markets. She was afraid they’d plunged a bit. They hadn’t bought as big an assortment as they ought to carry, but it was more than they could afford. She hadn’t meant to order quite so many belts, but they’d been so tempting and accessories were her weakness. Her father had lost all caution too when he’d discovered bright-patterned china. His passion for color always made him reckless. Now she gave the red-bordered cups and saucers a place of honor and put a dozen belts on the table.

She stopped for a final inspection of the showroom and felt a glow of pride at their daring. It had been daring in the face of last year’s accounts, and the grim reminders of the wholesalers. Though the display wasn’t as large or as impressive as she’d hoped, next year it would be better, and some day the Argosy would fulfill its role as the bearer of real treasure.

Below in her stateroom she changed to white ducks, her last clean pair, but Wally’s homecoming demanded something dressier than khaki. As she combed her hair she was grateful that today it crisped and crinkled into little waves which revealed faint auburn tones in the black. So often wind and sun made it only wiry. She hesitated about a scarf. She was inclined to soft shades, which went well with her gray eyes, but her father preferred vivid colors on brunettes, and she decided on the new bright green he had bought for her in Vancouver. It looked well with the dark blue cardigan and she was glad she’d worn it when her father looked up in quick approval as she entered the wheelhouse.

“That’s something like!” he said. “Now you’re as dashing as—” He hesitated, trying to find a real tribute, then finished with a flourish. “As dashing as a full-rigged ship under sail.”

Royal flushed. The green scarf must have pleased him. He didn’t often go to such lengths in his applause. She knew she would never equal her mother’s heart-shaped face and fragile beauty, but she had her mother’s coloring.

The captain was studying the chart. Usually he never looked at one although he kept it spread before him as a proper sea formality. When he reached for the dividers she couldn’t endure the mystery.

“Is anything wrong?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I’m only trying to find a place to hole up while Wally tinkers with the engine. That’s the first thing he’ll want to do. Mind taking the wheel a minute till I get it figured out?” She nodded and took over while he stepped courses with dividers, ran off one chart and brought out another. There were a dozen protected bays within a day’s run of Deep Inlet and unless the captain had a sudden attack of navigator’s fever, which was unlikely, there must be a real project in his mind. He totaled mileage of the runs and announced, “If we get away from the Logans early tomorrow morning we can be in Halcyon Harbor evening of the day after.”

“Halcyon Harbor!” she exclaimed, and her face was radiant. Of all the bays, it was her favorite.

“And the day after that is your birthday.” He saw her look of surprised delight. “You didn’t think I’d forgotten, did you?” She had thought so, but she didn’t say it. “How could anyone forget?” he demanded. “A seventeenth birthday and what it means to a girl! I’ve been thinking of it for weeks.” He sounded almost hurt. “It’s not just another year, like other birthdays. It’s the beginning of so many things! A doorway opening into the future! The last milestone on the way to womanhood! And it needs a special celebration.”

“And you made it Halcyon!” No one else would have thought to give a beloved harbor for a birthday present. She felt a little choking sensation. Ever since they’d left Vancouver she’d been telling herself not to be theatrical about becoming seventeen, and now he’d made her strange awareness of it seem so natural. She smiled a little raggedly, and hoped he understood, as she said, “It’s the nicest present you could give me.”

“Hoped you’d like it.” He was immensely pleased but he tried to sound matter-of-fact. “We’ll stay a few days. Give Wally all the time he wants to fiddle with the engine.”

“And I’ll paint the galley shelves,” she said. “I’ve been wanting to for months.”

They were comfortably back on everyday subjects when the captain asked about the display, and she knew he was thinking of Melville Inlet where they’d sold so little.

“You’d be surprised how much stock we have, now that everything’s unpacked,” she said. “The showroom looks grand. Better than it did last year.” She knew it didn’t, but saying it cheered them both, and she added, “It was only that some of the Melville people didn’t need much, and the others asked for things we didn’t have.”

The captain nodded. “Can’t expect a big trip every time,” he said. “Have to take them as they come.”

They were abreast Big Brother Mountain, which marked the last few miles of the run to the Logan float. Royal went back to the main stores locker in the captain’s stateroom to get the hat she’d bought for Mrs. Cameron. It was a special order, one of the many shopping errands the peddler boat did as a friendly service. The ten per cent commission didn’t begin to pay for the time and trouble but the gratitude of customers more than made up any loss. The hat was prettier than Royal remembered and she carried it forward to show to the captain.

“Mrs. Cameron has wanted a new hat for so long,” she said. “It would be terrible if she didn’t like it.”

“Looks fine to me. And the kind she’d choose herself. How much did you pay?”

“Six-fifty. More than she’d wanted to spend, but it was a bargain. Half price!”

“Glad you got her something nice,” he said. “Wish we didn’t have to charge commission but that would hurt Jim’s feelings. You could knock off sixty-five cents on something else though.”

“That’s what I planned.”

“Good for you,” he said. “Jim’s had it tougher than the other partners, and all three have had it tough enough. Takes money to go in for power logging. But a handlogger never sees that. He only thinks if he could buy a donkey engine to pull logs to water he wouldn’t have to climb a mountain and run them one by one. He never stops to consider the cost of rigging or how many cables he’s going to break snaking those logs through the forest, or how much time he’s going to lose when a log gets stuck behind a stump. All three partners are working harder, and making less than when they were handlogging for themselves. But you couldn’t get them to admit it.” He chuckled. “And I don’t know as I would either.”

She laughed. “You wouldn’t wait as many years as Ben Logan did before you bought a donkey engine. And he only bought a third of one.”

She carried the hat to the wheelhouse and put it on the table among what she always thought of as the really important things, the extras which shouldn’t matter, but made all the difference. Very early she’d discovered how much they meant, for it had been the extras, things girls didn’t have to have, bits of jewelry, fur muffs and scarfs, whole collections of enormous wide-ribboned hair bows, which other girls owned so proudly, that had bothered her the most. She’d never admitted her longing for them, had hid her envy behind an air of arrogant indifference and now she smiled as she remembered those boastful gestures of her childish pride. But she understood how Mrs. Cameron would rejoice to have a pretty hat instead of that dingy horror she’d been so ashamed of, and yet had to wear to the store on steamship days when everyone came in for mail.

The Argosy turned into the Logan cove. The three float houses, each on its raft of logs, were moored against the steep side of a mountain. They lay there on the sea, rising and falling with the tides, held in place by the enormous logs which served as boomsticks. Once Royal had thought float houses ugly, a halfway mode of living. They could neither travel like a boat nor were they of the land. Now she knew how well they were adapted to the country. The sheer-sided mountains offered no spot on which to put a house and when a logger changed his work site he had only to tow his home along.

When Dave Barnes and Jim Cameron became Ben Logan’s partners there’d been no problem of a place to live. They’d brought their homes with them. The need of a schoolhouse was met almost as easily. Of fresh cedar shakes, on its separate raft, it lay at one end and the children walked to school on boomsticks. Only Mary Logan’s hens used the land and walked precariously ashore on the long logs to scratch gravel whenever low tide exposed a beach. Their inability to read tide tables often caused a crisis, and then a line of hens finding nothing but a steep granite cliff would squawk and scold and hold a conference as to how the close file could turn around on a boomstick and regain the safety of the seaborne hen house.

The little community looked very gay with flowers in the window boxes. The Argosy sounded its familiar greeting. Royal once imagined the three sharp whistles were saying, “Here we come! Here we come!” and still wasn’t sure they didn’t. Mary Logan waved from her doorway beside the landing float, Mrs. Cameron started along the boomsticks, and Mrs. Barnes hurried out with her twin toddlers. The door of the small schoolhouse opened and Wally ran toward the float, followed by Miss Parr, the teacher, and all the pupils.

Seldom did Captain Dan have so large an audience for one of his famous landings. It was said that he could come closer to a crash without actually smashing his ship than any skipper on the coast, and today he outdid himself. Only when the Argosy seemed on the verge of carrying the float, the boom and everything before it, did he spin the wheel to bring the ship alongside. There were little gasps of relief from the spectators, but Wally was unconcerned as he caught the line and made it fast. His faith in miracles was well founded.

The captain lowered the accommodation ladder and stood at its head to receive the guests. Wally was the first aboard. He shook hands with his father, gave Royal a brotherly kiss and disappeared down the hatch of the engine room. He’d seen their trail of smoke. A moment later the others filled the showroom, overflowed into the galley aft and out on deck. Everyone needed something. Mrs. Barnes fitted the twins to overalls, and turned to shoes. Mary Logan selected slips and blouses and went to Royal’s stateroom to try them on. Young Ben Logan followed Wally to the engine room and the other youngsters gathered in the wheelhouse with cookies Royal gave them.

Emma Cameron was still stroking her hat. She’d hardly spoken after her first gasp of delight. Royal demonstrated the precise angle at which the saleswoman had said to wear it.

“I won’t look as wonderful as you do in it,” Emma said, “and at my age I shouldn’t expect to.” She put it on. “It’s the prettiest hat I ever owned.” Her eyes were misty.

“And a pretty woman wearing it,” the captain added. “Jim will tell you that.”

“But he won’t expect me to believe it.” She laughed. “Not with three children almost as tall as I am. But you’ll have to help me pick him out a shirt so I won’t be the only one dressed up next boat day.”

“He wants them loose and comfortable,” the captain said. “And he likes bright plaids.” He brought a box of shirts from the locker and laid out several for her inspection.

Royal went to the table where Miss Parr was holding a wide red belt with a big square buckle. It was the prettiest in the collection but Royal had feared it would seem expensive.

“This is exactly what I’ve needed,” Miss Parr said. “I tried to find one in the stores last Christmas, but these are all so pretty! Did you choose them?” She laughed. “I don’t have to ask. Men think belts are merely useful.”

Royal colored with pleasure. Perhaps Miss Parr was only making an effort to be friendly, but it was nice of her to want to. Miss Bates, last year’s teacher, hadn’t even come aboard, much less dismissed classes in their honor. Miss Parr was older than Royal had imagined from Wally’s enthusiastic reports. Her hair was quite gray but her eyes were young and she seemed so alive and interested in everything. Royal wrapped the belt and brought the change, and thought she ought to stay and chat.

But Miss Parr didn’t seem to expect this. “Don’t bother about me, my dear,” she said briskly. “You’re very busy. I’ll amuse myself. And when your father is through with Mrs. Cameron, I’ll ask him to show me the boat. I’ve heard so much about the Argosy from Wally.”

Later, as Royal rushed about, bringing different sizes and different colors and writing sales slips, she caught snatches of the captain’s guided ship tour, knew he had a fascinated listener and that Miss Parr was undoubtedly learning more about their history than anyone on the coast.

There was no need to hurry. The Argosy always tied up for the night at Deep Inlet, but no one realized how late it was until the three husbands came around the point in their skiff.

“Home from work already and I haven’t even started supper!” Mrs. Barnes cried, and began to gather parcels and corral the twins.

Her going was the signal for a flurry of departures. Captain Dan stood at the head of the ladder to see them off. Mary Logan, who had waited to make sure young Ben was out of the engine room and on his way to get kindling for a quick fire, was the last to leave.

“You’re all coming in this evening, of course,” she said. The captain assured her they’d come with or without an invitation, for it wouldn’t be Deep Inlet unless they had a good visit. “And save some room for chocolate cake,” she warned him. “Emma Cameron baked a fresh one this morning, and I’ll make coffee.”

“Sounds like a party!” the captain exclaimed. “What can we bring? Haven’t we some new records, Royal? We’ll be over right after supper. Tell Dave Barnes to bring his guitar.”

CHAPTER 3

Royal cooked supper while the captain put away the trade goods. She set the table and called Wally from the engine room.

“Ham and candied sweet potatoes!” he exclaimed. “I’d have been up here long ago if I’d known it.”

“Regular tuck-in,” his father said. “Always expected it myself first day home from school. But knew I’d be lucky to get cold mutton afterward.”

“Anyway, it’s good while it lasts.” Wally looked up from a filled plate to grin at his father. “Wish I’d asked young Ben to stay. He’d like this.”

“Anyone’d think Mary Logan had been starving you,” the captain said. “One of the best cooks on the coast!”

“Sure she is,” Wally agreed. “But she doesn’t make corn fritters.” He helped himself to a fourth and gave it his entire attention, though he buttered the fifth languidly. “Found out what makes us smoke,” he said. “One spark plug’s shot, the others need cleaning and the points adjusted. And somebody’s been monkeying with the carburetor. I’ve got a full day’s work.”

His father turned to Royal. “It appears we’ll have to sign on an engineer. At full time.”

“I always knew that,” Wally said.

“And I haven’t heard any applause about how clean you found the engine room,” the captain remarked.

“It looks great! For a minute I thought it had been scrubbed.”

“Certainly was, with a broom. After I cleared out all that junk.”

Wally looked up alertly. “What junk?” he asked.

“Just odds and ends.” The captain would have preferred to ignore the matter. “Stuff left around till we could find a better place.”

“Loose junk around a motor!” Wally exclaimed. “Starts moving around in a blow and it can wreck a boat. How long’s it been there?”

“Not long.” The captain gave Royal a beseeching look, and when she laughed he saw he’d get no help from her. “All right,” he said. “Wally wouldn’t have known about it if I hadn’t been so prideful. Should teach me a lesson.”

Wally shouted with delight. “I should have guessed it when I saw those shelves.”

They lingered at the table. There was so much to catch up on. Royal and her father told about the trip to Vancouver and Wally gave them the news of Deep Inlet. Power logging hadn’t shown a profit. The partners had to buy a lot of new rigging. The Camerons were really worried. Young Tom was sick and his father took him to a Powell River doctor. Tom missed most of the last school term but Miss Parr was helping him make it up. Captain Dan said he found Miss Parr a charming woman.

“She’s all right!” Wally said with conviction. “When she asks a question she listens to the answer.”

“What’s this about your finishing lower school?” his father asked. “How are they going to have a teacher without an extra pupil?”

“That’s what’s bothering Mrs. Logan,” Wally said. “Young Ben’s got another term to finish and the Barnes twins won’t be school age for years yet.”

“It’s too bad you got through ahead of Ben,” the captain said. “But at least the Logans know we did our share to keep the school going.”

“You did?” Wally asked. He wanted the benevolence properly accredited, but he added quickly, “Not that I wasn’t glad to do it.”

“Of course you were!” and Royal laughed. “You loved knowing they couldn’t have a school without you. Don’t pretend you didn’t.”

“Well,” and his eyes gleamed, “it didn’t hurt Miss Bates to know her job depended on me. I couldn’t help that, could I?” he asked virtuously. “But I wouldn’t rub it in on Miss Parr. We were lucky to get her! You should have seen their faces when she told them she was going to England next year.”

Royal knew what a blow it must have been to Mary Logan. She asked Wally how long he’d known this and when he said Miss Parr had told him after the midwinter holidays she wondered if that had been the real reason he’d worked so hard to finish. Wally always planned ahead, but it was unfortunate he was the precious eighth pupil.

“They can’t close that school!” she cried. “Not after all the Logans have done! They took care of Wally. Boarded the teacher for almost nothing, and Ben built the schoolhouse with his own money. It wouldn’t be fair!”

The captain shook his head. “I don’t like to think of Mary Logan being worried. We’re sure to run across some young ’un along this coast! Bound to! Any family would be glad to loan a youngster to a neighbor. I’ll tell her so tonight.”

After supper as Wally carried the dishes to the galley Royal noticed how much he’d grown. He was almost as tall as his father, and when he filled out he’d be as stocky. He looked older too. His boyish blondness was already darkening and he’d soon have his father’s ruddy coloring, though they didn’t look the least alike. It was queer that in one family there should be three people so different.

While Royal put the food away Wally scraped the plates, stacked them on the dresser and then remarked, “It made Mrs. Logan nervous to watch Ben and me do dishes. Thought we treated them too rough.”

“Wasn’t that just grand for you and Ben! How many did you have to break before you proved it? But I’m not the least bit nervous and if you grab a towel we’ll have these done in no time.”

“Anyhow, there’s nothing like trying,” he said. “I bet Dad’s glad I’m home and you’ve got someone else to boss. Here!” He took possession of the sink. “I’ll wash and you wipe. How about that?”

“Fine,” she agreed. He was such a funny combination, a boy one moment and a man the next. “And don’t forget to change your shirt before you go to the Logans. There’s a big smear of engine oil on the back of it.”

The party was well under way when they arrived. The Barnes twins had been put to bed, the other youngsters were playing on the float outside, the women were in the kitchen making coffee and the men were a close-knit group. They made room for the captain.

“All you’ll hear is logging,” Mary Logan warned him. “Days and nights and mealtimes, that’s all they talk about. Logs! Logs! Logs!”

Ben Logan smiled at his wife. He was as deliberate and slow-spoken as she was quick and voluble and they frankly admired each other.

“You know how it is with a handlogger, Cap’n,” Ben said. “First you wrassle those big cedars down a mountain with main strength and help of gravity, and then you begin to think how a donkey engine would do your pulling for you. Wouldn’t lose time picking special trees, just snake ’em in wherever you find ’em. And you get a donkey. And that’s fine! So you begin to think about bigger donkeys, and then a whole flock of ’em. But after that you start to really dream about what you could do with a lot of power and high leads and sky lines. How you could clean off a whole mountainside, swing the timber through the air, even across a canyon.”

“Plenty of big operators started as handloggers,” Jim Cameron said, “and what one man’s done, another can.” He was very earnest. “It’s something to remember.”

“Sure!” Ben said. “What’s the use of being a logger if you can’t dream. Isn’t that so, Cap’n?”

“Yes,” the captain nodded. “Without dreams we’d all be abject men. Taking defeat without a struggle! Why—dreams—they’re the very stuff of future victory. I say, give me dreams or give me death. That may be taking license with a great speech by a courageous man, but it carries truth.”

“Did you hear that, Mary?” Ben demanded. “It takes the captain to tell a fellow what he’s trying to say. Maybe we’ll never have a flock of donkeys, or build a log chute, or put in a high-lead. But you should be proud we dream about ’em.”

“Then we ought to be the three proudest women on this coast,” she said, and her smile was warm. “Sometimes I wonder if even the donkey engine doesn’t have its dreams.”

In the laughter which followed they forgot about logging. The captain put on a new record and smiled at Mary Logan. Their waltz had become a ceremony and no one ever danced until they finished. Mary Logan was still as light on her feet as when she’d come, a slip of a girl, from England, and Royal was reminded of the handsome, high-spirited father of her childhood. She smiled, thinking he hadn’t changed, really. She couldn’t imagine him getting old. The captain led Mary Logan off the floor and a fox trot brought everyone to their feet. One dance followed another until a riotous Paul Jones left them exhausted and Dave Barnes began to tune his guitar. They called for favorite ballads. Miss Parr knew the words of even the old ones and her clear soprano carried the air when the others could only hum. Presently, after much urging, Captain Dan recited Kipling’s poem, If. He’d given it many times but his passionate avowal of a creed never failed to stir them.

For moments afterwards, no one spoke. Then Dave Barnes’ remark, “Seems to me that fellow knew his logging,” released the tension.

Mrs. Logan went to the kitchen for the cake and coffee and Miss Parr crossed the room to sit by Royal. “I’ve been hoping we’d have a chance to talk,” she said.

She sounded as though the talk had purpose. Royal hoped it wouldn’t be about Wally’s education, just as she had always dreaded questions about her own in their first years on the Argosy. She stiffened a bit even though Miss Parr didn’t appear to be the sort of person who couldn’t understand a way of living which differed from her own. But one could never tell, and Wally’s teacher would naturally be curious about their plans for his future, and perhaps, horrified when Royal confessed they had none. She waited warily, but Miss Parr talked only about Deep Inlet and how she would miss it and its people. She’d heard of the coastline but never realized it was so beautiful. “And you must know any number of lovelier places,” she said.

Royal relaxed. “This inlet is different from all the others,” she said. “It’s so small, and so shut off in the high mountains. I can never quite believe we’re in a boat.”

“And I’m so glad I saw the Argosy and met your father. Now I can imagine the life Wally has told me so much about. You see, always before I’d thought of a boat as something to travel in, never as a home.”

“Neither had I until we bought one.”

“Of course! Your father told me how it happened. And what a wonderful three years you’ve had! I’ve caught only a glimpse of the country, just enough to make me envious.”

“Why don’t you come on a trip with us?” Royal heard her own words with astonishment.

“I’d love to! Perhaps next summer. This year I must go to England. My niece is only nineteen, she can’t be much older than you, and this is her first baby. I’m the maiden aunt, the only one who can get away, and her mother is dead.”

The last of Royal’s defenses crumbled. She found herself talking of favorite harbors, people they knew and liked, and adventures on the Argosy. Miss Parr listened, asking a question now and then. Afterwards Royal wondered how she’d ever happened to tell about the English classics and her father’s earnest discourses, unless perhaps she’d wanted Miss Parr to understand education had not been entirely neglected.

Miss Parr laughed. “Of course you have Kipling. And Shakespeare. A complete set, I’m sure. And some Dickens, and George Eliot and, naturally, some Thackeray.” Royal nodded. “Have you Masefield’s poems?” Royal said they didn’t. “I must loan you and Wally my copy. There’s a line in one of them I think of often. I hope you’ll read the whole poem, especially the line, ‘All I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by.’ It means so much, perhaps more than even Masefield intended.” She paused. “Some of us never find the star,” she said, then stopped and looked away.

Royal felt an urge to cover the awkward silence but there seemed to be nothing she could say. Then suddenly Miss Parr became very brisk.

“And I have other books you might enjoy,” she said. “William McFee. Remember to tell Wally he was a marine engineer. Conrad knew the sea, and so did Tomlinson. All books I brought up here. I’ll write my name and address in them and next spring, when you are in Vancouver, you can return them. I’ll be anxious to hear what Wally is doing.”

“But you know he’s coming aboard the Argosy with us!”

Miss Parr nodded. “I knew he must be eager to get home. He worked so hard. I didn’t think he could possibly finish this year. But Wally has determination.”

“And he’s always wanted to be back aboard!” Royal had intended it a declaration, but somehow she made it seem almost like a question. Miss Parr didn’t answer and Royal hated to leave the words hanging in the air between them. She had to go on.

“Wally loves the Argosy!” she said. “And he likes navigating. Of course he’s never paid much attention to the peddling part. But he likes people! And he’s always working on the motor.”

“I know,” Miss Parr said. “Machinery fascinates him. He spent days on the winch of the donkey engine even after Ben was sure they’d have to buy a new one. But Wally made it work.”

“He would!” Royal exclaimed proudly. “He never could bear to give up.”

“Yes,” Miss Parr said. “I know.”

For a moment Royal wished that Miss Parr was like other people who asked simple questions. She knew how to answer them. This talk reminded her too much of her uncertainties that afternoon, but after all the story of the winch didn’t mean anything. It didn’t prove the peddler boat had lost its glamor for Wally, or that he’d begun to dream of power logging, or even that he knew what he wanted.

“Wally decides things for himself,” she said. “He always has.” She was afraid she’d sounded ungrateful and she didn’t feel so. But Miss Parr’s eyes lighted happily.

“I was sure he did,” she said. “I think you both do. That’s the way it should be, isn’t it?” She smiled as she arose. “I’ll get the books. Your father said you were leaving early.”

The party was breaking up. Mrs. Barnes had wakened the twins and Jim Cameron was saying good night. “Got to be up early and do something about making those dreams come true, eh, Cap’n?” he called across the room.

Wally helped Royal carry the books to the Argosy. There were many more than she’d expected. The ship’s library looked most impressive.

Captain Dan read the name and address on a fly leaf. “Janet Parr,” he said. “That’s a good old English family. You don’t run across many Parrs in the provinces.”

Wally looked along the shelves. “McFee. The fellow with the chief engineer’s papers.” He pulled out a volume. “Here’s Harbors of Memory. Sounds like the story of his life.”

Royal said it must have been exciting.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Wally said. “Those big ships with a lot of crew are sort of cut and dried. Bet more exciting things have happened to men right on this coast.”

CHAPTER 4

Royal wakened, and knew at once the day would be wonderful. Early sunlight, glinting off tiny waves, shone through a porthole to make dancing beams of golden light on the white ceiling of her stateroom. It was a familiar part of waking but today it seemed a special birthday greeting. For a moment she lay there to enjoy it as she watched the bright reflection of a wavelet flit across.

The boat was quiet. Her father wouldn’t be awake for another hour and Wally never appeared until breakfast was on the table. She threw back the blankets, slipped from her berth and looked out a porthole to line up a point against the craggy shoulder of the mountain behind and make sure the Argosy was swinging securely on her cable. It wasn’t necessary in the quiet waters of Halcyon Harbor but the morning check had become a habit, and her first duty since they’d dragged on the eel grass bottom of Left Boot Bay and almost drifted ashore. Such a betrayal by a ship at anchor had only shocked the captain and he still felt morning bearings showed an ungrateful distrust of the heavenly Providence which watched over them. Royal tried to mix faith with a few judicious measures, took evening and morning bearings and stood anchor watches when a southeaster was on. At times she’d thought the captain felt a sneaking gratitude because of his mate’s precautions. She’d never been quite certain of this and wasn’t even sure she’d want him to be grateful, for she and Wally owed so much to carefree navigating in which there was always time to linger, time for enchanting harbors, winding rivers, lovely lakes in mountain meadows, days for coastwise neighboring, for savoring the adventure of the country.

She thought of these now as she stood at the porthole remembering their first visit to Halcyon Harbor. Then she’d scarcely known such delights existed. They’d left Vancouver on their first cruise only a few weeks before and discoveries had come so fast she’d had no time to sort them or catch her breath. Halcyon had been only an enticing name on the chart when they’d turned into it and now she was glad to see it as she remembered. Birds still wheeled and screamed in their early morning fishing. The waterfall, fed by snowfields on the lofty mountain, was the same gorgeous flashing column. In a clearing the old apple trees were again in bloom. Even the abandoned homestead seemed little different, except the cedar shakes were more silvered and the house had merged more completely into its setting.

She had hoped it would all seem the same, still be as lovely, for it was here the sea country had really claimed her. The voyage north had been tremendously exciting, but exciting as it would be to a stranger. Here she had been truly stirred because this land of sea and forest and mountain had begun to be her own. For the first time she’d had a sense of belonging, of having a homeland. She’d never known just why it happened. It was enough to know the feeling had come.

She turned from the porthole and began to dress, decided to honor the birthday with her best blue flannels and make popovers for breakfast. They needed a hot oven and she hurried on deck to the galley, lighted the fire, put tins in to heat and stepped outside for a look at the harbor. Captain Dan got up from a deckchair. He was freshly shaven, wore a tie and his best blue jacket.

“Why, Cap’n!” Royal cried. “All dressed up! You look wonderful!”

“I hoped to,” he said. “My warmest wishes and tender greetings to you, my dear,” and he kissed her.

“Dad! You even thought out a special speech instead of just saying happy birthday.” She laughed in pleasure but his eyes were solemn.

“I’ve been thinking what this day means to me,” he said. “I can’t believe it was seventeen years ago when I got your mother’s telegram. I can still see the freckles of the boy who brought it to the theater, even hear the crackle of the paper when I opened it, and remember how I felt. Business had been terrible, half-filled houses, and our chins were dragging. We were playing Saints and Sinners. And that night! Nothing could have stopped me! I had them on their feet, cheering.” He broke off, embarrassed. “All this doesn’t mean much now,” he said. “Even that we were a sell-out the rest of the engagement. But I wanted you to know why I went out at midnight to wire your mother that your name was Royal. Sometimes I’ve thought you didn’t like it.”

“Only when other children laughed,” she said, and thought how many times she’d wished she’d been christened plain Mary Jane, or even Tabitha. “But now I wouldn’t think of changing. It’s like something belonging to a person. It means just me. Only, weren’t you sorry you hadn’t saved it for your son?”

“Wallingford is a proud name too,” he said. “It played a great part in early English history. It’s a reminder of illustrious forbears, and there’s no more precious heritage a man can hand down to his children.”

Royal smiled, and her smile was tender. Once the familiar phrases, the romantic fairy tale of patrician birth, had meant so much. She’d never known who the forbears were, what famous deeds had been performed or where these great ancestral holdings lay, but this hadn’t spoiled their magic spell. It had been a shield against so many humiliations, a protective charm which made ugly living, shabbiness, even hardship, of no real import. It was the age-old myth of noble birth and it had healed many hurts. Now, although she had long ago gently closed the pages of the fairy tale, she was still grateful to the teller.

“I know,” she said. “We’re both proud of our names.”

“Wally never uses it.”

“Perhaps he feels like you do about Captain Dan. Nicknames are warm and friendly. You wouldn’t like it if everybody called you Captain Danforth Browne.”

“It was a fine stage name,” he said. “It had presence. And I couldn’t use my real one. Imagine Lemuel Browne on any billing!”

“And spelled without the final e, wasn’t it?” she teased. “But I’m so glad you added that. It goes so well with Royal.”

The captain and Wally brought their gifts to the breakfast table. Her father handed her a small box and watched eagerly while she opened it to find a chain and locket.

“First thing I gave your mother,” he said. “Thought you’d like to have it.”

“I love it! I’m so glad you saved it for me!”

She held it up and remembered her excitement when she’d discovered that the small stones in the locket were real diamonds. Afterwards at school she referred rather grandly to the family jewels, but that had been one of the hard years, when so many of the other girls were wearing dashing military capes with colored linings and flip-back collars. She put the chain and locket in the little box in which her mother had always kept it, and a tear showed as she smiled at her father.

“Nothing about my present to stir you up,” Wally said. “It’s practical.”

It was more than practical. Royal unfolded an oilskin coat, light weight, soft and pliable, a lovely red and truly glamorous. “Wally Browne!” she cried. “It’s wonderful! But you shouldn’t have spent all that money!”

“Figured it was worth it. If you ever went overboard in those heavy oilskins you been wearing you’d have sunk if I didn’t jump in after you.”

“But these silk ones cost so much! Where’d you ever—”

“Where’d I get the money?” Wally finished. “Fishing salmon at Campbell River.” He nonchalantly buttered a popover as they stared in amazement, and then explained. “Ben and I went down for a few days. He said he could use some extra dollars. I caught a hundred pounds more than he did. And I was lucky. Mine were mostly red. Made enough to buy the coat and have money left over.”

The captain chuckled. “I’d expected we’d have to give our new engineer a small advance.”

“Hope I didn’t talk myself out of anything,” Wally said. He waited through a silence, then shrugged. “Guess I did, though I’m not starting the season really broke.” He finished his sixth popover and got up from the table. “I better get started on that motor.”

“On a day like this!” the captain exclaimed. “Halcyon Harbor and a seventeenth birthday! Happens only once in a lifetime.”

Wally stopped on his way to the door. “Got any ideas?”

“We haven’t been in the salt lagoon since last summer.”

Wally went to the wheelhouse for the tide table. “Works out just right,” he said. “Low water slack in the entrance is at eleven-twenty-eight.”

“A slack near noon!” the captain said. “Means the sun will have a chance to warm the rocks and give us a decent swim. When do we depart, Mister?”

“Mister is for the deck,” Wally said. “Chief’s my title. We’ll be at the entrance of the roaring hole at eleven, leave the Argosy fifteen minutes before.”

It was a roaring hole. Twice each day the tides filled the salt lagoon, and twice they emptied it. The connecting passage was narrow and rock-filled and the current tore through at twelve knots or better, so turbulently no craft could live in the rapids and overfalls. Only at slack water, each seven hours, when the current died to a murmur, could a boat enter the lagoon.

The morning was leisurely. Dishes were washed, staterooms and deckhouse made shipshape, bathing suits and picnic gear collected. Wally reminded Royal not to forget roasting pans in case the starfish hadn’t cleaned out all the oysters.

The oyster beds, planted years before in an effort to introduce the eastern variety, had been as forlorn a hope as the apple orchard, and the scheme’s originator had long since conceded victory to the starfish and departed. Few people knew the beds existed as the roaring hole discouraged exploration. Cautious folk didn’t care to be imprisoned through a tide but to the Argosy’s crew this added to the zest. They’d spent an ecstatic day exploring sea pools, gathering oysters, and then had followed the lagoon to its head where, to their amazement, they’d discovered it was inhabited. At Royal’s first glimpse of a cabin of new cedar shakes and men on the beach she’d thought they couldn’t be real.

The presence of the two Englishmen was as little known as were the oysters. Mr. Charles and Mr. David, as the younger Brownes learned to call them, were Oxford graduates and officers in the first World War who had sought a new land in the hope of adding to small incomes. Why they had decided to cut cedar bolts for a shingle mill, no one understood, and even Captain Dan was shocked by their recklessness. Certainly no two men were less equipped to become loggers. They explained that a fine stand of cedar, the seclusion of the lagoon with an entrance barrier, a roaring hole to insure privacy, had been an irresistible combination. Despite their hermit desires, they had been gracious hosts on that first call and since then the Brownes had always stopped for afternoon tea in their cabin.

Royal took a can of homemade cookies for a house gift. As they stowed the dinghy her father saw it and said he was glad she’d thought of them. “Wanted to take something,” he said, “and tobacco or anything we sell would hurt their feelings.”

Wally rowed, and had given himself plenty of time. The sound of the roaring hole had ceased but the last of ebb was still running when they reached the entrance. It swirled and slapped futilely at rocks, blustered against a cliff. Wally caught an eddy, held it until he had to swing into the current. Royal, in the bow, could see the power he poured into his quick strokes.

With a final pull at the oars, Wally escaped the drag of the eddy. Now they were in the lovely secret chamber of the mountains, at the very tip of one of the sea’s long fingers. They followed the shore leisurely, enjoying the quiet and serenity. It was so different from the world outside where the sea pushed ceaselessly in every channel, fighting every barrier, surging through narrow gaps, always moving.

At the oyster beds they put on hip boots and waded in to gather booty. The starfish had almost won their battle against the eastern invaders but the survivors seemed only fatter and sweeter from the struggle. Wally and his father began to open and eat before they’d filled their bags but Royal couldn’t bear to stop until she’d picked every oyster within reach, and many that were not. The clear water was deceptive and she was soaked to the shoulders when they went ashore with their bags.

It was too early to eat and they crossed a small point to explore a specially fine sea pool they remembered. These pools were always wonderful in the lagoon, where tranquil water gave protection. Marine moss in gorgeous greens and yellows and startling shades of red and blues made rich Persian patterns on the bottom. Sea urchins, like great red pincushions, were studded thickly, and it was difficult to believe they were animals, not plants. Long green sea cucumbers, also marine animals, lurked under ledges and mussels lay in rows. Sea anemones clung to rock walls and thrust out sunbursts of colored feelers. Minnows unbelievably small swam through miniature forests of bronze grasses. Hermit crabs bobbled awkwardly in their stolen snail-shell homes. Wally tore a limpet from a rock and held it before an approaching shell. Instantly a claw shot out to grasp it and a tiny crab emerged to hold the limpet shell with one claw while he fed himself with the other.

“Like we hold a picnic plate in our hands and eat!” Royal exclaimed. “And see the others!”

Snail shells were moving close to share in the booty. It seemed certain the smaller crab would be robbed of his meal when a battle threatened and Royal and her father hurried to find more limpets.

“You be the official feeder,” the captain said as he gave limpets to Wally. “We’ll bring supplies.”

They didn’t stop until every hermit crab in the pool was eating from his own dish. The tiny creatures looked so funny, so earnest, and so enraged when a minnow waited just beyond claw reach to steal the shredded fragments.

“Wonder if the rocks have warmed the water in our swimming pool,” the captain said at last.

He meant only that it might be slightly warmer than the surging tides outside. Their first plunge seemed icy, but afterwards it was only delightful. The captain swam industriously. He believed in form. Royal and Wally, as at home in the water as a pair of porpoises, liked to play about, to dive and swim underwater and emerge, blowing and puffing. The clash of the two systems ended as usual in a water battle which lasted until, breathless and laughing, they went ashore.

“Now I can eat!” Wally said, and no one opposed him.

The annual oyster gorge had become a ritual. Wally built a big fire to get plenty of coals, preferring dry madroña, which gave such steady heat. Royal and her father prepared the main meal, cutting off the flatter shell so that the oysters could cook in their own juice in the deeper half. They filled two huge pans and prepared more. “Nobody ever has enough,” the captain said.

But the first course was always raw oysters shucked and eaten with no sauce or trimmings except the natural juice. They shucked industriously and slurped the salty liquid from the shells until Royal said there’d soon be no room for the real meal.

“Nothing can beat these raw ones,” her father said.

“But they’re so wonderful roasted,” Royal protested.

“It’s her birthday party.” Wally raked the coals smooth and laid the pans on them.

Soon the oysters were done, the pans were emptied and refilled. They ate, dunking the crinkled meat in butter. They shucked more, roasted more, until Wally shook the empty bags. “That’s the lot,” he said. “And we can’t get more because the tide’s in.”

Royal shook her head. “I couldn’t move if the tide flooded over me. It’s been a regular Indian feast.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” the captain said. “Indians on this coast really knew how to live before white men came to tell them about phonographs and gasboats and brass bedsteads. They knew the sea would always feed them and that they could take time to enjoy themselves. They could spend a whole winter feasting and dancing. No people ever had a better life.”

Royal looked up, astonished. Wally whooped in glee.

“It’s only the sun and the swim and all these oysters,” he said. “Can you see the skipper nodding his life away over a kettle of clams? He’d go crazy. Nothing about a clam to give a fellow enough spirit to get a new idea.”

His father chuckled, but with a gleam of understanding in his eyes. “You may be right about clams,” he admitted, “but an oyster gives a man ambition. Mind if I take a nap?”

He was asleep almost at once. Royal and Wally packed the picnic gear, then wondered what time it was. Wally tried to pull his father’s watch from a pocket quietly but the captain sat up with a start. “What!” he said. “So late? We have visiting to do.”

They rowed to the head of the lagoon. Mr. Charles and Mr. David were having tea on a small screened porch and rushed to the float to greet them.

“We’d begun to fear you’d passed us up this spring,” Charles said as he shook hands. “May is nearly ended.”

The captain explained they’d had to go to Deep Inlet to get Wally, adding, “And he finished with flying colors.” Charles, who had been a master in a boys’ school, looked impressed. “Fifth form lad now, eh?” he said. “Congratulations.”

They went to the cabin, which nestled under a huge and far-spreading cedar. The shaded porch was cool and pleasant, the tea table was set with a flour sack cloth freshly laundered, and their hosts had bathed and changed from work clothes. Charles insisted that Royal have the only chair and pushed magazines and books off benches for the others. David brewed a fresh pot of tea and opened a precious tin of biscuits. Royal presented the cookies.

“I say!” Charles exclaimed. “You shouldn’t have done this! We’re awfully grateful. David is the pastry cook and he hasn’t made short bread for a long while.”

“Been too busy,” David said. “Our trees have grown stubborn. Won’t sway over and come down. Just lean against the others.”

Skilled handloggers make few errors, and if skill failed they refused to admit it, but a whole series of logging misadventures did not embarrass these two men as they gave details. They seemed only the more delighted that Wally found their story so funny. David said at least they’d made no mistakes on the last one. “And it’s the biggest cedar we ever tackled,” he added.

“Did it come down in one piece?” Wally asked.

“How’d you guess it didn’t?” Charles asked. “Broke a third of the way from the top, but it’s all on the ground where we can get at it. Finished sawing it into proper lengths this afternoon. We’ve only to split out the bolts, a job too simple for even us to bungle.”

The talk ranged to other subjects, as it always did in the lagoon, and it wasn’t gossip. Charles and David never showed interest in news from the many inlets. They had just read an account of the inauguration of President Coolidge in March and were baffled by the four-year system. Captain Dan’s years in the American theater had established him as something of an authority on the States and David asked if, with Coolidge as President by right of election, he’d feel he had a freer hand. “Is that the reason for the general impression that the U.S. is in for an era of good times?”

“Everyone believes so,” the captain said. “If Coolidge gets the disarmament pact through and cuts the debt, prosperity is sure to come. In fact a building boom has already started. Cedar has gone up and they say it’s going higher. Good news for the loggers on this coast.”

“We were anxious for your opinion,” Charles said. “Living here, it’s hard to sense the temper of the times. So often the picture changes before we get the news. Gives a chap an odd feeling. Newspapers, even magazines, don’t seem to mean much. At least not like the books you’ve read and re-read. There’s something very comfortable about old friends who have endured.”

The captain agreed heartily, relieved that the political situation had been abandoned. Current events were not his happiest subject. Then presently books led to talk of the theater. The Englishmen always enjoyed the captain’s stories of his years on the stage. To them it was a fascinating touch with the world outside to hear of famous actors. The captain had played in the same cast with a few, met others, knew at least something about everyone they mentioned and he was at his best when he talked of people and the golden age of the traveling companies. He remembered plays the others hadn’t even heard of. David asked if these American traveling companies presented Sheridan’s plays.

“All of them,” the captain said. “Their public liked them and every stock company in the country played at least She Stoops to Conquer and The School for Scandal and The Rivals.”

“Really?” David said. “I wouldn’t have imagined so.”

“And why not?” the captain asked. “Some of our greatest actors got their training in stock companies. Look at Maude Adams! She played child parts in the famed Salt Lake City Stock Company before she was seven years old.”

“I’ll never forget the first night I saw her in London,” David said. “In Peter Pan. She was lovely. I walked out on air. What an amazing gift!”

“But she had to learn how to use it! A lot of actors owe their training to stock companies. Take Otis Skinner. There was an actor! I’ll never forget the night I saw him in Kismet. So smooth. So finished. Schooled in stock and repertory companies. It was thrilling.” He paused before he said, “And heartbreaking too. Heartbreaking for those who knew they’d never get there.” No one spoke. Royal had never been more proud of her father. She’d never known he’d had black moments.

Suddenly the captain put down his teacup and stood up. “What’s the matter with my crew?” he demanded. “The engineer was supposed to watch the tide. We have to row to the entrance before slack.”

David asked if the Argosy was staying over another day. “We’ve broken the helve of our last good ax,” he said.

“Mean you can’t go to work on that big cedar till you get an ax handle?” The captain was aghast. “Get that gasboat going! You and I will be at the Argosy in no time, and you can get back through the entrance before the ebb builds up.”

David admitted it would save a day. “But we can’t let you—” he began.

The captain had already started down the path. David hurried after him and when the others reached the float the gasboat was leaving. “Don’t forget we need wedges,” Charles shouted above the clatter of the exhaust.

The departure of the dinghy was more leisurely. Charles untied the line and held the boat for Royal to get aboard.

“Come again, and soon,” he urged. “A good talk is a real treat and we don’t have one often. Not many men like Captain Dan on this coast.” He tossed the line into the bow and gave the dinghy a mighty shove. They waved across a widening stretch of water.

Wally shipped his oars. “I’d have asked David for a tow but I didn’t want to hold them up.”

“I like this better,” she said, thinking that they hadn’t been alone since he came aboard.

She settled back in the stern. It was a lovely evening. The sun had dropped behind the mountains and rosy shafts lighted the snowpeaks across the channel while the high granite shore beside them was in deep shadow. The lagoon was opalescent, like the inside of an abalone shell. She felt no need to talk, and Wally too was silent for a long time.

Then suddenly he asked, “Have a good trip in Melville Inlet?”

“Not very.” She’d hoped he wouldn’t inquire. “It was just one of those times when people didn’t need much.”

“Sure! But you must have done all right in Keith Straits. Those fishermen had a good spring season.”

“They never buy much except from canneries, and not many families live in that string of islands.” She hadn’t wanted to talk about it this evening but she knew she might as well be honest. “We had a poor trip in Bayard Inlet too. There’s a new store at the entrance.”

“I heard about it. And Ben Logan told me the fellow who’d bought that old store in Hazard Strait was building an addition just for dry goods.”

“He’ll be open by July.” Royal should have known Wally would hear of the new ventures. News, boat-borne from one harbor to another, traveled quickly, but he’d never before shown this interest in their sales. “It’s different than when we first came up here,” she admitted. “When everyone was so excited to have a peddler boat.”

“No one else had ever thought of it until Dad got the idea!”

“There’s still as good a reason for one as ever!” Royal declared vehemently. “Only we ought to have things these coast stores can’t carry.”

“What sort of things?”

“You know. What people have to order from catalogues. Like you bought my rain coat.”

“How else could I buy it?” he demanded. “I didn’t want you picking out your own present. But everybody knows you’ll run shopping errands.”

“Yes, but they have to wait until we go to Vancouver, and even if a woman hated what I’d bought her she couldn’t say so for fear she’d seem ungrateful. But if we had dresses, different styles and colors and sizes, and hats! Things they could try on and be sure they liked. And pretty outfits for children. Even stuff for men! Not just work shirts and ordinary clothing.” She’d never told anyone of this idea before, and now as she shared it she was carried along as fresh and dazzling possibilities dawned upon her. She had no thought of convincing Wally, or even hope that this wonderful vision of a sea-going emporium would come true, but it was stirring to talk about. “A peddler boat could bring so many things people want,” she said a little wistfully.

Wally had stopped rowing. “Gosh, Royal, wouldn’t that be something! I could fix the crew’s quarters for a stock room, put in poles so we could use hangers, and tear out the berths to make room for lockers. Why don’t we start to do it, like getting a few dresses.”

“We can’t,” she said, angry at herself for having spoken of it. “It was hard enough to get even what we did this spring when we still owe so much on last year’s accounts. I thought you knew we didn’t square them.”

“Maybe I did,” he said soberly, and began to row.

She hoped she hadn’t spoiled the Argosy for Wally, but she’d never expected him to catch fire. And things weren’t as bad as he might be thinking.

“A store or two won’t make much difference,” she said, and her voice was cheerful. “There are lots of old customers who count on buying from us. And look at the people in out-of-the-way places who have only the Argosy to depend on.”

“Those out-of-the-way places are one reason we’re behind on last year’s bills,” he said. “We’ve always run to the head of any arm or to any cove where anybody lives. Spend a couple of dollars for gas and oil to sell a shirt or pair of shoes.”

“But we can’t pass by old friends!”

“Who said anything about passing them by? Only we ought to know what it costs to get there so we can figure what to charge.”

“But Dad’s always been so proud of our low prices, and what the stores add on for water freight is simply scandalous. The Argosy would be ashamed to do it.”

“Look, Royal,” Wally said. “I know Dad’s always laughed about the way I count gas by drops, but this year I’m going to keep a real record, work out the cost on all our courses, especially the side trips. Then the sales will show if we’re breaking even. I bet we’ve been taking stuff to a lot of places for less than nothing.”

“I know we have! I always thought those side trips cost us money. At least, I guessed they did. And I didn’t do anything about it.” She felt a little ashamed, especially after her dazzling vision of what a peddler boat could be. “But you thought of a way really to find out!”

“How else could a peddler boat figure what to charge.”

His surprise that there could be any other approach to the problem made her smile, but Wally’s solutions always were direct. When he was little she’d thought them only lucky guesses, but now she doubted if he’d ever guessed. Wally always had been older than his years. It was only that now she’d suddenly become more aware of it. In one winter he’d grown taller, heavier, and throwing off his boyish shell had given him a new assurance. She knew she’d miss that younger brother, but she liked this Wally.

“Has Dad ever talked of raising prices?” he asked. “He used to be dead set against it.”

“He still is. But he knows we’ve got to make expenses. I’m sure that’s the only reason he’s willing to have the photographer aboard.”

Wally’s oars stopped in mid air. “We’re having what?” he asked.

She laughed. “He made me promise not to tell you. He wanted to explain it, and I thought he had, but I suppose he hated to ruin your first few days. You made such a fuss about the dentist last summer.”

“Who wouldn’t?” Wally dismissed the dentist with a disdainful snort. “Where’d Dad find this photographer?”

“Ran across him in Vancouver. He takes portraits, and when Dad told him about all the people who never get a chance to have real photographs, he wanted to come up here.” He would arrive by steamer at Plunder Cove in two weeks, planned to stay at least a month, perhaps longer. He also took orders for framed enlargements, which Captain Dan was sure would sell like hot cakes. “Dad says everyone has old pictures they’ll want framed, and we can fit his calls with ours.”

“That’s what Dad said about the dentist. Everyone had teeth. And we never caught a tide all the time he was aboard. Always had to wait for him to do a filling. Besides the fillings never stayed in. We wasted a lot of gas bucking tide for nothing.”

“But a photographer won’t hold us up,” she said. “He can’t spend too much time just taking a picture! And he won’t be as much trouble. He’ll use Dad’s stateroom for his studio and he’s willing to sleep in the crew’s quarters.”

“That’s a break!” Wally said fervently. The dentist had shared his room and made an office of the deckhouse where his chair had been a depressing object during meals and had almost destroyed shopping desire on the part of customers. “At least he won’t be underfoot. Do you like the photographer?”

Royal hesitated. “You can’t help but feel sorry for him. He’s so skinny and so sort of meek. But his name is Amos Dare. I think he made it up.”

Wally shouted with laughter. “Or maybe Dad! Did Dad feel sorry for him too? I bet he isn’t paying any more than the dentist did.”

The photographer wasn’t paying as much, but Royal hastened to explain that in addition to his passenger fee the Argosy would share in his profits. It might work out even better. A photographer should find as many clients as a dentist, and although their one experience had proved a loss, another doctor was equipping a dentist boat. She’d gone aboard it. He’d converted one stateroom into an office, intended to spend the summer on the coast with his family and was sure he would more than pay expenses. “He said he’d never have thought of the idea if he hadn’t heard about our dentist on the Argosy,” she added with some pride.

“Nothing wrong with the idea,” Wally said. “A lot of loggers need to have their teeth fixed, and it wasn’t Dad’s fault our dentist wasn’t any good. Only I wish Dad’s schemes didn’t have people in them. Why can’t he think of something like those burnt wood outfits you sold so well.”

“Until Mrs. Ogden burned down their float house,” Royal said and began to laugh.

The pyrography sets had promised to be a triumph as the fad for decorated wood and leather spread from one inlet to another. The Argosy sold every set and had to reorder although it was the most expensive item the peddler boat had ever carried. The captain’d felt his first plunge proved his daring as a merchant mariner, but then as float houses bloomed with pillows, table covers, smoking sets, taborets, even chairs with designs burned on every inch of surface, he was certain that at last he had brought the splendor of the cities into isolated inlets. This was far more gratifying than profits of the venture. Not even the most practical minded had foreseen disaster when Mrs. Ogden, in her zeal, accidently set her work afire just as she was completing the last inch of the large center table. Naturally its rescue was imperative and she picked it up and ran to shore across the boomsticks. Tim Ogden never tired of telling the story.

“She could have reached into the salt chuck for a bucket of water and put out the fire,” he laughed. “But the table had taken her a couple of months to do, and by the time she’d saved it the shack was blazing.”

The story of a woman fleeing across the water, bearing her precious table but leaving her home to burn to sea’s edge, delighted the coast as much as it did her husband. It ended the sale of pyrography sets but in an odd fashion it had added to the renown of the Argosy. Captain Dan told and retold it.

“And Dad made a better story of it than Tim Ogden,” Wally said when he’d stopped laughing. He’d apparently forgotten his misgivings about the photographer as they talked of coastal happenings. Wally asked how the junk boat, Two Brothers, was doing and she told him they had passed it, towing a scow load of discarded gas engines picked up on the beaches of Indian villages. Wally reported Jim Cameron knew one of the brothers and liked him. “Must be smart too,” he said. “No one ever thought of collecting junk before.”

“But there’s no future in it once they have cleaned off the beaches,” Royal pointed out, finding the thought of a junk boat most depressing.

“Maybe so,” Wally agreed. “But there’s a fellow just started cruising around fixing donkey engines. He’s got a real idea. Ben Logan said he wished he’d known about him when we had all that trouble with the winch. Did you ever happen to run across him?”

“No,” Royal said. “We’ve never even heard about him.”

“It’s getting so there’s almost as many boats as people in these waters.”

This wasn’t quite true, but Royal thought how many more boats there were each year. Now the Inside Passage was a busy highway. Coastwise steamships darted in and out of the labyrinth of channels, larger ships passed on the Alaskan run, and everywhere were boats which served the coast—tug boats towing great strings of log booms to the mills, cannery boats, fishing boats, forestry boats, fire and fish inspectors, charter boats for outsiders who came on business, provincial police boats, since even the law must travel by water, and more numerous than all others, the little gasboats of the coastal dwellers. Only the yachts of summertime, sleek and gleaming, were visitors in the country, an imposing contrast to their working fellows.

Once Royal had thought of the sea and land as being apart. A person either stayed on land or went to sea. And she still marveled that these separate elements had so merged that the concerns of each were vital to and actually enriched by the other. She wondered if Wally had been stirred by the same thought. He’d never spoken of it but he didn’t speak of things which touched him deeply.

“Would you rather work with ships or people?” she asked suddenly. “I mean,” and she hesitated, “do you really like a peddler boat?”

She’d known she must ask this question sometime and now she waited a little breathlessly.

“The Argosy’s our home, isn’t she?” he said. “So why wouldn’t I want to keep her going?” There was an odd note in his voice as though he were on the defensive.

“Yes, but is this really what you—” She didn’t finish and watched Wally as he rowed. It was hard to explain what she meant, and he wasn’t making it easy for her. At last he looked up.

“Any boy thinks about a lot of things he’d like to do,” he said. “Nothing wrong with that! Gosh, Royal! Do we have to talk about it now?” He rowed furiously and then as they heard a gasboat come through the entrance, he exclaimed in evident relief, “There’s David on his way back. Let’s ask him if he got the wedges.”

He didn’t speak again, nor did Royal. She knew Wally hadn’t intended to rebuff her, and she was only sorry she had opened the subject. Wally had to keep things to himself until he was ready to talk.

David closed his throttle. “We’re all set for work tomorrow,” he called. “But I don’t know what we’d have done without the Argosy.” He waved. “A fine summer to you.”

CHAPTER 5

Next morning Wally disappeared in the engine room and Royal and the captain did boat chores. It was one of those fine days aboard a ship at anchor, swinging free with a whole harbor to themselves. The Argosy didn’t have such days often. The sociability when they moored at floats was pleasant but disrupting. The captain offered to get the crew’s quarters ready for Amos Dare’s arrival. Royal turned to painting and finished the galley shelves in early afternoon.

She stood back to admire the result. Shipboard painting was always gratifying, for it could be done in bits, a locker here, a shelf there, a timely rescue to keep everything gleaming. The galley was her special pride. Even yet its shining order was a startling reminder that once she had never dared hope for such a kitchen. Now the memory of rusty gas plates and untidy shelves behind dingy curtains gave her a sense of triumph.

Today she hated to put away the brushes. She noticed the locker doors could stand a fresh coat of paint, although a cook must have gangway. She’d learned from past experience that paint manufacturers were not to be trusted in claims on drying time, but she read the label of the can again and was being strongly tempted to believe them when Captain Dan appeared in the doorway.

“For anyone who claims this is her favorite harbor, you haven’t spent much time ashore,” he said.

“I’m cleaning the brushes now,” she said.

“And I’ve cleared out the forward quarters,” the captain said, immensely pleased. “Now Amos can rattle around there.”

“Against a lot of hardware?” she asked, for she’d noticed nothing had been carried on deck.

“He can’t use more than one berth at a time! The place sleeps three.”

“We can’t put the poor man down there with a lot of tools and boom chains,” she said.

“I can’t stow them in the engine room. You know how Wally feels about loose stuff.” He saw her look of speculation. “And you can’t put anything more in my stateroom,” he declared. “Besides, that’s where Amos expects to take pictures.”

“And plans to develop them in my galley,” she said with equal firmness.

They both laughed and she knew they’d find some place to put the hardware. In a ship with lockers bulging, there was always room for more, but it was much too fine an afternoon to spend restowing. “Do you want to go ashore?” she asked.

“Thought we might see if that school of rock cod still hangs around the point,” he said.

“Codfish balls for supper, eh!” and she laughed. Only his favorite meal made the captain consider fishing.

“I’d hoped for some, unless,” and he looked at the wet paint, “you’re so torn up out here that—”

“We aren’t, but we would have been ten minutes later. And while we’re ashore let’s pick strawberries. They must be ripe.” She’d never been sure whether the berries in the ancient garden had been planted and gone wild or were a wild variety which had taken advantage of the once tilled soil, but they grew all through the high grass and were very sweet. “If we both pick, we might have enough for a shortcake.”

“That’s a bare-faced bribe,” he said. “And I’m just weak enough to take it.”

Royal went to the engine room to ask Wally to come along, and found him in a litter of tools. A streak of engine grease running up from a cocked-up eyebrow gave him the look of a bewildered owl.

“Got her tuned up so she doesn’t smoke,” he said. “But I’d like to find out what makes the valves stick.”

“Do they?” she asked.

“Didn’t you hear ’em on our run from Deep Inlet?”

“When you’re aboard I never listen. When you aren’t, I know if she even thinks of hesitating.”

“Then you have heard her miss! Does it happen often?”

“Sometimes, but she always keeps going. Is that so serious?”

“Would be if it got worse. What bothers me is I can’t find out why they stick. She should have had an overhaul long before this.”

“I know.” Royal was silent a moment as she thought of so many things—the unpaid accounts, Bayard and Melville Inlets, their talk the previous evening. “But can’t you keep her running just one more year?” she asked.

“We’ve got to,” Wally said.

That seemed to be the only answer.

As Royal left she said if he was through in time they’d row back out to get him. Wally didn’t think there was a chance. “But I’ll be ready for a swim when you get back. I’ll sure need it.”

Captain Dan was waiting in the dinghy. A basket, two pails and lines for bobbing cod gave the departure a fine air of purpose. Royal always rejoiced in booty but Wally and his father could row aimlessly along a shore for hours and not dip up a single crab. The captain tied the dinghy beside a high flat rock and suggested they’d better make sure of fish balls first of all.

It was a perfect place for bobbing. They lay on their stomachs, raising and lowering their hooks while they watched the greedy cod compete for the honor of being caught. It wasn’t really fishing. It was more like going to market. The only sport lay in defeating small fish in favor of big ones, and a difference of opinion on bait added a bit of zest. The captain believed in red flannel while Royal used salt pork, maintaining that at least she didn’t cheat but offered real food.

“But I entertain them and they like it better,” the captain said. “I’ve got four big ones to your three.”

Royal pulled in her line. They’d never eat more than seven cod, even in fish balls, brown and shaggy, fried in deep fat. The captain went on bobbing, brought up another fish, the biggest of all.

“Couldn’t bear to disappoint the old chap,” he explained. “He’d worked so hard for a turn at the red flannel.”

While her father filleted the catch, Royal threw the rest of the salt pork to the fish which waited below, unable to believe the feast was over. Rock cod always looked so simple-minded and so perpetually astonished she wondered they managed to survive in a sea where every creature preyed on another. It didn’t seem possible nature had equipped them with brains enough to reach maturity.

Afterwards she and the captain visited the abandoned house in the clearing. She’d explored it each summer, knew so much about the builders they seemed friends. They’d tried so hard to make a home. Hand riven shakes, bits of hewn furniture, even the trees in the apple orchard, told their story.

“Do you think these were the people who planted the oyster beds?” she asked. Somehow, to be defeated by the starfish seemed a final blow.

“Certainly,” he said.

“But you don’t know.”

“Who could it be except a chap crazy enough to shut himself off in a place like this,” he said. “And look at the size of the garden he spaded up! Could feed six families! Not a chance to send the truck to market or give it to a neighbor. No more sense to this than the oyster beds.”

She didn’t answer as they began to gather strawberries, but she wondered that the pathetic record of the little homestead hadn’t touched him. He was quick enough to understand the logger who dreamed of flocks of donkeys and he never failed in sympathy for a man who hadn’t sold a boom. Perhaps houses held no meaning for him. Perhaps even their settled home aboard the Argosy had been a real sacrifice. After thirty years of changes he might miss that life—always believing the next year would be better, or, if it was worse, knowing it would be different with fresh hopes, fresh surroundings and fresh excitements. Perhaps the peddler boat had only been the end of hopes and dreams, a bitter acknowledgment of defeat. Except for her and Wally, he might have been willing, even eager, to have stayed with that company stranded in Vancouver.

This was the first time the idea had occurred to Royal. She looked at him, conscientiously gathering strawberries. He’d never seemed unhappy. If he had been, he had never let them know it, and he wouldn’t want them to guess it now.

“How’re you coming, Cap’n?” she called. “My pail’s almost full.”

He straightened his shoulders with a groan. “How many do I have to pick to get a shortcake?” he demanded, and showed her his contribution.

“That’s wonderful!” she said. “We’ll have a big one. With oodles of butter! And I’ll whip powdered milk till it’s thick as cream.”

Aboard the Argosy, Wally was waiting in swimming trunks. Captain Dan begged off, pleading too much exercise, but they knew he was thinking of the water’s temperature. Their first plunge was an icy shock, and an iron band seemed to have gripped their chests, but afterwards it was only tingling. They climbed to the top of the wheelhouse to dive off, one after the other, drenching the windows with salt spray. Captain Dan, who had retreated behind a closed door, opened it long enough to call, “Why don’t you learn to enter the water cleanly?”

Wally grinned at Royal. “Come on! Let’s really show the old coach something,” and he went in spraddled.

After supper they sat on deck in an evening quiet which held enchantment. The last shafts of sunset faded on the snow peaks but a rosy glow lingered on the water while deepening shadows stole out from shore. Dab chicks dived and gossiped sociably together. Scooters cocked their tails and scudded, perhaps to prove they were the real inventors of the sport of aquaplaning. Thousands of jelly fish rose to the surface and their fairy-like, filmy parasols dipped and swayed as they moved gently with the tide. A bachelor seal, which had watched the afternoon swim from a discreet distance, came close to satisfy his curiosity about new neighbors. Only his nose and his bright eyes showed above the surface as he swam in circles around the Argosy.

Royal said his mother must have taught him lovely manners. “Notice how apologetically he coughs and looks away when he sees we’ve caught him spying.”

It was fun to turn their heads quickly in his direction and surprise him, but when Wally said, “Won’t you come aboard?” the seal’s swift dive was almost a convulsion.

“Why’d you scare him?” Royal said.

But Wally was sure he’d stay around. “Think he’s going to miss a chance to scratch his back on the keel of the only boat that’ll anchor here all summer?” he asked.

Halcyon Harbor was out of the way from the main channels and even the Coast Pilot gave it scanty mention in a terse warning about the pinnacle rocks in the center. Yet someone must have loved it to have christened it so beautifully and Royal wondered if it could have been the family which had lived there so long ago. She knew sooner or later other boats would find it and said a little sadly, “And then it won’t be our own special harbor any more.”

She hadn’t expected to be proved a prophet quite so soon and had an eerie feeling she’d conjured up the large yacht which turned into the entrance a few moments later. It came on with no slackening of speed as they watched in fascinated horror.

“He must be crazy!” Wally said. “He’s headed straight for those rocks! Doesn’t he read the Coast Pilot?”

As he spoke, the yacht lost headway and came to a stop. A youth at the bow moved a lever on an electric winch and dropped the anchor, the ship went smartly into reverse to bite it in, and the youth signaled to a thick-set man on the foredeck that all was well. The signal was relayed to the wheelsman and the motor was shut off. The procedure had all the snappiness of a fire drill.

“Don’t think I ever saw a boat anchored any faster,” the captain said.

“Fellow on the foredeck must be the skipper,” Wally said. “And look at the crew he carries!” Suddenly the deck swarmed with people. “Most of them are boys! And that was a girl at the wheel! See her? Walking aft from the wheelhouse?”

Royal hoped their manners were as good as those of the seal’s, but feared they weren’t as they watched their neighbor. The yacht lay three hundred feet away. Wally went forward for the binoculars, reported her name was the Scapa Flow and her home port Victoria. Even more fascinating was the activity aboard as the crew went to stations. Two boys lowered a big dinghy, and this too had an electric winch. They made it fast to a boat boom and let down the accommodation ladder. Another swabbed the afterdeck and still others washed the upper works.

“Didn’t notice anyone cleaned the salt spray off our windows,” the captain remarked with the air of one merely making conversation, but his comment went unnoticed.

“Suppose they do that every night?” Wally asked. “They haven’t had spray on a day like this.”

At last the Scapa Flow appeared to be snugged down. No one was on deck and lights shone from portholes and the deckhouse. Wally said he thought he’d take a row around the harbor. “Like to come along?” he asked Royal casually.

She laughed. “You can play seal all by yourself, Wally Browne.”

“It appears no one has to,” their father said. “Someone’s coming over.” He went forward and was at the companionway when the dinghy with two boys drew alongside.

“Captain Browne?” the older one asked. The captain nodded. “I’m Lawrence Ponsonby. My father sent me to invite your family aboard.”

“We’d be delighted,” the captain said. “This is my daughter, Royal, and my son, Wallingford, but he prefers to be called Wally. And I’m usually known as Captain Dan.”

“That’s the name we always heard,” the younger said. “People have told us a lot about you and your—” He broke off as the other frowned.

Royal felt sorry for him, and curious why the other boy had stopped him. Neither looked as old as Wally.

The captain chuckled. “Good things, I hope,” he said easily. “Please thank your father and say we’ll be over shortly.”

“We’ve plenty of room to take you,” Lawrence said.

“I see you have.” The dinghy could have held ten people. “But our own boat will save you the bother of bringing us home.”

Royal had hoped he would be firm. She gave him a grateful look and rushed below to change into a skirt, which seemed a safe choice, no matter what the other girl was wearing. The new green scarf looked rather dashing against the soft yellow of her sweater. Captain Dan nodded his approval. He was resplendent in white ducks and blue jacket.

“At least we’ve got a dressed-up skipper,” Wally said as he handed his father to the stern seat of the dinghy.

Royal hoped she didn’t show how excited she was. She’d gone aboard other visiting boats but they had been family cruisers in which owners lived much as on the Argosy. She had never been in an eighty-foot yacht, although she’d seen them on their way to Alaska and thought how opulent they looked with people lounging on canopied afterdecks, being served by white-coated stewards, all so assured and so apart from other seafarers.

Mr. Ponsonby met them at the rail. “Happy to have you aboard,” he said as he shook hands, then led them aft where the others were gathered. “You already know Lawrence and Wilfred,” he said. “The rest of my gang—Monica, David, William, Thomas,” pointing each out as he spoke the name, “and my nephews, Gerald and Daniel. We’re all Ponsonbys, which makes it easy. I imagine I’m the only captain who’s raised his own crew. Quite an idea! Never have any trouble. No one jumps ship, and you can’t fire anyone.” He laughed heartily at his own joke but his crew didn’t seem to find it funny. Royal thought perhaps they’d heard it too many times.

She knew she could never remember all the names. Monica must be the eldest and Thomas, who couldn’t be more than nine, was certainly the youngest. Monica made room on the long seat.

“You’ll get us straightened out later,” she said. “So many Ponsonbys must be overpowering. David, over there, is the first mate and in charge of navigation. Bill, the dark lad talking to Wally, is the official engineer. The rest of us fill in the chinks.”

Mr. Ponsonby looked around the circle and asked, “Where’s your mother?”

“Coming,” a cheerful voice called from the after stateroom. “I’m getting a sweater. It’ll be cool on the veranda.”

David laughed. “Mom’s the only one who dares use shore talk,” he said. “Sometimes she calls this the back porch and always says she’s going downstairs to her room.”

“Of course I do,” Mrs. Ponsonby said behind him. She shook hands with Royal and her grasp was firm and warm. “I’m so glad we found the Argosy at last. We heard about you last summer. A peddler boat must be fun.”

“It is,” said Royal, thinking how attractive the woman was.

“This is our only non-crew member,” Mr. Ponsonby said. “Won’t even do galley duty. Of course I don’t mind. Happen to like Sang’s cooking, though a paid hand spoils our record. But Mother’s pleasant to have around and we put up with her.”

“Certainly putting up are not the proper words,” and Captain Dan’s eyes twinkled. She smiled at him.

“Well, that’s the gang,” Mr. Ponsonby said. “And now I imagine you people would like to see the ship. Been in commission two years. Took ten months to build and I smelled every timber that went into her.”

He started forward, the others straggling in the rear. In the deckhouse Wally whispered to Royal that he was going to the engine room with Bill. Mr. Ponsonby didn’t seem aware he’d lost part of his audience, nor did he notice other desertions along the way. Only a remnant reached the wheelhouse.

“Here’s the heart of any ship,” their host said. “Notice how everything is controlled from this spot. Speed! Direction! Lights! Heat! Pumps! Fire extinguishers! Speaking tube to the engine room! Loud speaker to call the crew to stations! Every emergency prepared for! That’s the way to keep out of trouble.” Captain Dan nodded and looked properly impressed. “Even have a radio direction finder,” their host went on. “Lucky to get it, but some day every yacht will have one. Let me show you how it works. It’s simple.”

The explanation didn’t sound so. Royal was certain her father didn’t understand it any more than she did, but he managed to say “Amazing,” as though he meant it.

“And these are the charts.” Mr. Ponsonby pulled out several. “Every course is run by compass. Here are the readings for this harbor and here’s where we dropped our anchor.”

Captain Dan looked up alertly. “You came in by compass?”

“Certainly! Ran the course last summer. Takes a little time but it’s more than saved on future cruises. This year we’ll make Alaska in five days. Cruise at ten knots, can do twelve, get underway early and observe watches. Two hours on and two off. Keeps everyone on his toes.”

Royal wondered what anyone could do in a two-hour relief as she found four hours too short for any project of importance. She wanted to ask Monica and David how they felt about this but feared it would embarrass them. She liked them both. In the first few minutes Monica’s assured manner had been somewhat awesome but she’d taken charge of Royal’s tour through the deckhouse and when they’d visited the galley it was evident Sang adored her. David had a nice quirk of a smile around his mouth as he answered questions on navigating. A first mate on the Scapa Flow would need a sense of humor. Royal had begun to fear they’d never get beyond the pilothouse when Monica asked if she’d like to see the staterooms.

“I’d love to,” Royal said.

Mr. Ponsonby was reaching for another chart and Captain Dan’s eyes were taking on a hypnotic stare as the girls slipped away. Passing the engine room, they heard young male voices. Monica laughed and said her mother called the place the ship’s club.

“That’s what our wheelhouse really is,” Royal said. “It’s where the three of us hang out.”

Monica gave her an odd look and started down the companionway to the amidship quarters. Two staterooms, one on either side of the corridor, were no different than those of any boat, except they had more berths. “Men’s dormitories,” Monica said. “It’s pretty thick when all six are down here. Have to dress in shifts. My room’s at the end.”

She opened a door and Royal gasped. The room ran the full width of the ship and was exactly what Royal had imagined a stateroom on a yacht would be. A dressing table between the berths had jars and bottles, each in its secure compartment, and a tall locker had a full length mirror on the door. A built-in desk made Royal yearn, while a big chair seemed a minor miracle and it could be chained to the wall in a heavy sea. An open door revealed a bathroom with a full-sized tub and, more important, an electric pump with which to empty it.

“It’s wonderful,” Royal said. “And I love the color! It’s like—” She stopped, not quite sure what it made her think of. “I know!” she cried. “It’s like sparkling blue-green sea water with sunlight shining through. What a marvelous idea.”

“Mom had it done as a surprise. My tub is a special feature because this room has to double as guest quarters. Then I sleep on a transom in the deckhouse. I don’t mind,” she added almost too quickly. “We couldn’t squeeze in another stateroom. There’s so many of us.”

“Of course,” Royal said. “It’s different when there’s only three aboard.” She hoped she hadn’t sounded smug. “But this makes my room seem awfully bare and practical, and I don’t keep it half as neat.”

“Don’t give me the credit. Ship inspection every morning.”

“Really?”

“Isn’t that a rule at sea? And poor Thomas! Being the youngest, he has last turn at the boys’ bathroom and he’s always forgetting to scrub out the bowl.” Fascinated, Royal waited to find out what was done about this, but Monica had started for the door. “We’d better go on deck,” she said. “Sang’s made hot chocolate.”

Monica stopped at the foot of the companionway. “Hope you don’t mind my going first,” she said. “Isn’t it supposed to be correct at sea? Proves it’s safe or something. But perhaps you don’t bother about such things on the Argosy. Mom doesn’t. Says it’s just plain rude.” Royal couldn’t remember she’d ever heard of this convention, but resolved to watch the captain and see if she could catch him out. He’d be crushed if he thought he’d violated a sea formality. Monica halted in the deckhouse door to ask if Royal had ever seen a big whale lobtailing. “Or whatever it is you call it when a whale stands on his head and slaps the water with his tail,” she added.

“We saw three big fellows lobtailing at the same time one morning,” Royal said. “It was in a narrow passage and—”

“Wait! I want the boys to hear this, especially Gerald. He wouldn’t believe they do it. Said it was just a yarn a man at a cannery told me.” She hurried Royal toward the others who were gathered on the afterdeck. “Gerald’s always so afraid he’s having his leg pulled. He’s the dark cousin in the swing seat.”

Gerald made room for Royal beside him. Sang brought thin ginger cookies and hot chocolate. Royal noticed the china had the yacht’s name emblazoned in heavy gold. It was all just as she imagined—the broad stern, the long sweep of deck, the colored awning above, the deep comfortable chairs, a white-coated steward—and in an odd way it was strangely reassuring. She felt relaxed, and very happy.

Monica called for the story of the whales. “Royal’s actually seen them do it,” she said. “And lobtailing is what you call it.”

Finding herself so suddenly the center of a circle, Royal had one sharp moment of stage fright, and then she remembered how thrilling it had been to see the three huge creatures with half their bodies lifted in the air, their flukes silhouetted against the sky, and then describing great semi-circles, thrashing the water first on one side, then on the other. Each crash had sounded like cannon fire, had sent geysers of water high and made the sea a smother of foam. She knew she had imparted some of the excitement of that experience to her listeners when she’d finished.

David let out his breath in a sigh. “Gee! I’d have liked to’ve seen that! Were you close?”

“As close as we dared be. We were in a dinghy.”

David asked if it were true that whales did this to rid their sides of barnacles, but Gerald said he’d heard it was only a form of play. “Which is it, Royal?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, feeling suddenly a bit deflated.

“And why should she?” David demanded. “She didn’t claim to be a naturalist, but she’s seen something you and I would give our heads to see. Not many girls have watched a scene like that.”

She smiled at him. He was nice, and so were the others. The whole evening had been wonderful, but she felt a little sorry for her father, still cornered by his host, still talking ships. He looked pathetically in need of rescue. A moment later he arose.

“This ship has to make a five o’clock departure,” he announced. “And it’s getting late.” Mr. Ponsonby protested but Captain Dan was firm as he shook hands. “May be pulling out ourselves,” he said, “but not so early. And we can take our time. We’ve only to meet a steamship in Plunder Cove ten days from now.”

Everyone stood at the railing to see them off. Thomas pulled their dinghy in from the boom and David, as first mate, helped them aboard. “We’ll be looking for the Argosy on our run south in August,” he said as he shook hands. “We’ll see you somewhere.”

No one talked as they rowed home, but in the deckhouse, where their voices couldn’t carry across the water, Wally’s pent-up indignation found relief.

“I wouldn’t ship aboard the Scapa Flow if they gave it to me!” Wally exploded. “Not with him as skipper! Not if he threw in a couple of yachts.”

“Aren’t you the lad who’s always urging me to use a compass?” his father asked.

“Sure! On long courses in open water. But not to drop anchor in a little hole like this. Or run a set line into a harbor instead of conning! That’s just showing off! Of course, it’s not so bad for Bill. He can stay down in the engine room and let his father holler through that speaking tube. It’s Dave I feel sorry for. Writing out courses like a lesson! First mate! A fine chance he has! I’d like to see anyone boss Royal around that way. And the rest of them have to toe the mark too.”

The captain chuckled. “You mean morning ship inspection?”

“Can you beat that!” Wally’s wrath had found fresh fuel. “And I heard a lot of the stuff he was talking on the afterdeck. Discipline of the sea! What’s he know about it? Just because he owns a yacht he thinks he’s an admiral. Doesn’t know as much about those twin motors as Bill does. Just thinks he knows. And all day long, it’s got to be ‘yes, sir’ and ‘no, sir.’ Nobody else has a right to think. Why didn’t you tell him how we run the Argosy?”

“What good would that have done?” and the captain shrugged.

“But you sat there and listened! I watched you! I was waiting for you to open up and let him have it.”

The captain did not answer for a moment. “I tried that once,” he said. “It was a long time ago.” He seemed unaware of the breathless attention of his listeners. “You see,” he went on at last, “I know the sort of father he is. I should know. I had one.”

Wally looked at him in astonishment, his wrath gone as suddenly as the air from a pricked balloon. Royal could not bear to meet her father’s eyes. There was something strangely shocking in his mention of a father, and then she realized it was the first time she’d ever heard him do so.

“I suppose he’s why I joined a circus.” The captain seemed to be talking only to himself. “I wanted to shame him. Later I fell in with players acting at country carnivals. And I knew how he’d cringe at the thought of a son in grease paint, making country bumpkins laugh. I guess I hated that old man.” He appeared to have finished, but neither of them spoke. Royal moistened her lips and tried to say something. This dreadful silence seemed to leave some awful fact hanging in the air. Then her father said, “I think I always did hate him. As far back as I can remember.”

He walked out of the deckhouse. They watched him going aft.

“He meant every word of it,” Wally said in an awed tone. “Gosh! Can you imagine hating your own father?”

“Then his father deserved it!” Royal flared. “Did you ever know Dad to hate anybody?”

“But he’s always talked about his family and how fine they were. You’ve heard him.”

“And why wouldn’t he?” she said. “With a father like that he’d have all the more reason.” She stopped. She could understand it, even if Wally couldn’t, and she didn’t want to talk about it any more. But she felt a sudden rush of tenderness, and of new understanding. That old, old fairy tale of ancestral greatness had been so much more important than she’d ever known.

CHAPTER 6

In the next few days the Argosy poked its nose into a string of bays and harbors. One evening Wally showed a new log book he’d worked out. He’d arranged it so that they’d have a record for trips through main waterways and for short side runs. Captain Dan studied the columns for gas and oil, distance, running hours, sales, and a final place for profits.

“From Halcyon to Plunder Cove is always one trip,” Wally explained. “All regular stops are on our route. But if we go off our course to make a call, that’s a side trip and we can tell how much it costs us. Know if we lost money and if we ought to raise prices.”

“Bound to lose money on some trips,” the captain said. “And you can’t charge more’n people can afford to pay. This looks to me like a lot of work to find out something we knew beforehand.”

“Not much more,” Wally said. “I’ll have to keep closer track of gas and running hours.”

The captain examined the sheets again. “Wish I’d had this along the other night,” he chuckled. “Makes the Ponsonby’s log look like child’s play.”

It was good to know the Scapa Flow’s skipper was again only a comic figure. In the past few days they’d avoided mentioning that visit. Royal looked at the log sheets over her father’s shoulder.

“I’d have loved watching you show him this,” she said.

“Might have saved me from a lot of compass courses. Ponsonby’s cutting only minutes off a ten-day run. We’re conducting a real business.”

“What’s a peddler boat but a business?” Wally demanded sharply. “And if we don’t find out—”

“I’m not making fun of this,” the captain hastened to explain, “but a man who’s stood three hours of Ponsonby is entitled to a little joke.” He studied the columns again. “Shouldn’t wonder but you’ve got an idea here. Might have kept us from losing money on the dentist.” This was the first time he’d admitted this experiment in supercargo had been costly, and it was a handsome peace offering. Wally accepted it at its full value and grinned companionably at his father. The captain handed back the sheets. “If you think it’s worth the bother, go ahead and try it! I’m willing. Only don’t expect me to keep the ship’s log.”

“Was that a ship’s log you two kept last winter?” Wally asked.

Royal had known it was a scanty chronicle of a ship’s movements but not until she examined it next day did she realize how scanty. Whole weeks had gone by without an entry and she was prepared for Wally’s puzzled air that afternoon as he riffled through the pages in an attempt to discover the running costs of the previous winter.

“What’d the Argosy travel on last April?” he asked. “Wings?”

“There’ve been times we wished she could, but I don’t recall she ever managed to.” The captain looked around from the wheel. “Where were we in April, Royal?”

“Georgia Straits. We bought gas at Quadra Cannery. Don’t you remember we had enough money to buy a hundred gallons!”

“Sure! Had a fine trip all through there. Took on gas again in Shark Passage. Enough to get us to Vancouver. How much did we take on there, Royal?”

“I’ve forgotten, but the cannery’s watchman was awfully nice. He came aboard for tea and his dog had the cutest trick, Wally. If you held out a piece of meat and said it was Friday, the dog would wrinkle his lips and turn away.”

Wally looked from one to the other and laughed. “I can figure on the usual average, four and a half gallons an hour. More if you buck tide and current. Make many side trips?”

“Ducked in all around those islands,” the captain said. “Books will show our stops.”

“They show only the calls where we made sales,” Royal said. “I’ll get the journal for you, Wally.”

“Never mind,” he said. “I don’t suppose it makes much difference now. We’d better start the record with this trip.”

“I’m totaling today’s sales now,” Royal said.

The Argosy had made four calls, more than usual, for rarely did customers lie so close together. Each stop had been lengthy and most sociable, with the whole family aboard and eager to hear gossip. There’d been no time for bookkeeping but she had cash box, sales slips and ledger in the wheelhouse. The captain’s aversion for written sales slips had added to the confusion.

“How many red plaid bordered cups and saucers did you sell Mrs. Harris?” she asked her father.

“Eighteen,” he said promptly.

“But we had only a dozen! I counted them just after Mrs. Welsh bought hers.”

“Found six more in main stores and Mrs. Harris took the lot. She knew her daughter’d want some and didn’t dare risk our not having any left when we got to her place.” Royal smiled. The captain always made the things he admired seem a special prize for the discriminating. “Guess that cleaned us out,” he went on, “but Gridley and Allen are sending another shipment to Plunder Cove on the same boat Amos is coming on.”

“Did they promise?” Royal asked. For a year Ezra Gridley had been dubious about their account and this spring he’d been so grim she hadn’t dared order half the stock they needed. “I thought Mr. Gridley said he—”

“You mean that first morning we went there,” the captain said. “Shouldn’t have let it bother you. I went to see him while you were hunting Mrs. Cameron’s hat. Had a good straight talk.” He swung the wheel to avoid a piece of driftwood and then filled his pipe. Royal waited. “Where was I?” he asked after a moment. “Oh, yes! About Ezra! You can’t blame him for worrying a bit. He doesn’t know any more about this coast than the other people in Vancouver. All they ever see is a single logger on a three-day bust spending his boom money. But I told him about the families depending on us. Took the chart in, gave him names and showed how we never lost a cent. Of course, sometimes we have to wait over a season to give them a chance to sell their logs. That’s only reasonable. And I told him that so long as such men were getting British Columbia’s logs to market, supporting families and counting on the Argosy, we intended to stand by them. My putting it that way made him feel better. He saw what we are doing.”

Wally grinned at Royal. “And the best part was that Dad meant every word.”

“Certainly I meant it! If we bring people what they need and keep our prices fair, there’s no reason for anyone to worry. And no cause, as I see it, for the Argosy ever to be anything but a friendly boat.”

As Royal returned to her bookkeeping she wondered if her father had intended a declaration, wondered too if he wasn’t right. That was the baffling part of their peddler business. He made it seem so simple, and to him it was. It would never have occurred to her to talk to the stern-faced Ezra Gridley about the friendliness of a peddler boat or of men getting logs to market or to expect him to consider such matters important.

Wally asked if the sales were totaled and she told him they had been once but the figures didn’t agree. She rechecked her arithmetic, frowned in perplexity and then laughed in relief.

“I see what’s wrong!” she exclaimed. “I’d forgotten to charge for the wool undershirt Chris Welsh bought just as they were leaving. Remember his wife told him to buy another so he could at least start out for work looking clean. I hurried and got it for him.”

“Did you write down those congress shoes I sold him?” the captain asked. “And four pairs of socks.”

She added the items. “That does it! Slips, cash and charges tally! We sold one hundred and sixty-three dollars and forty-two cents worth of goods today!”

“Hurrah!” Wally shouted. “Doesn’t that look great on our new trip sheet!”

“Proves what we can do when things break right,” the captain said. “That was a fine idea of Wally’s. Tells us where we stand.”

The large entry was only one of many. The Argosy made sales at almost every stop and the ten-day trip sheet became enchanting reading even for the captain. He ignored the figures on gas and oil but adopted the rest of the scheme with fervor, even thought of elaborations.

“Keep the ledger by the trip instead of by names and we would know what people bought the last time,” he suggested. “Might help in our buying.”

Bookkeeping threatened to be truly complicated, but fortunately even Wally’s interest in this innovation lagged somewhat. It was the morning of their final run into Plunder Cove and no one wanted to talk business. Royal suggested a wheelhouse lunch.

“I was hoping you’d think of that!” the captain said. He was always in favor of a picnic meal when he had the noon trick at the wheel.

“And it’s so exactly right today,” she said. “I hate to miss even a minute up here.”

The day was sparkling and the wide forward windows gave the wheelhouse a sense of a theater in which absorbing events would presently take place, and she knew they always did. For the sea was never empty but a world of constant movement. It might be a flight of birds, a school of blackfish with great bodies rolling through the water, perhaps a mother whale and her baby traveling side by side and coming up to blow, the youngster’s exhalation the merest vapor beside the mother’s sturdy spout. Or if the Argosy was truly lucky, a band of frolicsome porpoises might make merry, flashing swiftly back and forth across the bow to form an ever-changing pattern of black and white in the green water. When none of these appeared, there were always boats, each different, and each bound on its special errand.

And that night they would be in Plunder Cove. Not only was it the largest and the most exciting float town on the coast but Bart Emerson, its owner, was one of their best friends. Moreover, tomorrow was boat day when the weekly steamship arrived and all the families in nearby inlets would come for mail. In the busy weeks just passed Royal hadn’t realized how she looked forward to the visit, but now as she fixed the tray of tea and sandwiches she thought how many months it was since the Argosy had called at Plunder Cove. It was strange how their life afloat never seemed to be one long voyage. It was a succession of voyages marked by indefinable boundaries. As one part of the coast closed behind them, another opened like the chapters of a book.

Royal carried the tray forward and set it on the chart table. Wally, with the glasses, was too absorbed studying a troller to protest this invasion of sacred territory. The fishing boat’s long poles were lashed to the masthead, and it was evidently bound for market.

“Look how low she is in the water,” he said. “Must have struck a big run of spring salmon off Scott Islands.” He waved congratulations and the two-man crew waved back jubilantly. One idled the motor while the other opened a hatch, held up a big salmon and pointed to the Argosy.

The captain drew alongside and the man handed the fish to Wally.

“Luck like we had should be shared,” he said. Captain Dan stepped to the door of the wheelhouse to thank him and the man smiled broadly. “Heard a lot about you,” he said. “Always hoped we’d run across the Argosy. Glad we happened to have our hold full.”

He was about to get underway when Royal called, “Wait a minute,” and ran to the galley for a pumpkin pie. She’d baked two in case of possible guests at Plunder Cove.

“Sure you can spare this?” the fisherman asked.

“I baked it for you,” and she laughed.

“Homemade pie is a treat when you’ve been eating out of cans, and this one is sure a dandy. Good and brown and nothing stingy about the filling. Don’t get pies like this often, but don’t tell my old woman I said so.”

When the two boats had drawn apart, Wally hefted the salmon, guessed its weight at more than twenty pounds and confirmed this on the scales. The captain asked if the new log had a column for felicitous events.

“I can write, ‘The Heron gave us a salmon.’ ”

“Surely such a fish is worthy of a better entry!” The captain looked shocked. “You couldn’t say less than we bespoke the troller, Heron, which presented us with a magnificent, fresh-caught, twenty-four pound spring salmon, and the skipper was deeply stirred at the prospect of supper. Perhaps, though,” he added, “you’d better not enter the last statement until the cook confirms it.”

“Broiled salmon for supper, baked salmon tomorrow and salmon salad the day after,” Royal said. “That is, if the Inlet Queen brings fresh lettuce.”

“Make the entry.” The captain’s eyes twinkled. “And as master of this vessel I want it understood that in the future the ship’s log must be at all times complete.”

“Yes, sir. You are right, sir,” and Wally saluted.

During lunch Wally paced off the course with dividers and announced they’d be snugged down at the Cove by suppertime. The captain asked why the hurry.

“I could get at the motor this evening. You’ve heard how it’s been missing, haven’t you?”

“But it kept on going,” the captain said. “Always has. It acted this way all last winter.” He appeared to think Wally should find this reassuring, but seeing Wally still looked troubled he said, “There’s nothing wrong with that engine. It’s a good one. Couldn’t be better! When they built the Falmouth they had the best of everything.”

“That was a long time ago,” Wally said. “And she’s missing more every day.” A few moments later he went down the hatch to the engine room.

“Wally’s been worried about the motor ever since he came aboard,” Royal said.

“Don’t see why. People stutter. Why can’t an engine?”

“But they’re not supposed to.”

The captain’s face was unusually sober. “Sometimes I’m afraid Wally is going to turn out to be one of these worriers. Don’t see where he gets it. He didn’t used to be any more than you are, nor was your mother. Worrying is a habit that can grow on one. And how’s he ever going to enjoy the Argosy if he’s brooding every time the motor sneezes.”

Royal carried the lunch tray to the galley and returned to settle on the transom seat of the wheelhouse. She had a fine sense of leisure. Lockers were in order, books balanced, the crew quarters more inviting than she’d thought was possible, no customers lay ahead and it was almost two hours before her trick at the wheel. Not a single task nagged to spoil her mood.

And Queen Charlotte Sound was spread before her, an opalescent sea, beneath a rampart of glistening snow peaks. The aftermath of a storm, far off in the Pacific, was only a suggestion of a ground swell here, a lazy movement of the water which stirred jewel tones on the glassy surface. Swirls and circles of amethyst and ruby, vivid emerald and glittering topaz, formed, broke and re-formed all about them.

Far ahead was an approaching tug with a tow of logs. Once she thought these tug boat skippers timid men, always lurking behind protective points, shepherding their charges, but now she knew the odds they faced and how cautious they must be. Each log floated freely, restrained only in sections enclosed by boomsticks, the sections stretched out in a long double line and held together by boom chains. A sea that would not disturb the Argosy could set the logs to bobbing and popping out and if a tow were caught by a wind in a long stretch of open water it might break up entirely. And the harvests of a whole year of many handloggers would be scattered along miles of shore line.

The heavy drag of these long tows made more than a two-knot speed impossible and this slow progress must be set against the chance of a change of weather and the need to get the logs to the sawmills before prices changed. And in each decision the skipper must wager his judgment against his reputation as a master of a tow boat.

But today that captain must be a happy man, knowing he would get his precious charge across open Queen Charlotte Sound before even a threat of wind. Rejoicing for him somehow added to Royal’s own mood of drowsy content.

She was half asleep when Wally suddenly erupted from the engine room. “I bet that’s the Monitor,” he said. He reached for the binoculars to confirm his guess. “Sure it’s the Monitor! That long cabin aft the pilot house. And there’s Captain Hendricks now! Got his glasses on us!”

Royal sat up alertly. Captain Hendricks was a celebrated skipper. Not only had he never lost a log, but loggers claimed he had never lost an unnecessary hour in getting his tow to market. “Do you know him?” she asked.

“Know a lot about him. Ben won’t send his logs by anyone else. Says he’s so good a logger doesn’t have to insure his boom. Want to take a look?” He started to hand the glasses to her but the tug sounded a deep-throated, toot, toot, toot. “He’s signaling us! Captain Hendrick’s waving us over, and he can’t stop with all those logs. He must want something.”

Wally went forward and stood ready, and since so momentous a meeting seemed to demand the presence of their skipper, Royal took the wheel. She turned the Argosy toward the tug and the distance between the two boats lessened.

“Any chance to buy some tobacco?” Captain Hendricks called through a megaphone.

“All you need,” Wally shouted, and Royal heard his voice crack a bit in his excitement. “Want us to come alongside?”

“Think you can make it?”

From the doubt in the captain’s voice, Royal was sure he must have heard of the Argosy’s more famous feats in hairbreadth navigating. She circled and came back with all her skill and did it beautifully. A deckhand helped make the two boats fast. Royal let out the clutch.

“I was sure glad to sight this craft,” the mate said. “Been smoking tea leaves for a week. No solace in ’em.”

“You can consider this a rescue.” Captain Hendricks laughed. He was astonishingly genial for a harried tug boat skipper but there was a look of competence in his bronzed face. “And if you can spare a dozen sheets, we’ll be glad to have them. Tore ours up for bandages when one of the men got a bad leg cut.”

“We’ve plenty of sheets,” Royal said. “And gauze too.”

“Good! As many rolls as you can let us have. I think that’s all, unless,” and he turned to the crew, “one of you fellows needs something. Here’s your chance! Never had a store traveling alongside us before.” He was evidently anxious to make the Argosy’s stop worthwhile.

“I’d like a couple of shirts and a few pairs of socks,” the cook said. “Took my gear ashore to wash and when the wind shifted didn’t have a chance to go back and get ’em. Anything you’ve got in my size will be all right, Miss. Seventeen collar and number eleven socks.”

While Royal made up the order, Wally visited aboard the tug and it was amazing how much information he had collected in the short stop. He was full of facts when the Argosy resumed her course.

“Never thought we’d be lucky enough to run across the Monitor,” he said. “No wonder they can handle two million feet of timber with power like that.” They were still passing the last of the long tow. It seemed endless—thirty sections. Wally said one third was cedar. “It’s that first-grade stuff they’ve got to watch. Let one stick pop out in a little slop and they’ve lost real money. But Captain Hendricks gets the motor launch overside in a hurry and goes after it. He’s awful proud of his record of never losing a log.”

“Did he tell you his secret in guessing weather?” Royal asked. This seemed to have more bearing on the concerns of a peddler boat than the safe conduct of a tow.

“Claims he hasn’t got one, but the mate said the captain’s smelled, felt, and slept weather for so many years, it’s just instinct with him.” Wally opened the new log book. “Glad we got a place for special events,” he said. “Now we’ve got something really important to enter.”

“And a sale.” Royal handed him the slip. “Fifty-four dollars.”

“Which reminds me of the salmon,” the captain said. “It wasn’t a sale but certainly it should appear as profit.”

“Then we’d have to deduct the cost of a homemade pie,” and Wally grinned. “I’ll let you figure that out.”

The Argosy threaded its way through a chain of miniature islands and turned into a narrow passage in the broken mainland coast, the last leg of their trip. Wally said they’d made such good time they’d be in early.

The captain didn’t answer but as they came abreast the point of Blackfish Arm he looked up the slender channel and remarked, “There’s plenty of time for a run to the head.” He spoke casually as though the idea had just occurred to him.

Royal and Wally exchanged glances. The side trip, up and back, would take four hours and only two families lived in the arm. The Carrs never bought much, and the Thorpes couldn’t.

The captain waited through a few moments of silence before he looked around. “We’d still make Plunder Cove by noon tomorrow and the Inlet Queen never gets in till suppertime,” he said.

Wally paced off the distance with dividers. “Trip’ll cost us twenty gallons of gas. Even more. We’ll have to buck tide both ways.”

“But we haven’t called at the Thorpes since early winter. And Jim was pretty down. Hadn’t sold a boom for more than two years.”

“And from what Ben Logan told me he hasn’t got one in the salt chuck yet,” Wally said.

“Jim used to be one of the finest loggers on this coast, but he’s had a run of awful luck. Broke his shoulder working on a hang up, and then that snow slide caught all the logs he had in the water. He was lucky he didn’t lose his shack. Then Alice was sick and a man can’t go off all day and leave a sick woman. It’s enough to make him lose heart. A fellow gets broody off alone and the Carrs aren’t much as neighbors. Wouldn’t want him to think we’d passed him up.”

He swung around the point and headed up the channel. Royal smiled at Wally, knowing how he was mourning those twenty gallons, but Wally only shrugged. The captain looked at the clock and said that apparently the mate wasn’t aware his watch had been ended ten minutes ago.

“You wouldn’t have given up the wheel until you’d made that turn,” she said as she took over. “Which stop first? The Carrs?”

The captain nodded. “Let’s get the worst behind us.”

Mrs. Carr was always a leisurely customer, but this afternoon, although she hurried across the boomsticks barely giving her four-year-old a chance to get his footing, she seemed to have more time than usual for browsing. Royal opened all the lockers while Mrs. Carr fingered tablecloths, discussed the price of stockings, admired ash trays, considered belts, looked at towels, toyed with a set of dishes brought from the main stores, then picked up a double boiler.

“For a month I’ve been hoping you’d come by so I could get one,” she said. “Mine boiled dry. Melted the whole bottom and Tom says breakfast isn’t a meal without his porridge. But you know men! They seem to think there’s a store around the corner, never stop to consider what a woman puts up with in this country.” She asked the price of the boiler, laid the money on the table then stood in the door looking back on the shambles. “You’d never believe that anyone could carry so much in a boat,” she said. “And Tom will be so glad I’ve got a boiler.”

When the Argosy was underway again Royal restowed the lockers and joined the others in the wheelhouse. Her cheeks were pink with exasperation.

“I wouldn’t mind so much if I liked the woman,” she said. “And did you notice how she yanked that little boy around?”

“Thought she was nicer to the tyke when she left,” the captain said. “Shopping cheered her up. Probably gets lonely.”

“She wouldn’t be so lonely if she’d stop complaining about the country and take some interest in Tom’s work. Why, she didn’t even know where he found those big cedars or how far he’d had to tow them. Imagine Mary Logan not knowing a thing like that!” Royal was vehement, and then she laughed, “It’s no use, Dad. You can’t make me like her.”

“Neither do I, but I can feel sorry for her. She’d never been up this coast when she happened to meet Tom in Vancouver. He’d just sold a fine boom, and a chap with three thousand dollars in his pocket is a lot different from that same fellow up here who’s off on a mountain all day, getting the boom in, stick by stick. How was she to know what it was like to live in a float house with no chance to get on land or go any place? And in a cove with only logs at her front door? Or how it would be to spend months, maybe a year, perhaps even longer, with nothing to see but a lot of mountain peaks? You have to look at it from her side.”

Royal steered in silence. When her father determined to feel sorry for someone he flung himself into the project. He’d enjoyed his own eloquence, yet he knew as well as she that he was on unsure ground. She thought of other women whom he liked and admired, women who had known even less about the country, who had come from the quiet orderliness and serenity of English countrysides and who had managed to live in float houses without complaining.

After a moment the captain chuckled. “Suppose it’s like Chris Welsh always says,” he admitted. “In this country wives come graded just like cedar. If one doesn’t happen to be a fine number-one—well, that’s the way it is. Do Mrs. Carr a lot of good to neighbor more with Alice Thorpe. She’s one fine woman.”

The Argosy made a sharp turn around the sheer side of a mountain and nosed its way into a small cove. Jim and Alice Thorpe rushed to the float to take their lines, then came aboard. Captain Dan looked at the logs behind the boomsticks.

“Got some fine cedar there, Jim,” he said.

“Good sticks, all right, but nowhere near enough.” Jim shook his head. “Between hang-ups and everything else that’s gone wrong on this show, seems I can’t get a boom into the salt chuck.”

“Happens sometimes,” the captain said, “but you won’t be sorry you didn’t sell in last winter’s market. Cedar’s going sky high.”

“Is that the talk?” and Jim’s voice quickened.

“Bound to with the big building boom that’s starting in the States. Hadn’t you heard? And it isn’t all talk. A couple of chaps were telling me about it. They’re smart, Oxford graduates, pay attention to the market and understand about business. They’re interested in cedar bolts, and they said things were really going to hum across the line. And where will the Americans get their cedar except from up this coast?”

Jim turned to his wife. “Did you hear what the captain said? We’re lucky we didn’t sell this cedar. Price’s going up. We got some fine sticks. Good number-one. And there’s plenty more where they came from.”

Alice Thorpe’s eyes lighted. “I’ve always said it takes Captain Dan to see things straight. He puts the right side foremost.”

“Sure he does,” Jim said. “And there’s no sense in letting good cedar stand when prices are going sky high. I’m going to slam a boom into water so fast you won’t believe it. Get those logs to market!”

His wife laughed, a happy laugh. “I intended to buy you a pair of working gloves but now I’d better make it two.”

Jim grinned at the captain. “Maybe she means one pair for her. She’s always said there’s no finer music than a tree starting for the salt chuck. Never forget the day I put in one stumper. Biggest fir I ever run.”

“It was a grand sight,” she said. “I was watching from the shack and I saw that big top swing out halfway up the mountain. At first it leaned over slow, so slow you held your breath. And then the whole tree shot out, like a rocket, straight for the salt chuck. It went so deep it didn’t come up until it was half across the channel. I nearly died waiting for it to show. And then I saw it. A monster of a log! I gave a shout, and started up the mountain to find Jim. Remember?”

She looked at him and the two stood smiling at each other, oblivious of the others. Alice was the first to recover.

“But my goodness, Jim!” she said. “These folks are heading for the Cove and we shouldn’t keep them here listening to logging talk. What I need most are towels.”

She added a half dozen to the gloves, chose a few dishes and insisted on paying cash. She admired red-checked kitchen curtains and Captain Dan put them in her hand as they said good-bye. She started to protest.

“Jim will take care of them when he’s slammed that boom in,” the captain said, and then as she still hesitated he added sternly, “Take them! That’s Captain’s orders.”

Afterwards as they ran down the arm he told Royal not to write a sales slip. “She needed something gay to look at.”

“I never intended to charge them,” Royal said. “But wasn’t it wonderful how Jim cheered up when he heard about the rise in cedar!”

“Might have over-reached myself a bit about how smart Charles and David are,” the captain admitted. “Maybe too bright a picture is as—”

“Bright!” and Wally laughed. “You should hear that gang in Deep Inlet when they get started. You’d think cedar was going to be the price of gold. Trouble with Jim, he doesn’t hear enough of that talk. It was—” he looked at his father with admiration—“it was worth every cent of twenty gallons!”

CHAPTER 7

Next morning the Argosy reached Plunder Cove. It had been called this as long as anyone could remember, years before Brad Emerson had built his first small float store, and as the venture grew it had never occurred to the owner or his customers that this was an odd name for a town which was the shopping center for loggers of a big district. Now store, restaurant, warehouse, blacksmith shop, first-aid station, Brad’s house, and a dwelling for Len Purdy and his wife, the clerk and cook, all rested on rafts at the foot of a mountain. Chains and cables moored these rafts to shore, and long boomsticks running out from the base of a high cliff kept the town from battering against the rocks in change of tides or when buffetted by winter gales. Outer boomsticks herded the buildings into line and also served as sidewalks. A large float with a big freight shed provided a landing for the weekly steamship.

The Argosy skirted this outside landing and headed for the store, where three gasboats were already moored. Brad waved from the doorway and ran out to take their lines. The easy movement of his compact body and the aliveness of his smile made him seem surprisingly young to be the owner, although he was in his middle thirties and had been a handlogger before he’d become a storekeeper. All he’d ever told about himself was that he’d discovered the coast country at an age when a lad just naturally had to travel to the head of every inlet.

Now he knew everyone on the coast, and everybody liked him. In the few years of the town’s existence it had become not only the handloggers’ store and postoffice but their bank and club, and Brad was a court of appeal in disputes and adviser in business problems.

Royal threw a line and the captain leaned out the wheelhouse to say they were meeting a passenger on the Inlet Queen.

“Glad something brings you here occasionally,” Brad said. “I was wondering what happened to you. Where do you want to tie up? You’re early enough to pick your spot.”

“Near the blacksmith shop,” Wally said as he leaped ashore with the stern line. “Can’t we walk her down there?”

“Seems cruel to deprive the captain of the fun of a second landing. How about it, Skipper?”

“Go ahead and strain your backs,” the captain jeered. “But I’d like you to remember I’ve never crashed one of your precious boomsticks yet.”

“But miracles can’t go on forever,” Brad said.

The blacksmith shop lay at the end of the long line of buildings. Wally and Brad made the boat fast and went aboard. Royal served coffee while they talked and laughed and caught up on Cove news. Brad’s stories were always entertaining for his slant on human nature was amusing.

Wally told Brad that he’d joined ship. “A full-time job,” he said. “Nobody’s mentioned any pay yet but—”

“And nobody’s likely to,” the captain said. “Who wants an engineer who’s got to tie up by a machine shop? Miss half the fun of Plunder Cove.”

Brad said it would be quieter if the crowd stayed over. “Last boat night the poker game didn’t break up till daylight. Jack Smith and Frank Walters sold booms and both set up jugs. I’m thinking of rearranging this town, put the club room at the far end and call it our country club. Having engine trouble, Wally?”

“What I want to find out. After I’ve had a good look I’ll know.”

“If you don’t there’ll be plenty who will,” Brad said. “By afternoon when the gasboats get in, you’ll have more armchair mechanics than the shop can hold.”

“Just what I’m afraid of,” Wally said, “and why I’m getting at this job early.” He started to leave, then turned. “Do you happen to know anything about motors?”

“Not any more than the rest of the handloggers,” Brad said. “But say! I heard about a fellow who does! He’s got a workshop in a boat.”

“He sounds like the one Ben heard about who fixes donkey engines. Do you know him?”

“Never saw him, and I couldn’t tell you how good he is. He’s a young fellow, hasn’t been up here very long. Name’s Eric Ward, and he sounds all right.” He laughed. “Calls his boat The Willing Slave. At least he’s got a sense of humor. I think someone said he hung out at Pybus Bay at the McDonald logging camp.”

“Ben couldn’t find out even how to get hold of him,” Wally said. “Wonder how good he is on gasboats?”

“I can find out for you. He might stop in here, or I’ll run across someone who can tell me about him. Shall I let you know what I hear?”

“Wish you would,” Wally said. “I got to work. See you later.”

Brad watched him as he left the wheelhouse, then turned to Royal. “The lad’s a full head taller than when I saw him last summer.”

“Does he seem much older to you?” She was anxious for Brad’s opinion. “I was sure you’d notice it if anyone did.”

“No one could miss it,” Brad said. “Can’t believe he’s the same kid who used to fool around this float, but he’s the sort who’d grow up in one jump.” He looked at the captain and chuckled. “In some ways Wally’s older than Captain Dan.”

Royal was a little startled, and then her laugh was understanding. “I know what you mean!” she cried. “Of course he’s older!”

“Worry will put years on anybody,” the captain declared seriously.

Royal and Brad exchanged amused glances and Brad said he should be getting back to the store. Len Purdy had promised to help his wife in the restaurant. Mrs. Purdy was in her usual boat day humor.

“She’s mad if she has a gang for supper, and she’d be madder if they didn’t stay. I think she’d be maddest of all if she didn’t have anything to be mad about.”

“Three boats are in already,” the captain said. “Early customers?”

“You might call them that. The Knight Logging Company sent in a man with a crushed shoulder. I wirelessed two hours ago for the hospital boat to come and take him across the Sound. The other two—well—they’re customers with troubles. One wants to throw up his logging show. He’s in the books pretty deep but he’d make out all right if he’d stop brooding because a neighbor married his lady cook. I’ve offered to find him a better one, and good-looking too. He’s sitting in his gasboat thinking it over.”

“What’s the matter with the other chap?” Captain Dan asked.

“Wish his problem was as simple. He wants to get rid of his partner, and neither of them will give up their show. They’re so mad at each other they’re willing to saw their shack in two, and even their gasboat, but they can’t settle on how to divide the timber. Neither can I. It’s a spotty holding. The worst of it is, they like each other, down deep. It’s just a bad case of cabin fever.”

“Broody folks, handloggers,” the captain said. “And always with big ideas. In a lot of ways they make me think of actors.”

Brad nodded. “I remember when I used to sashay up an inlet and think how I was going to slam in every cedar I could run to the salt chuck. In those days I figured by booms. One tree was nothing!”

As he left he asked if they were coming to the store. Royal said she wouldn’t have her shopping list ready until later.

The captain hesitated. “I might as well go along now,” he said.

“Don’t forget we’re having baked salmon for dinner,” Royal said. “And can’t you come too, Brad?”

“Wish I could. It’s boat day, but if I see a chance, I’ll sure be here.”

The main trading of the week must be done in a few rushed hours and Royal wasn’t surprised when the captain returned alone, and very late, for dinner. Wally had already eaten and was back in the engine room. Captain Dan was full of news. The hospital boat had come and gone. Many more gasboats had arrived and the town was crowded. A winchman and his wife had come from a nearby logging camp and were trying to get transportation to a new job.

“I said we’d be glad to take him if we didn’t have to wait to pick up a passenger. Brad will have a hard time finding him a craft today. Couldn’t even get the provincial marshal to give him a lift.”

“I saw the police boat come in,” she said. “It didn’t stay long.”

Her father chuckled. “The marshal was on an important mission. Hunting a dangerous criminal who was supposed to be around here, but no one had seen a man of that description. Brad offered to put the marshal on the trail of a real live bootlegger. A tough customer. The marshal said he wasn’t afraid of any man, asked where the fellow was, slammed into his gasboat and headed in the opposite direction. Guess Brad will have to run off his own bootlegger.”

He finished dinner and asked about the motor. Royal told him that Wally had eaten and run, had been very silent.

“We’d better see what he’s doing,” the captain said.

The engine room was a clutter of tools, ignition wires, spark plugs and odds and ends of the motor. Wally had removed the side plates of the base and was exploring with a heavy bar.

“Find any trouble?” the captain asked.

“Plenty. One main bearing’s loose, and so is one of the con rod bearings. I’ve taken off the cap over number four exhaust valve. The valve looks warped and I can feel where it is pitted. I’ve got an extra exhaust valve but don’t think I could put it in. We might get in a worse jam than we are now. And if what I’m beginning to guess is making the valves stick, we couldn’t fix it without an overhaul. But we’ve got to have one anyway.”

“You mean in a regular machine shop?” the captain said, looking shaken.

“I can’t do it! Don’t know enough, and I haven’t got the tools.”

“Well—” and the captain gulped. “You make it seem pretty serious. Tell you what, lad, the first money we get ahead we’ll have an overhaul. But right now, couldn’t you fix it up a bit?”

“You can’t just ‘fix up’ loose bearings!” Wally sounded almost savage. “That’s the trouble with old motors.”

“Of course! And I understand.” The captain’s manner was conciliatory. “But they keep running, don’t they? Just like me. I’m not the man I was twenty years ago but it hasn’t slowed me up much, and nobody’s said I need an overhaul. You have to make allowances for age. Maybe that motor isn’t as good as when we bought the Falmouth, but it’s still a fine piece of machinery. The way we travel it might keep running for a long, long time.”

“What if she stopped some day when we were going through a roaring hole? Or if we were caught by a southeaster on a big stretch?” Wally looked past his father at Royal. “That’s what I’m thinking of.”

“Is the risk that great?” she asked slowly. She had to keep her voice down to quiet her own panic as she thought of what the loss of the peddler boat might mean.

“Could be,” Wally said. “If an exhaust valve stuck and we got a backfire into the carburetor, we’d be in real trouble.”

“And you can’t fix them?” she asked.

“I’m hoping to figure out a way to unstick ’em. Working on it now.”

“I knew you’d manage something!” The captain caught at this with eagerness. “And don’t worry. A few good trips and we’ll make a new engine of her. That’s more than they can do for people.”

When they went on deck the captain was very cheerful, and evidently anxious to get off for a round of visits. Royal felt almost a touch of envy as she saw how completely he had regained his usual blithe spirits. Engine trouble seemed the least of his concerns, but he paused a moment as he departed.

“Suppose Wally’ll ever learn not to let things nag him?” he asked. “Always worrying about what might happen! If I’d looked at life that way I’d never have dared buy a ship or take two young ’uns to sea. Then we’d have missed the finest home a family ever had.” He shook his head and started off. “Need anything at the store?”

“I’ll come up later,” she said.

She was making her shopping list when Wally looked in the galley. Apparently he too was going to the store, for he was scrubbed and had remembered to change his shirt.

“I’ve figured a way to loosen those valves when they stick,” he said. “Wanted you to know it.” After a moment he asked, “Did Dad mean we haven’t any money for an overhaul?”

“Would it cost much?”

Wally hesitated. “Of course I could do a lot to cut labor costs, but even then it’s liable to run over a hundred dollars. Maybe more because you never know what you’ll find when you tear down an old motor.”

“I was afraid so.” Her words came slowly. “We’ve promised to make payments on the accounts, but of course”—she paused and then her voice firmed—“we must keep up the Argosy. Only—could we put the overhaul off a little while, Wally? It would be so much easier later.”

“Sure we can! And don’t you worry!”

“That from you, Wally Browne!” and she laughed. “And it’s the second time in an hour I’ve been told not to worry.”

“I was afraid I might have scared you.” He started away, then stuck his head back in the door. “Get on deck and see the yacht that’s coming in!” She hurried out. “American,” Wally said. “Isn’t she a dandy! Must be one of those big ones from California. At least a hundred and twenty footer.”

The ship was standing off while the captain searched the boomsticks for a space large enough to berth her. Handloggers moved their gasboats to make room, and others sprang to catch the lines. The Sea Wanderer was made fast, and among her gasboat neighbors she seemed as big as the Leviathan.

“Wonder what they’re doing in a place like this,” Wally said. “Gosh! I’d like to get aboard a ship like that!” A cook jumped off the yacht and went to the store. “Just came in to buy something. Guess I’ll wander up and see what’s going on.”

His gait along the boomsticks was anything but wandering. It was almost a lope. Royal smiled, and when she hurried to change to blue flannels she wondered why she’d been amused by his excitement. As she walked past the Sea Wanderer she saw how truly impressive it was. Much grander than the Scapa Flow. A deckhand was cleaning the afterdeck, which was filled with chairs. Two white-coated stewards were bearing trays to the big deck lounge forward, and out of the corner of an eye Royal saw people at a card table. They were as remote and detached as though a float town was an ordinary matter.

In the store Brad was busy waiting on the cook and the counter was piled high with packages. Royal got the Argosy’s order book from the customers’ file and filled her list. On boat days everyone waited on himself. Jimmie Dent, the oldest man in the district, presided at the scales. Customers wrote down their items, and the price if it was marked, which was seldom, and Brad had to fill in the blanks later. This system had evolved naturally when friends pitched in to help a merchant who must transact the major portion of his business in one afternoon a week. It had ironed out confusion. Routine shopping, special orders and postoffice affairs were finished before the arrival of the steamship with mail, express, freight and, most important of all, fresh meat and vegetables. Today at Brad’s announcement that the Inlet Queen was bringing tomatoes, crates of lettuce, quarters of beef, peaches and even melons, a combative gleam appeared in the eyes of housewives. There never was enough to go around, and seldom was there such enticing loot. The Argosy hadn’t had fresh meat or a leaf of lettuce since she’d left Vancouver, and not a melon since last summer. The cook from the Sea Wanderer eagerly asked the hour of the ship’s arrival. It would be his last chance for vegetables until he reached Alaska.

“Around suppertime,” Brad said. “Might be an hour before or a couple of hours after.”

“The big fellow would never wait,” the cook said sadly and folded his list.

Everyone felt a little sorry for him but their sympathy was mixed with relief that at least one contestant for the precious items had been eliminated. And no one was in any doubt who the big fellow was. An astonishing amount of information had percolated ashore from a yacht which had so strictly maintained its distance. She was owned by a well-known radio manufacturer, was on her way to Alaska for a two months’ cruise and the party included three millionaires. The cost of the yacht was a matter of speculation and one of the handloggers said it was powered with three motors, each stateroom was done in a special color and had its own bath, and the faucets were silver plated.

Royal didn’t believe the silver plating but she liked the note of grandeur it suggested and she wondered if such details were implied in the words, “palatial yacht,” which had always aroused her imagination. Never before had she been within hand touch of such luxury and magnificence. Even to share the same boomsticks with such a gorgeous creature was stirring, but, strangely, she had no wish to go aboard. It was thrilling enough to know this other world actually existed.

The store emptied to watch the Sea Wanderer’s departure which was accomplished with the same aloofness that had marked the entire stay. The captain did not whistle a friendly farewell and no member of the party appeared on deck.

“At least the cook waved,” Brad said as the yacht disappeared around the point. “That’s something!”

Afterwards the handloggers, who had doubled up to make room for the yacht, moved their crafts back to moorings. A few late-comers arrived and a long line of gasboats nosed to the boomsticks like horses at a hitching rail. After Royal finished shopping she made a round of calls among the boats. Almost every family was a customer of the Argosy, and many she hadn’t seen since last winter. It was the social hour. Housewives, with routine errands done, were ready to visit. And then suddenly tension grew as everyone began to watch for the sight of the steamship.

Someone called, “There she comes! I see the smoke!”

CHAPTER 8

Before the Inlet Queen was moored everyone had gathered on the huge landing float. The freight doors in the hull swung open and cargo began to pour out. Mail sacks came off first and were carried to the store. Cartons of freight followed and were trundled by eager helpers to the big shed. Brad stood in the center checking manifests. In the beginning the unloading was orderly but when crates of vegetables and quarters of beef appeared the ranks of spectators broke. On these items it was always first come, first served. Some tore the slats off vegetable crates. Others followed the beef to the chopping block in the shed where Jimmie Badger officiated as volunteer butcher. He was besieged by orders. Only Mrs. Purdy had the right to commandeer, and the strength of character to enforce it.

“Not a pound of meat goes to anyone till you’ve cut off steaks for the eating house,” she said. “I’m serving them for supper. And I want a big oven roast besides. Enough to last us through the week.”

Royal waited so long watching for the photographer to come off the steamship she almost lost out on lettuce and got the last two heads only because Mrs. Walters took pity and divided with her. The baskets of tomatoes had long since disappeared, as had the peaches and melons. Rumor had it that only stewing beef was left.

“I’ll try to get some while you watch for Amos,” she told her father.

“I’m going aboard and hunt him up before the ship pulls out,” the captain said. “Most of the freight’s ashore.”

Royal nodded and hurried to the shed where Jimmie Badger was still surrounded by a throng of customers. He saw her standing at the edge of the crowd. “Here’s the pot roast you ordered, Royal,” he called. “I was beginning to think you didn’t want it.”

The brown paper parcel was passed over the others’ heads. A woman glanced at Royal suspiciously, but no one had ever proved Jimmie played favorites. Royal thanked him and started for the store to have the meat weighed. On the float she met Wally, who reported Amos had been found.

“Trouble was, he didn’t have his gear packed. But say, Royal! Does he always look like a scared rabbit? Even wiggles his nose.”

“He didn’t in Vancouver.”

“Said he’d been seasick all the way up. How’s he ever going to stand the Argosy! Dad’s led him aboard and I’m to bring his stuff.” He grinned. “Guess Dad would just as soon folks didn’t see him till he’s in better shape. Right now he’s nothing to boast about.”

Wally sounded very cheerful, even amused. But he brooded only about mishaps in the future and once a calamity was upon them he always took it in his stride. Royal went to the store, listed her meat and lettuce and waited for the mail to be distributed.

As she left, the supper gong sounded and a long line of men started down the big larch boomstick toward the restaurant. Apparently only the bachelors were remaining. Children and groceries were being loaded in family gasboats and last-minute messages called from one craft to another. Soon the sharp staccato of starting motors filled the channel.

Royal went on to the Argosy. Wally was helping Amos carry his luggage to the forward quarters but the photographer stopped for a limp handshake. Royal smiled, thinking how apt Wally’s description was. Amos did look like a frightened rabbit. She hadn’t remembered his eyes were quite so pale or his hair so wispy. She joined the captain on the afterdeck to watch departures and thought he seemed a bit dejected, but later at the supper table he made a valiant effort.

“It’s too bad Amos didn’t have a chance to meet people and let them know there’s a photographer in the country,” he said. “I’d planned to introduce him this evening but none of the families are staying over.”

“I prefer to meet my clients in their homes,” Amos said, and left the remark hanging. After a moment he went on, “I take portraits, not snapshots. Portraiture reveals the person. It isn’t a trade. It is an art.”

“No one would understand that better than people on this coast,” the captain agreed warmly. “Every handlogger is, at heart, an artist. Wouldn’t handlog if he wasn’t.”

“That was what you told me,” Amos said, and went on eating.

Wally and Royal exchanged glances but neither spoke. After a time the captain returned to the matter of introductions and suggested they drop in at the store that evening.

“Of course, these fellows are all single and won’t want their portraits taken,” he said. “But every man jack of them has a snapshot of a mother, or a sister, or maybe an old sweetheart. He’d enjoy an enlargement hanging on his wall. Make his cedar shack seem homelike. We’ll take your samples along, and don’t forget to explain about the unbreakable glass.” He turned to Wally. “Only picture I ever saw you couldn’t hurt if you hit it with an ax.”

“It won’t shatter even if you drop it from the roof of a building,” Amos said with considerable pride.

“Tell them that!” the captain exclaimed. “And tell them you’ve proved it.”

The captain went below to change, and returned ten minutes later in a fresh shirt and wearing his best tie. He asked Royal if Amos was ready. “We ought to be there before the poker game starts,” he said.

She laughed. “Amos wanted me to tell you he was tired and had gone to bed. And then he fairly scuttled for his quarters.”

The captain looked disconcerted but recovered quickly. “I shouldn’t have tried to rush him. We’ve got to give him time to get used to this country. Once he’s squared around, he’ll be all right.”

But a week later even he admitted time was not the solution. Wally marveled that it took longer to pose a client than to fill a tooth. Also tide meant nothing to an artist. Royal didn’t speak of the extra cooking, although she wondered how so small a man could possibly eat so much food. She did speak somewhat bitterly of the combination galley-darkroom. Captain Dan’s complaint was even more fundamental.

“And look what he turns out!” he said. “When Mrs. Meade saw her proofs she stamped off the boat without buying so much as a spool of thread. That speech of his about a portrait showing the real person didn’t help much either.”

“Nancy Dunn’s photograph was even worse,” Royal said. “She’s a cute little trick and naturally her mother was awfully anxious to have a picture. But she cried when she saw the proofs. And Henry Dunn said if he believed a five-year-old child of his had that kind of a personality he’d drop her in the salt chuck.”

“Suppose Amos does it on purpose?” Wally asked.

“Doesn’t make sense.” The captain shook his head. “No man wants to go around hurting others’ feelings. I tried to talk to Amos.”

“What did he say?” Wally asked.

“Just quivered his nose and explained people up here had no feeling for real art. And it didn’t seem to bother him that no one orders those enlargements. I was a bit afraid of that thick greenish glass. Everybody says it makes a person look gloomy. And any man wants to think of his old sweetheart as being pretty, or cheerful, the way he remembers her.”

“At least we won’t have to deliver those dreadful things later,” Royal exclaimed in relief. “Or collect the money. I couldn’t do it!”

“Why should he worry?” Wally asked. “He couldn’t live anywhere, let alone travel, for what he pays on the Argosy.”

“It seemed a fair enough figure with our commissions on his sales,” the captain said. “We couldn’t expect him to take all the risk after spending money on his ticket.” Definitely their father was on the defensive, and then he said, “Only now I’m afraid we’ll lose more than we did on the dentist. Amos has been aboard only a week and it was understood we’d take him for a month.”

Wally groaned. “By that time we won’t have a friend on the coast.”

“It’s not that bad, but I wish—” The captain stopped and Royal knew they were all wishing the same thing. Then the captain shook his head. “No,” he said. “A man must keep his word. But things will work out somehow.”

Afterwards Royal and Wally talked it over. A month of Amos would be eternity. Wally suggested that Royal starve him out.

“I couldn’t do it any more than Dad could go back on a bargain!” she said. “Besides, Amos is probably used to starving. He was awfully thin when he came aboard. No, Wally, we’ll have to think of something else.” She spoke with more conviction than she felt. There wasn’t anything they could do. Amos was a natural limpet. Nothing but the captain’s orders could dislodge him and unless Amos did something dreadful, he wouldn’t be told to leave. Yet people like Amos didn’t do dreadful things. They just wore you down with petty irritations and with that arrogant disregard for others. “After all,” Royal said, “it isn’t as hard on us as on Dad.” Wally looked incredulous. “Of course it isn’t!” she insisted. “Don’t you realize this is his first scheme that he didn’t have a single good thing to say about?”

The Argosy departed early next morning for Nimpkish Inlet and made the entrance at dead slack. Wally was happy. “That’s one tide we caught right,” he said. “Get a boost clear to the head.”

A half hour later the motor stuttered, got going, missed again, stopped. Wally ducked below. He had become so adept in loosening sticky valves that Royal didn’t worry as she waited at the wheel. But when the tinkering below went on and on, with no reassuring snort from the exhaust, she was uneasy. Her first sight of his face when at last he came on deck told her the news.

“This time it’s stuck for good. Exhaust valve in number three is wide open. I can’t budge it.” He looked at the chart. “Bill Allen’s float house is around the next point but the current is carrying us inshore. If we can get an anchor to bottom you can wait here while I row to Bill’s.”

“But it’s always got going before,” the captain said. “Maybe if you give her—” He saw Wally’s eyes. “I guess, lad, that’s the thing to do. I’ll go forward and be ready to drop the anchor.”

“Keep a sharp lookout. Chart doesn’t show a reef but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one.”

“What shall I do?” Royal asked.

“Just keep looking. Yell if you see a rock.”

The Argosy drifted slowly and in a great silence.

Royal peered overside, shading her eyes, trying desperately to see into the dark depths below. Wally sounded and said nothing. Suddenly the stillness was shattered. High on the steep mountainside a tree crashed.

“Did you hear that!” Wally shouted. “Bill’s working up there now! What a piece of luck! Isn’t that his skiff? Give me the glasses! Blow the whistle!”

Royal handed him the binoculars and pulled the whistle cord. Wally said it was Bill’s boat and the relief in his voice was good to hear. A moment later Amos came through the deckhouse. He was carrying his cameras. Equipment dangled from hands and shoulders. The man was scarcely visible beneath it.

“We’re going to be wrecked!” he panted.

Royal laughed and pulled the whistle cord again. The Argosy was still drifting when Bill Allen put out from shore.

“Well, well!” his big voice boomed as he came alongside. “What’s the matter with the cap’n’s guardian angel? I couldn’t believe it when I looked down and saw the Argosy.”

Wally told what had happened as he put the dinghy over and the two boats towed the Argosy to shoal water where they could drop an anchor. It was wonderful to be fast to the bottom. Wally carried the lead line to the dinghy and explored their cable range for pinnacle rocks.

Bill said he’d row home and get his gasboat to tow them to his float. “Guess that angel the cap’n’s got watching over him was on the job after all,” he laughed. “I’ve been working on the other end of the show. First tree I’ve run here. And just yesterday a young fellow stopped in. Repairs engines. Got a work shop in his gasboat.”

“Not The Willing Slave!” Wally exclaimed.

“Sure, Eric Ward. He was on his way up the inlet to fix a donkey. You know him?”

“Heard about him. When’s he coming back?”

“This afternoon or evening. Least he expected to. Didn’t say anything about stopping in but from my place you can see his boat coming.” Bill took a few strokes. “Course I don’t know how good he is. Sounds smart enough. Likable too. But in the shape you folks are now, you can’t afford to be fussy.”

CHAPTER 9

After Bill Allen had towed the Argosy to his float house, Wally spent the afternoon in the engine room. Royal would have been glad to join him if only to escape the accusing face of Amos, but she had to keep a lookout for The Willing Slave. Amos paced slowly back and forth on the float, a woeful figure. He had recovered from his panic and was now convinced his plight was entirely their fault. And perhaps it was, Royal admitted to herself, as she recalled Wally’s warning and thought of the dangerous passages where the motor might have stopped when loss of power could spell only disaster. She hadn’t forgotten her awful sense of helplessness that morning as the Argosy drifted toward shore, but she knew the sea had let them off lightly and she was grateful.

Amos should be too. He ought to know his troubles were as nothing compared to those of the Argosy, and the sight of the pacing figure became more and more annoying. She’d tried to ignore him, to wipe him out of her consciousness, and then found she was counting his trips across the float, even the number of his steps.

“Isn’t there any way to stop him!” she burst out to her father.

The captain looked at her with real concern. “Never saw you so stirred up before. You can’t tell a man he hasn’t a right to walk. If I can get him to light somewhere he might calm down.”

The captain joined Amos and a moment later they were sitting side by side on cedar blocks while the captain explained his theory of the disaster. He regarded it as only a capricious notion on the part of an otherwise properly behaved engine. He felt a bit betrayed, but philosophical. Absolute perfection was not to be expected in this world, where even the finest people failed others sometimes. Royal doubted if this theory would calm Amos but at least it gave him another object for his censure, and later, on his way to his quarters, he stopped for a baleful stare at the offending motor. Amos remained below the remainder of the afternoon. He didn’t even come up for supper, said he was resting.

“He must be scared if he can’t eat,” Wally said, and then everyone forgot about Amos as they watched for Eric’s boat.

An hour later it came around the point. Wally rowed out to hail him and Eric turned in. There was a sturdiness about the craft which was reassuring, and its jaunty name seemed so friendly and so joyous, Royal’s spirits rose. Eric was as reassuring as his boat when he came toward the Argosy with a heavy tool chest. Tall, broad shouldered, with a lean, hard figure, his walk had spring, and a deep coat of tan made his blond hair seem very light.

“Good-looking chap,” the captain said in some relief, as though this augured well for treatment of a temperamental motor.

He met Eric at the head of the ladder. “It was good of you to stop. Hope it wasn’t too much bother.”

“No bother,” Eric said. “I’d intended to tie up here for the night anyhow.” He smiled easily and the smile did pleasant things to his face. “Perhaps your trouble isn’t serious. I can tell better when we’ve had a look.”

He picked up his tool chest to follow Wally as Royal stepped out on deck.

“My daughter, Royal,” the captain began. “She’s our mate and—”

Eric smiled. “Hello, Royal. Sorry to hear you folks had tough luck.” The words seemed only the natural speech of an old friend, and then she realized he felt he knew them, must have heard all about the peddler boat.

“Weren’t we lucky it didn’t happen a half hour earlier in that tricky entrance?” she said.

“It’s never stopped before,” the captain explained quickly. “Missed a few times but always kept on going. Today it was only that she took a sudden notion and the chances are—” But Wally had already started down the ladder to the engine room and Eric nodded absently and followed. The captain appeared somewhat dazed as he stared after them. “Doesn’t waste much time, does he?” he said to Royal.

“He came to see a sick motor,” she said, for there had been in his manner something of the urgency of a doctor summoned to see a patient.

“But someone’s got to tell him how she’s run three years without a breakdown!” the captain exclaimed. “He didn’t even listen. Let Wally do all the explaining and he’ll think she needs rebuilding. The way Wally worries, he’d scare anybody.”

The captain peered morosely into the hatch at the two below. Royal knew he’d like to join them, but the figures hunched above the motor seemed self-sufficient and Eric had appeared quite capable of reaching his own conclusions. She waited beside her father as clank of tools and muttered comments went on and on with no possibility of the watchers even guessing what it was all about. At last she suggested they await the verdict on the afterdeck, where at least they would be comfortable.

The sun had gone down and the first twilight shadows lined the cove. The captain settled in a chair, put his feet on the railing and prepared for the vigil. In the Allens’ float house, nestling against the shore, they heard Bill’s hearty laughter. Royal thought she caught the thin high squeak of the photographer’s voice, and was sure of it when she saw her father listen.

“Amos must be feeling better,” he remarked, and seemed pleased, although usually he didn’t care how Amos felt.

Royal hoped the Allens weren’t having their portraits taken. She considered a mission of rescue, and then didn’t think she had the energy. A few moments later the captain suddenly straightened in his chair. Amos was hurrying along the boomstick.

“First time I ever knew he could move fast,” the captain said. “What do you suppose has got into the man?” And there was an odd tone in his voice.

Amos was breathless when he reached them. “Did the mechanic say what is the trouble?” he asked.

Captain Dan shook his head dolefully. “It looks bad, Amos. The best we can even hope for is an overhaul. It might lay us up a month, but we’ve got to take things as they come.” And he made a gallant attempt to rally. “We can’t complain, not after three years without a breakdown. I was just telling Royal that, even if we lose a summer, we’ll pull through somehow.” He turned to her for confirmation. “And she feels the same.”

Royal nodded. It was all she could manage on such short notice, but it was convincing, for the photographer’s nose quivered as he asked, “And the mechanic doesn’t know how long the job will take?”

“Can’t tell yet. What did Wally say about it, Royal?”

“Only that you never know what you’ll find when you tear down an old motor,” she said.

“I suppose so,” the captain said. “But it’s like I said this afternoon, Amos. No matter what’s happened to us, we’ll see you find a place to live. There’s bound to be a storekeeper who’d be only too glad to make some extra money.”

“A cannery would be better,” Royal said. “It wouldn’t charge so much for board and Amos might get passage on a gasboat.”

“Maybe Eric knows of one,” the captain said. “Or we could ask Bill Allen.”

Amos gulped. “They’ve just told me a steamship is stopping on its down trip at Spider Cove tonight. Mrs. Allen has to get a letter off to Vancouver and they’re going to meet it.” He looked at them defiantly. “Every man has to look out for himself.”

“Of course he does!” The captain clapped Amos on the shoulder with heartiness. “No reason you should share our bad luck. We’re only glad you don’t have to.”

“When are the Allens leaving?” Royal asked.

“Right away.”

“And you’re not even packed!” Royal cried and leaped to her feet.

“I packed this afternoon,” he said.

“Oh!” She was relieved to discover her conscience had ceased to trouble her. No wonder he’d not had time for supper. As Bill Allen came out of the house and went aboard his gasboat she said, “We must help Amos with his luggage.”

Everything was on the float before Bill had finished pumping out the boat. Mrs. Allen was already aboard. The captain helped Bill stow the luggage and handed Amos in so tenderly Royal thought he might be overdoing it a bit. She saw a furtive gleam in Bill’s eyes. As the gasboat drew away they waved. The captain continued to wave until the boat disappeared around the point.

“Didn’t I tell you things would work out?” he demanded.

“You knew about that boat all the time!” she said.

He denied this, but he added, “And if I’d ever guessed Amos was so anxious to leave the country I’d have asked Bill to take him over to Spider Cove.”

His retreat to the afterdeck was one of outraged dignity. Royal looked into the forward quarters. The empty cabin seemed almost too good to be true. She stopped for a peek at the engine room, then joined her father.

“How much longer is it going to take those two?” he demanded. “In all this time they could have built an engine.”

“Eric was packing his tools when I looked in,” she said.

Soon Eric and Wally came aft. Eric set down his tool chest and pulled on his leather jacket. He turned to the captain.

“You’ve got two loose bearings,” he said. “Tightening them won’t be too bad. Your big trouble is that wet exhaust. Slants down to the engine and causes too much back pressure. Exhaust valves heat up, warp and get pitted. Stems stick. Wally had that figured out. It’s the reason you broke down this morning. And you’ll go on breaking down until they’re fixed. Only wonder to me is you managed to keep going so long. You’ve been lucky.”

“The Argosy is a lucky ship,” the captain said.

“So I’ve always heard.” Eric’s tone was impersonal.

Royal flushed. Of course he’d heard any number of stories. People told them because they liked Captain Dan, and found delight in the fable of his guardian angel. If they brightened the tales with entrancing bits it was only by way of tribute, for they knew Captain Dan enjoyed the inventions as much as they did. But perhaps the stories hadn’t seemed so humorous to a mechanic.

“Eric said he can tighten the bearings without an overhaul,” Wally announced triumphantly.

“Isn’t that wonderful!” Royal’s voice warmed. “We’d been almost sure we must have one.”

“Here’s our scheme to stop your valve trouble, Captain.” Eric took paper and pencil. “We can run a dry exhaust out through the deck, this way,” and he drew a sketch. “The exhaust will be noisy until you get to Vancouver to buy a muffler. Wally can install that. I’ll tell him how. And I know this scheme will work.”

His voice was confident and his face was alight with pride as he handed the sketch to the captain. Captain Dan looked at it and said nothing.

Eric laughed tautly. “I suppose you think it took us long enough to figure out,” he said. “It was a tricky business. Had plenty of ideas on how to go about it, but I know at last we hit the right one. This’ll end your valve trouble and give you more power besides.”

Captain Dan studied the sketch. “Sure there’s no way to fix the engine without all this work?” He flicked the paper with a disdainful finger.

Eric stiffened. “If I’d thought so I would have tried it.”

“If you could get the engine started, chances are it wouldn’t stop again all summer,” the captain said. “Didn’t Wally tell you she’s gone three years without a breakdown?”

“I know.” Eric’s voice was flat. “And I’ve told you what I think.” He stood up. “Talk it over, and if you decide on that dry exhaust you can let me know in the morning.” He went on to explain he could tow them to Pybus Bay where he had machine shop privileges in a logging camp, that the job would take a week, perhaps longer. “Wally asked about the cost,” he said. “He can do a lot to cut labor time but the job will run over a hundred dollars. In fitting bearings you never know how long it’ll take. It’s got to be done right and you can’t rush it.”

Royal did mental arithmetic and tried not to show her shock. She didn’t dare glance at her father. Eric picked up his tool chest.

“But we’ve got to fix those valves,” Wally began, “and we might as—”

“As big a job as this needs thinking about,” Eric said. “You never saw me before tonight, never heard about me until today. I’ll still be here in the morning.”

As Royal and Wally accompanied him to the ladder she hoped he didn’t know that her father always claimed the honor of seeing guests off the Argosy, but he didn’t seem offended. He glanced into the lighted windows of the deckhouse.

“She’s a real ship,” he said. “I’d heard you had a lot of room. You can live aboard a craft like this. On The Willing Slave I have to clean off tools before I eat a meal.”

“But not many boats have a workshop aboard,” Wally said.

“That’s right. Think mine’s the only one on the coast.”

Royal thought she’d never known anyone who changed so quickly. Prickly, with that take-it-or-leave-it air one moment and the next so friendly and laughing. But of course he couldn’t understand that a scheme he’d been so proud of made no impression on the captain.

Eric said goodnight and started down the ladder.

“Sure you have to go?” Wally asked. “Royal baked a cake this afternoon.”

“It’s chocolate,” she said, “and I’ll make coffee.”

Eric hesitated, then said, “Wish I could but I sat up half the night with an ailing donkey. The crew was waiting for it to get going. Besides, you people have enough on your minds.” He waved. “See you in the morning.”

They found the captain still staring at the sketch.

“Don’t see how it should take all this nonsense to get an engine started,” he said. “Suppose, though, there’s nothing but to tell him to go ahead. Looks like that scissors grinder has to do it his way or not at all.”

Wally bridled. “He’s a mechanic, and a good one. We were lucky to—”

“All right! That’s what you say. But to me he’s nothing but a scissors grinder.” They stared in astonishment and he covered his retreat. “I said he could have the job, didn’t I? So I guess I can call him what I want.”

“Have we got the money?” Wally asked.

Royal glanced at her father. “If we don’t make that payment to—”

“I’d already planned to write Brooks, and a few others about our breakdown,” the captain said. “They’ll understand. At least they ought to see this didn’t happen through any fault of ours.”

“I’d better tell Eric before he gets to sleep.” Wally started away, then swung back. “Say! We’ll be tied up for a week, maybe longer. What’ll we do with Amos?”

“Amos did for himself,” and the captain chuckled.

They told Wally the story between shouts of laughter.

“Wish you’d called me,” he said. “I’d have given a lot to watch you two helping him aboard. Remember when Dad said things would work out somehow? Bet he never guessed it would be the motor.”

“Right now I’d be more than willing to trade back for Amos,” the captain said.

“Not me!” Wally declared. “And I’d better get over while Eric’s still got a light on. How about taking him a piece of cake? He ate supper on the run down. Make it a couple of pieces and we can eat while we talk.”

It was late when Wally returned. The captain’s stateroom was dark but Royal was still reading and Wally came in for a chat. His ability to gather information was always amazing but tonight he had outdone himself. He knew every detail of the thirty-six-foot work boat, the changes Eric had made and those he planned for the future. He knew even more about its owner. Eric was twenty-three, had lived in little towns in Canada and the United States where his father worked as a railroad mechanic. Eric had done odd jobs in roundhouses during vacations and one summer had shipped aboard a steamship on the Alaskan run.

“He went crazy about this coast country,” Wally said. “Told me he knew then he was coming back some day. But he wanted to be a mechanic too, and went to trade school in Seattle. Earned his own way, went to work and saved his money. Then last fall he got a chance to buy this boat. Said she was a bargain but it took scrimping to build her over for a workshop. He’s not through yet but he knows he and The Willing Slave are going to make a living.”

“Heavens, Wally! Is there anything you didn’t ask him!” Royal said.

“Things just happened to come out, and if you think I found out a lot about him you should hear how much he knows about us. Everything! How Dad was an actor and bought the Falmouth, and our trips and our customers. Even how Mrs. Ogden burned down their float house to save her table. He wasn’t even surprised the way Dad made a fuss about the motor. Said he supposed an actor was different.”

Royal sat up alertly. “How did he mean different?”

“From other skippers, of course. Never looks at a chart or thinks about a tide or worries about ground tackle, or even if the tanks have gas. You know that’s true, Royal, as well as I do!”

“Oh!” she said. “I thought he meant we were different from other people.”

“Maybe he did.” Wally laughed. “But it was sort of funny. Eric was telling me why he bought The Willing Slave. Said in the old days a blacksmith shop was the first thing to get started in new country, and now it was a garage. But up here every man had a gasboat and every logging camp had donkey engines, so he figured a machinist had to get around by water. Then I told him about the day Dad met a handlogger in Vancouver and bought the Falmouth and got all those charts. He laughed like anything and said that was the only story about the peddler boat he hadn’t heard.” Wally stood up and yawned. “We’re starting at five o’clock,” he said. “Eric wants to get to Pybus Bay while the machine shop is still open.”

Royal was up at four-thirty to make a pot of coffee before beginning the forty-mile tow. They could eat a real breakfast while they traveled. She carried coffee to Wally and Eric who were making the lines on the foredeck ready. The early morning air was crisp and fresh. The June sun had risen and the sky above the mountains was a vivid glow.

“It’s a fine day for towing,” Wally said, “and the barometer is holding steady.”

In a half hour they were off at the end of a fifty-foot line. Captain Dan remained aloof from the preparations, said it was an ignominious way for a good ship to travel and not to expect him to act as wheelsman. Wally and Royal arranged for two-hour watches since the four-knot speed was monotonous. She begged off for time to cook a hot dinner. Wally megaphoned an invitation to Eric who turned into mid-channel where they could drift with safety, then dropped back alongside and came aboard. During dinner she was astonished at the people and places they both knew, and yet Brad Emerson was the only one who’d ever mentioned Eric.

“Isn’t it strange the two boats never ran across each other,” she said.

“Missed the Argosy by an hour a couple of times,” he said. “And as for hearing of The Willing Slave—well, there’s nothing exciting about a sea-going workshop. But all this,” and he nodded at the big lockers which lined the deckhouse, “it’s different! A merchant vessel bearing treasure.”

Captain Dan stared. “You know Shakespeare?” he asked.

“Only the plays I had to read in high school,” Eric said. He finished his pie and looked out the window. “This current is taking us too near shore. We’d better get under way.”

In late afternoon they turned into Pybus Bay and tied up at the outer end of the float. Royal knew the McDonald Logging Company was an old English firm but hadn’t expected so large a camp. A long line of buildings stretched along the bench above the beach, office, machine shop, bunkhouse, cook camp and cabins for the married employees. Behind lay the forest, rising on the mountain slopes. Off to one side was the yarding ground with lofty spar sticks with cables running out like fingers into the forest to drag in logs by the power of donkey engines. Donkeys roared and shuddered, cables screeched as they were wound on drums, captive logs nosed out of brush and workmen shouted and waved their arms to signal. It was a scene of noise and vast confusion. Wally watched a great fir log lifted to a pile in the yarding grounds.

“That takes power!” he said. “Never saw bigger donkeys. Nor so many of them.”

“And plenty more you can’t see,” Eric said. “They’re the reason I’m kept around here.”

Wally and Eric departed for the machine shop and Wally did not return until long after the quitting whistle blew. He’d met the manager, Herbert Dryden, and liked him.

“Seems to think a lot of Eric,” he reported. “Told him to get anything from the shop he needed for our job. Even thought they had a muffler for the exhaust. Afterwards Eric and I went out to watch the sky line working.”

“Was it exciting?” Royal asked. “I’ve never seen one.”

“Neither had I.” He gulped. “You ought to see those big logs travel through the air. Right across a canyon! That donkey engine was sure a monster. Eric says it’s the biggest on the coast. Once you see what power can do, you know why Ben Logan’s always dreaming about a flock of donkeys.”

“But he’ll never get the satisfaction he had handlogging,” the captain said. “One tiny man pitted against a forest giant! That’s drama!”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Wally said. “Machinery’s pretty dramatic too. You ought to watch the donkey man on the sky line, Scotty Maxwell. He’s a friend of Eric’s too. Handles a five-ton fir as easy as you’d pick up a stick of stove wood.”

After supper Eric brought his tools and fittings to be ready for work next morning. He said they’d be careful about noise and would keep out of the deckhouse when customers were aboard.

“Customers?” said the captain in amazement. “We won’t even open our lockers here!”

“Mean you only sell to special people?” Eric asked.

“Not at all,” the captain said stiffly. “We’re guests of a company which has a store, and in my profession there is one rule which is never broken. No real actor knocks a show. I’d like to think I’ll never have to.”

It seemed like a rebuke. Royal feared Eric felt so as his friendly smile faded. Even worse he might have thought it was a theatrical pose only to be expected from an actor.

“Dad won’t open lockers even at Plunder Cove,” she explained quickly. “Brad Emerson thinks it’s funny. He says he’d like some competition.”

“The store here is different,” Eric said. “It doesn’t bother with women’s stuff. The timekeeper tends the store and his wife will be the first one down here. Who’s going to tell her she can’t look at anything?” He seemed to find the idea diverting. “She blows her top easy. And can she tell a fellow off!”

The woman sounded terrifying but the captain said peppery people always cooled off the quickest.

“But why shouldn’t we show our stock?” Royal asked. “Eric says the company doesn’t care and sales would help to—” She stopped, not liking to mention the repair bill.

“Sure it would,” agreed Eric, not at all embarrassed. “A lay-up and a motor job runs into money.”

The captain didn’t answer and next morning he still avoided the subject. Royal had a sneaking sense of sympathy. There were so few traditions and so little of that precious world of noblesse oblige he could carry over, and in an odd way they were precious to her too. She’d been rather proud that even Brad’s jeers had not induced her father to show their stock when Mrs. Walters wanted to buy a blouse. Later the Argosy ran thirty miles out of the way to deliver it, and this had seemed a rather splendid gesture.

Royal couldn’t have explained this to Eric and she was determined not to have to explain it to the timekeeper’s wife, and went below to give her stateroom a spring cleaning. The job had reached the halfway state of vast confusion, with drawers turned out for rearrangement and hanging locker empty, when her father called. Then he was in the doorway, staring at the chaos.

“What if one of those women wants to try on something?” he demanded.

“What women?”

“The wives, of course! Dryden says they’ll all be down.”

“You mean you’ve seen him?”

“Naturally, I went to the office to thank him for his hospitality. Pleasant chap. Says the Argosy is really a blessing. The men are better workmen when their wives are having a good time, and there’s not much for them around this camp. We can do the company a real favor.”

Royal began to throw clothes into the locker. “I’ll be up in a minute to get out the display,” she said. “I wished I’d washed the windows of the deckhouse instead of making all this mess.”

The first customers didn’t notice windows in their excitement at being able to try on slips and blouses and choose odds and ends of houseware. As word of the peddler boat spread, one shopper followed another. Royal brought stock from the main stores and began to take orders. She was entering these in her book when Eric stopped and looked in.

“Didn’t you hear the quitting whistle blow?” he asked.

“I was trying to remember the size of the slip Mrs. Evans ordered,” she said.

“Offhand, I’d say the largest, but she’ll be back tomorrow. Heard them clacking up here all afternoon. Does it always take women that long to buy their stuff? No wonder the timekeeper won’t bother with it.”

“But I don’t mind. And they were so nice.”

“You haven’t met the real ones yet,” he said. “I’m going to Scotty Maxwell’s tonight and he wondered if you’d care to come.” It was the first time she’d ever seen him at all uncertain. Then he added, “Nancy wants to meet you. You’ll like her. Everyone likes Nancy.”

“Why—” she began, a little startled, and wishing also he hadn’t seemed so doubtful. “I’d like to go. I’d love to!”

“Good!” And he beamed. “Dick Eddy will be there. He’s straw boss in the yarding grounds. Young for the job but doing all right. His wife, Pam, is a chum of Nancy’s.”

After supper, while she was dressing, she wished she knew more about the evening. Eric hadn’t said it was a party but she decided it warranted her new pongee. She didn’t often have a chance to wear it and though clothes might not be important, they certainly helped at times. Wally had told her Scotty was about Eric’s age, so Nancy and Pam must be too. She hoped they’d like her. All at once this seemed terribly important, frighteningly so. And then with an appalling suddenness she realized that for the first time in her life she was going somewhere, not with her family, but with a man, and to meet his friends.

Startled, she put down her hair brush and stared into the mirror. She was seventeen. Pam and Nancy must have had dates with boys for years before they married, and how amazed they’d be if they knew she hadn’t, and naturally they would know. To them she’d seem like some sort of oddity and they might wonder why they’d asked her. But she told herself sternly not to think about it. There was no sense starting an evening in a panic.

CHAPTER 10

Eric was waiting in the deckhouse. She hadn’t realized he was so good-looking, in a sort of Viking way. He’d changed to slacks and a handsome jacket and she was glad she’d decided on her pongee. Evidently it was a party.

They walked along the float toward the ramp which led to the beach. Gasboats were moored on either side and as they came to The Willing Slave she paused to admire the bow lines.

“Looks so competent,” she said. “It was the first thing I noticed about her.”

“She’s a husky little crate,” he admitted casually, but the pride in his eyes was unmistakable. “When I’ve had time to slick her up, I’d like to show her to you.”

Royal knew an owner’s dread of having a stranger see his ship except at her shining best. “The Argosy gets messy too,” she said. “When you’re in a rush it happens in any gasboat.”

“First time I ever heard a craft like the Argosy called a gasboat. Bet Captain Dan would have a fit.”

She laughed, and then wondered if she should have. Of course everyone found the captain’s airs as master of a vessel amusing but knew these lacked pretense, knew how real the role was to him. Perhaps Eric didn’t understand this, and it seemed important.

“Dad doesn’t try to be different from other skippers,” she said a little soberly.

“I never said he did!” The vehement denial betrayed his thoughts. Royal flushed, sorry she had spoken. A moment of strained silence followed and then Eric smiled. “If I said anything that bothered you, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. How’d we get on this anyway?” he asked. “I thought we were talking about gasboats.”

“We were. Only—” she hesitated. It was hard to explain a man like her father, and never before had she felt a need to. Yet Eric must have wondered why the captain hadn’t even glanced into the engine room all day, and he couldn’t be expected to understand a skipper who put his faith in Providence and the unfaltering performance of machinery. “I suppose,” she went on after a moment, “I was afraid you’d think Dad was just pretending not to understand about boats.”

“Pretending!” He stopped to look at her in amazement. “Why—there isn’t a skipper on this coast who could pretend to know that little about his motor! Of course, he was an actor, but he isn’t that good, is he?”

“No,” she said. “He isn’t.”

Eric nodded and turned into a path leading to the row of little houses. “It’s shorter than through the camp,” he said, “but a little rough. Hope you’ll like the gang. Dick and Scotty are good friends of mine.” Both had been married less than a year—to hometown girls they knew in high school, Eric explained. Pam had lived in the east, Nancy in a prairie province, and they’d felt a little lost in a logging camp on the west coast. “So they teamed up,” Eric said. “And they’re the only young married people here. Have a lot of fun together.”

Royal asked how old they were.

“Around your age, I guess,” he said. “Neither one is more than nineteen.”

Royal gasped. Apparently he didn’t know how wide that two-year gap could be—and then his unawareness of this fact was somehow reassuring. Eric turned toward a small house at the end which was even more bedraggled than its neighbors. The board and batten walls were streaked by the rains of many winters and one corner sagged at a depressing angle.

“Nothing fancy,” Eric said. “Nancy had last pick of the company shacks.”

Royal didn’t speak. She was thinking of the fresh cedar float houses in little coves surrounded by lofty peaks, and in comparison they seemed so lovely. Eric gave her a quick glance.

“What did you expect?” And he laughed. “In a logging camp a fellow’s lucky to have a place to bring a wife.”

The door opened. “Hello!” Nancy called. “Stop admiring our castle and come in.”

All four were at the door to greet them. Nancy’s introductions were drowned in the general hubbub. “Anyway, I tried,” she said. “I guess there are enough places for all of us to sit down. Bring a bench from the kitchen, Eric.”

Scotty pulled up an armchair for Royal. “Place of honor,” he said. “Company lists it on the inventory as a lounging chair. It’s made of planks and has no springs, but Nancy made noble cushions stuffed with our very best excelsior.”

As Royal looked around she realized how many miracles Nancy had accomplished. The small room was surprisingly pleasant. The rough board walls were freshly painted. A bright cover and a heap of cushions gave the army cot the semblance of a couch and an open cupboard under the window held books, magazines and gay dishes. Royal admired it.

“Orange crates!” Nancy said. “They’re wonderful for furniture. And we had to have some place to put things. I mixed the paint myself. Scotty says he never saw anything just that shade before, but I had to do something with those awful colors they carry at the store. Do you like to paint?”

“I love to,” Royal said.

“Most women do, I guess. I was really glad there was so much to cover up in this place.”

“Was the inside as—” Royal had been about to say terrible, then thought there must be a more tactful word.

“As ratty as the outside?” Nancy finished. “It was worse. One of the best donkey operators gave up his job because his wife refused to live in it.”

“But you’ve done wonders.”

“Not half the wonders Pam’s accomplished.”

“Does she make things too?” Royal asked. She’d thought of Pam only as an attractive blonde, and a bit quiet compared to the glowing Nancy.

“And much better than my slapdash stuff,” Nancy said. “You’d know that just looking at her.”

Royal glanced across the room where Pam was talking with Dick and Eric and realized how alive and vital she really was. “Yes,” she said. “Pam would have to do everything awfully well, wouldn’t she?”

“You make me afraid to show you the dressing table I just finished,” Nancy said, laughing. “And I’ve been dying to.”

They went to the bedroom to inspect this latest triumph. Royal admired the chintz lining and most of all the perky skirt. Its air of gaiety was a defiant challenge to the shabbiness of the decrepit bureau and the iron bed.

“Scotty’s promised to buy a mirror to hang above the dressing table,” Nancy said. “Then I’ll paint all the furniture. Pam will help me dye muslin for a spread and curtains and I’m going to build a closet.” She looked at the row of wall hooks venomously. “I’m tired of waking in the morning to stare at a lot of clothes. Scotty says I’ve planned enough to keep me busy all summer.”

Royal doubted this. Not a girl with Nancy’s drive. She was an exciting person but Royal had a feeling of being carried along on a rushing current, almost like being caught in a tidal rapids. Nancy folded the color samples she’d been showing Royal and said they should be getting back.

“It’s not fair to keep you from the others.” She started toward the door, then turned impulsively, “Do you know why I brought you in here?” she demanded. “I wanted to tell you how thrilled I was when Eric told us you’d come tonight. Ever since I’ve been on the coast I’ve been dying to meet you. And I’m crazy about your name! Royal Browne! Why couldn’t my family have thought of something as marvelous as that! Don’t you love it? But I suppose, with an actor father, you get so you take exciting things for granted.”

“Dad isn’t an actor now, and—”

“But he was! And nobody but an actor would have thought of buying a yacht to make a peddler boat. When Eric towed the Argosy in I was so excited! I thought I might have a chance to meet you.”

“Then why didn’t you come down today? All the other women—”

“I know. We wanted to, but with all those customers—”

“Of course!” Royal said quickly, and thought how dumb she’d been not to know they’d want to be invited. “We’d have more fun by ourselves. How about tomorrow evening?”

“Pam and I hoped you’d ask us.”

“And Scotty and Dick,” Royal said. “We’ll have a party.”

So it was as easy as that. And she’d been wondering if she’d dare invite them. She was glowing as they walked out. The others had cleared the table and brought up chairs. Scotty fanned out a deck of cards.

“Just in time to cut for partners,” he said. “Pam and I will stay out. Figure Dick needs a couple of straw bosses if his bridge is as wild as last time. Heaven help the one who draws him.”

Royal’s brave new mood collapsed. No one who had just been told she must lead a thrilling and sophisticated life should have to confess she’d never even seen a game of bridge. Then Eric said if they made it hearts everyone could play. She smiled at him. It was nice to discover he didn’t know bridge either.

“Let’s take him up!” Pam laughed. “It will give us a chance for once to get even with him,” and she turned to Royal. “Eric always wins at bridge. He uses mathematics and it’s a dirty trick when the rest of us have to depend on instinct.”

Royal said quite humbly she’d never played hearts. “But I’d love to watch,” she said.

“It’s easy,” Dick assured her. “Anyone who can tell the suits apart can play it.” He smiled companionably. “And that’s about my speed.”

It wasn’t quite so simple, Royal discovered, but she knew she hadn’t disgraced herself when they stopped for cake and coffee and Scotty added up the scores.

Nancy looked over his shoulder. “Royal and Pam both topped me. Isn’t that disgusting! As usual I’m down at the bottom along with you, Dick.”

“Fine!” he said. “I still retain my low-man title, and I don’t intend to lose it. If I do, I’m quitting cards forever. None of this deposed champion stuff for me.” He glared around the circle. “I’m just warning you fellows in case you want to keep me around for a fourth at bridge.”

Pam asked what they were doing the next Sunday. Everyone turned to Eric.

“I’ll be working on the Argosy,” he said. “Why don’t you people use The Willing Slave?”

“As though we’d go on a beach party without you!” Nancy cried.

“Scotty knows how to run the engine,” he said.

“You talk as though your boat was all we wanted! We may act that way sometimes but you know it isn’t true.” She turned to Royal. “Any Sunday there’s even a chance The Willing Slave will be in port, we begin to plan on a picnic in our cove. We call it ours because we found it. Nobody else goes there. And it’s wonderful for swimming.”

“There’ll be a fine noon tide,” Dick said. “Any chance you might change your mind?”

Eric shook his head. No one spoke. Then Royal suddenly became aware she had the close attention of the group. Of course, she thought, it wasn’t Eric but the Argosy’s engine which was ruining their Sunday and everyone was embarrassed for her. With things so casual and so taken for granted, it was hard to keep up. Nancy began to tell a funny story about an incident at the store.

“But Eric! You can’t work aboard the Argosy on Sunday!” Royal broke in. “Dad’s been expecting you’d take the day off.”

“Sure?” He seemed skeptical. “I don’t want to hold him up any longer than we have to.”

“And you aren’t!” She tried to think of a convincing argument, considered saying her father needed Wally’s help to take stock, then decided this wouldn’t tally with the stories he must have heard. It would be better to stick closer to the truth. “If you don’t believe me, why don’t you ask him? He’ll have half the logging camp aboard to visit and he won’t want you pounding in the engine room and running back and forth to the machine shop. Besides, with all those people on the boat he’ll need both Wally and me to help.”

“But you’re coming with us!” Pam said. “You’re the reason we were so anxious for a beach party.”

Royal flushed with surprise and delight. She’d never dreamed she’d been included. It had sounded so very special. Their own cove, their own crowd, and a regular affair—nothing to which an outsider should expect to be invited.

“Sure, you’re coming,” Scotty said. “The girls have been counting on it. Wally can handle visitors, the whole camp, if he has to. He’s quite a lad, that boy! How big a tide do we get?” He rummaged through the magazines, then shouted, “Hey, Nance! Where’d you hide the tide book this time?”

“In the kitchen. Exactly where you left it day before yesterday.” She brought it to him. “Poor darling,” she said, “he’s always screaming for the very thing he didn’t put away.”

He laughed and said if a man kept working at an idea long enough he’d be bound to prove it sometime, but Royal saw the smile which flashed between them. They were so right for one another. And so were Pam and Dick. She couldn’t imagine one of them with a different person and wished she knew Pam and Nancy well enough to ask how it happened, and when they were really sure. It must have been in high school.

Scotty found the proper page at last. “We’re in luck,” he told them. “Midday high, a sixteen footer, is at eleven. Plenty of time for a swim before we eat.”

“And an afternoon low to give a beach for a game of two-old-cat,” Dick added. “I’ll bring the bat and balls.”

“Of course we could just sit and talk,” Nancy remarked.

Dick assured her she didn’t have to sit to talk. She’d talk anyway, and everybody laughed, including Nancy. Royal relaxed. Sunday didn’t hold a single hurdle. She could swim, and the new yellow bathing suit Captain Dan had insisted she buy was the prettiest she’d ever owned. On the spring trip in Vancouver it had seemed a wild extravagance, for she could have made the old one serve another summer. Now this recklessness appeared only proper foresight.

The party broke up soon after. Eric and Royal walked home the long way through the camp. It lay quiet, with darkened windows, and was unbelievably peaceful, nestled in between the mountains. Moonlight masked the rawness of the slashing and even the ugly donkey engines were only vague masses at the foot of spar sticks. The bay was a silvery sheen and far out in the narrow entrance tiny islands floated like ethereal birthday cakes. At the beach she saw the Argosy was the only boat which showed a light, a small one in the deckhouse. She had no idea of the hour but suspected it was late.

“I’m afraid we stayed too long,” she said. “I was having such a wonderful time I didn’t notice.”

“I knew you’d like them. Told the girls so when they were so scared about asking you.”

“They scared!” she said. “Not half as scared as I was!”

His laugh was disbelieving.

“But I was!” she insisted. She knew it sounded childish and dramatic. He might expect that from an actor’s daughter. She became very earnest. “I was really scared,” she said. “I didn’t want you to guess it but when we started I was in a panic. And why shouldn’t I be?”

He didn’t answer. They started down the ramp. She listened to their footsteps sounding hollowly on the planking and wished she’d never tried to be convincing. This was a dreadful way to end a lovely evening.

Suddenly he stopped. “What was there about tonight to scare a girl like you?” he asked abruptly.

She hesitated. It was nothing she wanted to explain.

“I told you they were girls from little towns,” he said. There was an intensity in his voice which surprised her. “The only big city they ever saw was Vancouver. Stayed overnight, just long enough to catch a steamship for this camp. Now they’re stuck here! Don’t know anything about the coast they live on! Never go away! Don’t meet anyone from outside! But don’t get me wrong,” and his voice warmed, “they’re grand kids both of them! They know all that stuff about how much fun it is to make furniture out of orange crates doesn’t fool anybody. They don’t intend it should. And they’ve heard about you people and the Argosy ever since they got here. Seems to me they were the ones who had a right to be worried.”

Royal leaned on the rail and stared at the beach where the high tide pushed up in little shimmering tongues of water with the merest whisper of a hiss. She knew she might regret what she was going to say, but she had to say it.

“Wouldn’t you be scared if that was the first party you ever went to?” she asked.

“You mean—” he began.

“I mean a party like tonight with people my own age who have fun together. It’s different than evenings with handloggers’ families. I don’t see why you’re so surprised!” she said, annoyed at having to explain. “You know the inlets and what the people are like. Where would I meet girls like Pam and Nancy?”

“But before that? Weren’t your father and mother both stage people? And you went to school, didn’t you?”

“Of course! Only if you live in theatrical rooming houses you don’t know other children, at least not so well their mothers want you at their parties. And it was the same in the little towns where we lived sometimes when Dad and Mother weren’t working. We didn’t belong there either. We were different somehow. I guess we didn’t belong anywhere until Dad bought the Argosy. And that’s been wonderful!” Her tone dared him to challenge this.

“I bet it has!” She thought he’d finished, and then he said, “And you stood there and listened while I sounded off! Why didn’t you cuff my ears back? I had it coming.”

“You didn’t.” She smiled. “I suppose being actors’ children sounds exciting to everybody. And it was. There’s always a chance something grand will happen.” She paused. She couldn’t expect him to understand this, but she didn’t want him to feel sorry for her. “You see,” she went on, “it wasn’t Dad’s fault when things weren’t good. Wally and I always knew this, and it wasn’t because we had to believe in him. Dad wouldn’t have wanted it that way. Wally and I were proud of our father. And we still are.” She waited a little defiantly for his answer.

“Why wouldn’t you be?” he said. “Not many people can be actors. First one I ever knew.” He didn’t look at her as he tore a long splinter from the rail and dropped it carefully into the water below. “And maybe if I’d known a few I’d have had more sense about tonight. I’d no business popping off. I’m sorry.”

“But I liked what you said about Pam and Nancy! Aren’t they wonderful? This has been a funny way to tell you what a good time I had, but at least you know how much it meant.” She laughed a little raggedly as she put out her hand. “Good night,” she said, and walked swiftly along the float.

The abrupt parting might have seemed a little queer, yet there hadn’t been anything more to say. At the Argosy she looked back at The Willing Slave. Eric was standing on the float beside it. She waved, and went aboard.

Next afternoon it was four o’clock before the last customer departed. For an hour Royal had been in a fever of impatience while the woman vacillated between pink cups or yellow, knowing all the time she’d return the next day to change them anyhow. Royal flew to the galley. Tonight the Argosy must live up to her rating as a yacht. The Scapa Flow had served ginger wafers and hot chocolate, but this evening was too warm for anything but cold drinks. The can of shortbread was almost full, the last batch of ginger beer she’d made was just right for serving, and there was still time to make thin sugar cookies. Captain Dan looked in to ask if he could help. Most evidently he was looking forward to the party. Royal told him he could put a sack of ginger beer bottles overside for chilling.

The captain snorted. “Do better than that,” he said. “The cook’s a good friend of mine. I’ll get a cake of ice.”

“Wonderful!” she said. The tinkle of ice in glasses would be a touch of luxury. “And buy some cokes for those who might not like ginger beer.”

She was baking her last pan of cookies when a workman asked for Eric and she went to the engine room to call him. Eric stopped in the galley on his way out.

“I’m awfully sorry, but they need me in a hurry,” he said as he helped himself to a warm cookie. “Job back in the slash. You know I wouldn’t go if I didn’t have to. If I finish in time can I come late to the party?”

“Of course! Come in your work clothes whenever you’re through. Don’t waste a minute dressing up.”

He hadn’t said what the job was but when the others arrived they’d already known Eric wouldn’t be there. “It’s my donkey,” Scotty said. “And he’d better get it going if it takes all night. We’ve got some big stuff to move tomorrow.”

The party began with a ship’s tour. Wally took Dick and Scotty to the engine room. Captain Dan showed the lockers in the deckhouse and explained what they’d done to change into a peddler boat. Nancy and Pam were as impressed with Royal’s stateroom as she had been with Monica’s on the Scapa Flow. Later they sat on the afterdeck through the twilight. The tinkle of ice in glasses made the captain the hero of the hour. Nancy said no one else had been able to wrest even a square inch of ice from the cook. She asked the secret, but the captain only chuckled.

Royal knew her party was a success when the girls demanded one story after another from the captain. He proved to be quite as exciting a person as Nancy had imagined. For the first time the Argosy was a yacht again with a gay gathering on the afterdeck.

“Isn’t this fun?” Nancy said to Scotty. “Some day we’ll have a yacht too. As big as this and go cruising.”

“Sure, Nance,” he said. “A seventy-five-footer, and we’ll see Alaska. When we’ve got a camp of our own, and have a lot of timber. We’ll take Dick and Pam along.”

“What do you mean, along?” Dick demanded. “Our ninety-footer will run away from yours.”

After they had departed the captain helped Royal carry the glasses to the galley. He’d had a good time.

“That’s a fine lot of young people,” he said. “I told Pam and Nancy they ought to take a trip with us. They said they’d like to.”

“That would be wonderful!” Royal cried. “And they could have my stateroom.”

In the following days Wally and Eric worked long hours. Wally reported the bearing job was tedious and he marveled at Eric’s patience and precision. They put on a bearing cap, turned the motor over, took the cap off, scraped, put it back, and did all this again, and again, and again, mostly working by feel in the depths of the base.

On Sunday everyone was glad of a day off. Early in the morning Royal saw The Willing Slave come back to the bay and later learned the reason—two pails of clams Eric had dug in a narrow entrance where fast water made them especially sweet and fat. They would be the main feature of the picnic lunch, and after an hour’s swim everyone was looking forward to them. Eric steamed them on a bed of seaweed while the girls dressed in The Willing Slave. Nancy was as fervent an admirer as ever.

“Scotty said he wished I could learn to swim like you do,” she reported. “You’re a regular seal,” and then she laughed. “That doesn’t sound very complimentary! And you’re the first girl I ever saw who’s as pretty in the water as you are out.”

Eric called that the clams were ready. They ate so many no one had more than a languid interest in the other food. Pam said they’d save it for supper.

“We are staying over for the evening, aren’t we?” she asked.

They assured her they most certainly were. After the clams were somewhat settled, Dick organized a game of two-old-cat, although even the idea of exercise required conviction and leadership on his part. Royal hobbled most of the balls that came her way, but Nancy shone.

“Four brothers and prairie country, I’ve had training,” Nancy said. “Then I come to a seacoast and don’t know how to swim.”

After supper they watched the sunset and then went back in the early twilight. It had been a wonderful day. As they said goodnight, Scotty suggested Eric shouldn’t finish the motor for another week.

“Wally and I’ll have it running day after tomorrow,” Eric said. “I’ve got to. A job’s been waiting for me at Nelsen’s camp.”

Royal was surprised. She hadn’t thought the work was so nearly done. Tuesday morning she could hardly believe it when she felt the vibration of the motor. It started, hesitated, backfired once and then settled to that steady, dependable sound which they had known in the first days of the Argosy.

She rushed to the engine room hatch. Wally and Eric were grinning at each other.

“Sweet!” Wally shouted. “Ever hear anything sweeter?”

But Eric wasn’t satisfied. “We’ll let her idle here for three hours,” he said. “Make sure. Then I’ve got to head for Nelsen’s camp, and fast.”

CHAPTER 11

The Argosy departed from Pybus Bay early the next morning and in the days which followed no Cheshire cat ever wore a broader grin than Wally as he listened to the rhythmic beat of the motor. Royal shared his elation. She hadn’t known how wearing the constant dread of misfires had been until the strain was ended. Captain Dan’s reactions were more tempered. If he rejoiced at all, it was only because the worst was behind him. He would have been willing to overlook a few motor tantrums, but he still felt Eric had been too indulgent of open mutiny on the part of a rebellious engine, and might have recalled it to its duty by simpler methods had he really tried. To the captain, the scissors grinder, as he occasionally referred to Eric, had been quite as stubborn as the engine. Wally’s reports on speed and power, and even more rhapsodic remarks on economy in fuel left the captain cold.

“With this cut in gas and oil, we might save almost enough to pay for the motor job in one season,” Wally said.

“Plus a ten-day lay-up?” the captain asked drily.

“But it wasn’t a real lay-up,” Royal pointed out. “We made sales to new customers, and they want us to come back.” She was already looking forward to a return visit.

“I promised Herbert Dryden we would.” The captain basked in the gratifying thought that the Argosy had rendered a friendly service and seemed to feel better. “I guess we do go faster,” he admitted. “We ought to, with all the racket we make about it.”

The dry exhaust was still unmuffled. Its clatter filled narrow channels with a resounding din and echoes cannonaded off cliffs. Wally said at least they didn’t have to blow the whistle to announce arrival, but Royal was glad they wouldn’t have to endure the noise until the fall trip to Vancouver. The logging company had finally unearthed the muffler but not in time for the machining necessary for installation. Eric had promised to deliver it at Salmon Cove, where the Argosy planned to stop for mail and freight. Even allowing for the celebration of Dominion Day on July 1, this gave ample time for replies to the captain’s letters explaining the regrettable breakdown and for freight shipments. Pybus Bay had depleted stock, and reorders had been imperative.

The Argosy reached Salmon Cove the morning after the steamship stopped on its regular trip north. The float was deserted which was not surprising since Dave Walker, postmaster and owner of the small store, was an indifferent merchant and boat night offered no excitement. Local families either met the steamship for their mail or dribbled in during the week. Dave ambled out to take their lines.

“Intended to be here yesterday,” the captain explained, “but that westerly was smoking. We wanted to save you the bother of handling all our freight.”

“A little jag of stuff is no trouble,” Dave said. “Got some mail for you too.”

“Was The Willing Slave in?” Wally asked. “A fellow by the name of Eric Ward?”

“Nope. Never heard of him. Expecting him?”

“He’ll be along,” Wally said to Royal. “He knows we’ll wait.”

“Of course,” she said, and had no doubt of Eric’s coming. He wouldn’t make a promise he couldn’t keep. “He might not get in until tomorrow.”

While the captain went to the store for mail, Wally loaded the few pieces of freight aboard the Argosy.

“That’s the lot,” he said, and didn’t look at Royal. “Maybe they’ll ship the rest on the next boat. Dad’s getting the letters now. Dave doesn’t even sort ’em beforehand, and he’s got to do just so much talking.” He took out his clasp knife and turned to the largest carton. “Here’s the Gridley and Allen shipment,” he went on more cheerfully. “Want me to open it?”

She nodded. The cartons were so few, not a third as many as they’d expected. A few moments later the captain brought the mail. As he laid it on the table she saw the envelopes had been opened. The captain looked more hurt and puzzled than indignant.

“Wouldn’t you think any man could understand a breakdown?” he demanded. “They seem to think it was all our fault, and I told them we’d run three years without any trouble.” He shook his head. “I knew all along we should have fixed that engine somehow and kept on going. Then I wouldn’t have had to try to explain. They don’t know anything about this coast. And don’t want to know.”

Royal and Wally read the letters. They were much the same. A couple of wholesalers had partially filled the orders, others were awaiting the promised payment on the overdue accounts. They opened the letter from Gridley and Allen last. It was the longest, and was signed by Ezra Gridley. He wrote they had filled the order and he had discussed the matter with his partner. In view of the circumstances, they would extend a five-hundred-dollar credit to the Argosy but it would be the last. From grim-faced Ezra Gridley, this understanding seemed incredible.

“Why, Dad! It was your talking to him that did it!” Royal cried.

“I told you he would,” the captain said. “Wish I’d talked to the others.”

“But we can make some payments,” she said. “Our cash box is bulging after all we sold at Pybus Bay.”

“Planned to get money orders off from here,” he said. “It’ll be like scattering bird seed to a flock of crows, but it’ll let them know we can take a breakdown and a ten-day lay-up and still stay in business.” The captain chuckled. “We’ll show them the Argosy doesn’t have to knuckle down to a little run of bad luck. We’re not worried and there’s no cause for them to be.”

He was filled with energy as they brought out the books and planned the distribution of their assets. Each payment was small but he spoke of it so grandly as satisfaction of their creditors that Wally, alarmed lest he wouldn’t save enough money for gas, hovered over Royal and her father as they conferred on finance and wrote letters. By noon when the captain went to the store with the mail, he was in a fine humor.

“Better get Dave started,” he said. “At the rate he moves he won’t have these ready before the down boat stops. More postoffice business than he’s done in a month.”

Wally watched him go. “Do you think those little payments will do any good?” he asked soberly. “Some of those letters were awful tough. Maybe it would have been better if you sent money to a couple instead of spreading it so thin.”

“Perhaps,” she said. “But we’ve never made big payments, and owing so much for so long—” She shrugged. “I don’t know, Wally. Dad wanted it this way.” She thought how crushed he must have been by the replies. He’d been so sure of winning a reprieve. Then added quickly, “You know how right he was about Ezra Gridley.”

“Sure!” and Wally grinned. “Too bad he couldn’t have put in something about men getting logs to market.”

“He did even better. He kept his promise and sent money to every wholesaler. Not much, but the best he could do.”

After dinner Royal and the captain spread account books and papers on the big table and went back to work. The cartons had been unpacked and they listed items which had not been filled, and which they needed. Orders must be pared to bare necessities. It was the same old problem. A half hour later she stopped to listen to the sound of a gasboat. The beat was familiar.

“It’s The Willing Slave!” she cried.

“The scissors grinder?” and the captain chuckled. “So he’s coming after all.”

There was no “after all” about it. She’d known he’d come. “And don’t you dare call him a scissors grinder!” she said. “Not after he’s run all this way just to bring our muffler.”

“I never have,” the captain denied quickly. “At least not to his face.” He looked aggrieved. “A man who’s had to listen to engine talk for ten days has a right to a little joke.”

“It isn’t a joke,” she said. “Besides, it hurts Wally’s feelings.”

She went on deck to watch Wally help make The Willing Slave fast.

Eric waved. “I hoped you’d wait,” he said. “Didn’t finish a job till almost midnight. Then I hustled.”

“You didn’t think we’d pull out before you came!” Wally said. “Can you stay overnight?”

“I’m staying till we get this muffler in place. After all the work of machining it, I’m not going to take a chance on your ruining it.” He grinned at Wally and Wally grinned back, and Royal thought how well they understood each other. “If we both fly at it, we can do it by tomorrow afternoon.”

Royal watched the muffler carried aboard and went to the foredeck to admire it and listen to their plans for installation. She wondered if Wally could have done it by himself. One pipe leading into the bulky object and another leading out sounded tricky. Eric said when it was all painted the same color, no one would notice. “And you can creep up on a boat and they’ll never hear you.”

“Peace and quiet!” Royal said. “I can’t believe it! You two deserve something extra special for supper.”

“Like an apple pie?” Wally asked. “I’ve been thinking about one ever since Mrs. Dane gave us those green apples.”

“Two days ago!” Royal laughed. “And yesterday the Argosy was standing on one ear.”

Eric looked up. “I was wondering how you people were making out in Gladstone Passage. A westerly gets a real crack at you in that stretch.”

“It did,” Royal said and went back to work.

Supper was gay. Everyone wanted news of Pam and Nancy. Eric reported Nancy had painted the furniture and started to build a closet. Wally said he bet it would be a good one.

“Hope she finishes it in time for the girls to take a trip with us,” the captain said. “We haven’t had enough young people aboard the Argosy.”

Royal flushed, thinking of the walk home from the party, but Eric’s expression did not change as he said, “They’re grand kids, both of them.”

After supper Eric and Wally helped Royal with the dishes. Eric asked Wally if he’d told about the Rock Bay job.

“Not yet.” Wally carefully selected a plate and began to wipe it absently. “Eric’s got a job on a couple of diesel donkey engines,” he said. “They’ve gone haywire and nobody else up here knows anything about them. But Eric worked on diesels in Seattle. It’s a two weeks’ job and he’ll take me on as helper.” He polished the plate furiously. “I never saw a diesel yet and I’ve always wanted to.”

“Why, Wally!” Royal cried. “How wonderful! Of course you’re going.”

“Well—” he began. “I joined ship for the summer, and now after getting the motor fixed and with things like they are—” His voice trailed off.

“Dad and I ran the Argosy those winters you were at school.”

“That’s what I told him,” Eric said. “And it was a tougher job than you’ll have with the motor now. We can show you anything you need to know in half an hour.” He spoke as though she ran the Argosy single-handed, but it didn’t bother her. She smiled at him gratefully as he added, “We’ll give you a lesson tomorrow morning.”

“I’ll get along,” she said. “And, Wally, you know Dad will understand your going off with Eric. Shall I tell him now?”

“I’ll tell him myself.” Wally hung his towel on the rack and marched out of the galley.

Eric went on wiping dishes and said nothing. Royal wondered if he knew how precarious a future the Argosy faced and why Wally had even hesitated about the helper’s job.

“I never saw Wally so excited about anything,” she said. “Are diesel engines so different, and so hard to fix?”

“They’re easy once you understand them,” he said. “Just new, that’s all, but in a few years there’ll be a lot up here. I was lucky to get in early when they started to build small ones.”

“And now you’re giving a chance to Wally,” she said. She turned to face him and her eyes were shining. “I don’t know how to thank you but—”

“I’m not giving Wally any chance! Don’t get that idea!” He sounded outraged. “I’m just smart and grabbing off a live wire for a helper instead of a dumb mechanic who thinks he knows it all.”

She smiled. Most people wanted to be thanked, but he put an end to further talk by stowing pans and kettles in the lockers with a clatter. He seemed to know instinctively where things belonged and said he ought to for he always swamped out the kitchen on his visits home. His father had retired and now his parents had a small chicken ranch on the outskirts of Seattle. It was a lot of work for two old people but they wouldn’t be happy if they weren’t busy.

“Some day I’m going to bring my mother up here for a trip,” he said. “Though she’ll probably go crazy aboard The Willing Slave because she can’t find enough to do.”

After Eric had departed Wally stopped in Royal’s stateroom for a visit. She’d been eager to hear about his talk with his father. Wally told her the captain said it was all right.

“But I think he’s sort of disappointed. No reason why he should be, but you know how he feels about machinery.” Royal nodded and waited through a moment of troubled silence, and then Wally said, “He ought to be glad I can earn a little money. Of course helper’s wages won’t run the Argosy, but they’ll come in handy.”

“Is that the only reason you want to go?” she asked.

“I should say not! Any mechanic at the camp would jump at the chance to work on a diesel! I’m just lucky Eric likes me.” He explained the job would have to be finished in two weeks because Eric had a contract to check up on the cannery boats around Tyee. “I told him you’d pick me up there. We ought to stop at that town anyhow this summer.”

She noticed he’d said “we.” He was being very careful to make it clear this was not a desertion. And they should stop at Tyee. The town was on a small island, the only land-borne settlement in a long stretch of coast line. Originally it had been a native village but now a few provincial officials lived in it and there was a mission school and several canneries in the vicinity. The peddler boat could keep busy even if Wally were a few days late, and the timing made it right for receiving the shipments from Vancouver.

Royal didn’t go to sleep at once thinking of how much had happened in the last few weeks. In May she’d been troubled about Wally and now she knew he wasn’t trapped, and he would decide things for himself when the time came. And nothing about Wally or anything else need be decided now. She found this strangely gratifying for usually she was impatient to see the path ahead clearly outlined. Now it seemed enough to feel this buoying sense of things coming over the horizon. Even the fortunes of the Argosy might have turned a corner. A month ago she’d seen no hope of getting the motor repaired. Now it was done, and paid for. The peddler boat might be starting its best season.

She wakened in the same cheerful mood and hurried on deck to call to Eric that he was expected for breakfast. He protested just enough to make it clear that feeding him was not her duty, and then accepted with enthusiasm. Wally and Eric discussed mechanics all through the meal. Eric talked vividly and well, for the precision of his work was reflected in a choice of words which expressed his exact meaning. As they left the table, Royal asked when she’d get her motor lesson.

“Right now,” he said. “You’ll have no trouble.”

His confidence built up her own and she was surprised to discover she even understood the workings of the carburetor. Wally had made it sound like something mystic.

“It’s no different than when I used to run it!” she exclaimed.

“Only more dependable,” Eric said. “You know you’ll get the power when you need it. That’s important.” He patted the motor almost lovingly. “This is the heart of a ship. If it goes wrong, where are you?”

“I know,” she said. “So does Wally.”

“And I meant to tell you we added seventy-five feet of chain cable to your ground tackle. Had a chance to get it from the camp for almost nothing and I added it to my bill. We linked it up one morning when you and the captain were away.”

She looked at him, a bit startled. “And you didn’t want even me to know?” she asked.

“You might have wanted to talk it over with the captain and Wally knew he would never stand for it.” He avoided her glance, but his voice was hard. “A boat’s got to be safe. It isn’t funny when she’s not.”

She knew he was thinking of some of their more famous feats in navigating. She wasn’t angry. She couldn’t be with anyone who’d gone to so much trouble to help Wally get the ground tackle he’d been insisting they needed. It was comforting, too, that Eric had taken an interest in her safety. No one else along the coast had worried. They’d only been amused. Still she felt she couldn’t let the implication go unanswered.

“You mean—” she began.

“I mean any skipper,” he said harshly. “Ground tackle is important. Now you’ve got enough to let out three to one for depth, and if you’re in a blow, let out more.” He looked around. “Guess that’s all I had to show you down here and I’d better get at that muffler.”

Afterwards she was glad he’d been abrupt. It wasn’t important, really, that Eric didn’t consider providential navigation funny. She couldn’t expect him to. Wally didn’t, and it had made no difference. Even her father would agree a man was entitled to his own opinion. An argument would only have spoiled what became a lovely morning. Captain Dan wandered over to the store and visited with Dave. Royal finished boat chores, then sat on the foredeck in the sun and watched the boys. It was companionable and very peaceful. Eric and Wally worked easily together and liked to toss jibes at each other, enjoyed it even more when they had an audience.

They set the muffler on the exhaust pipe. Eric stretched. “Time to take five,” he said. “That’s the first thing a mechanic’s got to learn, young fellow. Work goes better for it.”

He sat on the deck, leaning against the wheelhouse and looked as though he didn’t have a care in the world. Royal thought he could uncoil faster than anyone she’d ever known. All energy one moment, and a drowsy content the next. He seemed not to be listening when Wally mentioned a line from Sea Fever. Eric opened one eye and asked who wrote it.

“Masefield,” Wally said. “My teacher loaned me the book.”

“Always intended to read him,” Eric said.

Royal brought the volume from the wheelhouse and read the poem. It seemed so right for the day.

“That’s great!” Eric sat up abruptly. “Bring it along, Wally. It’ll be fine for evenings. The Willing Slave is short on reading matter.” He went back to the muffler. “Better get busy if we’re to have this installed by noon.”

It was finished and ready for a demonstration when the captain came aboard for dinner. His applause for the muted exhaust was startling for a man who disdained mechanical contrivances.

“Never would have believed it,” and he shook his head in wonder. “You mean that bulge gives us this miracle of quiet! I thought we’d have to travel in that din forever. What’s in it anyway?”

They left Eric trying to explain while Wally packed his bag and Royal put dinner on the table. As soon as they had eaten, The Willing Slave departed. Royal and the captain stood on the float and waved until the boat was out of sight. Neither spoke for a moment. Royal was still struggling against a quick stab of loneliness when the captain broke the silence.

“Do the young fellow a lot of good,” he said. “You know how lads are. Anything that’s new or different. Right now he’s all steamed up about being helper to a—” He caught himself, then said carefully, “to a machinist.”

He turned and walked slowly to the boat. Royal watched him with a sense of pity. Once the peddler boat had seemed so inspired an answer to their problems and even now she wasn’t sure he questioned this. There was no uncertainty in his manner when she joined him in the wheelhouse.

“Might as well pull out,” he said, and looked at the chart. “We were headed for Timpkish Inlet when all this happened to us.”

“It’s still a good idea,” she agreed, trying to remember just how long ago that was. “And there are some good customers along the way.”

In the next two days they made several calls and Royal was glad the cash box wasn’t quite so depleted when they stopped at a cannery for gas. They couldn’t fill the tanks but they wouldn’t have to. Royal had become almost as niggardly as Wally in using tides instead of fuel.

The cannery man gave Captain Dan his change, and said, “Too bad you folks didn’t stop by last week. You missed a good stage show.” The captain stared, not quite able to believe what he’d heard. “A showboat,” the man said. “Funny you haven’t run across her. She’s been working the coast. Did all right here. Eating house was jammed at a dollar and a half a head.”

“What kind of a show?” the captain asked.

“Oh, a bit of singing and dancing. A fellow did a funny piece, and a one-act play at the end brought down the house. They’re hard workers. Had only six people. Think I’ve still got one of their posters.” He dug through a pile of newspapers and brought it out. “West Wind Players. That was the name of their boat.” He handed it to the captain. “This woman was the best of the bunch. Told a funny story about a party, and anybody’d laugh just to hear her talk.”

Royal and the captain read the bold type, “Blanche La Toure, Impersonations.” He looked somewhat dazed and asked if he could keep it.

“Of course. Weren’t you in the show business too?”

The captain gulped, admitted he had been, and asked which way the West Wind was traveling.

“They mentioned Fisher’s Landing and asked about the Alexander cannery. You’re bound to run across them. They do logging camps, canneries and steamship stops where there’s a freight shed to put on the show. Captain told me they could run lights from their own plant.”

After several questions which developed nothing more, the Argosy was ready to depart. The cannery man threw off their lines and waved. The captain waved back but Royal saw that he put no heart in it. The blow to his pride had been too great, and he made no effort to conceal his chagrin when he burst out a moment later.

“All this time, while I’ve been carrying dentists, photographers, even burnt wood sets, I never once thought about a show. Me! An actor! Right under my nose for three years! And I didn’t have the wit to see it!”

Royal had never known him to be so stricken and offered what consolation she could. “But a whole show, Cap’n! How’d we ever get anything like that together?”

“Same way they did. Getting an idea and working on it.” He swung the bow out toward the channel. “Maybe we can catch them at Fisher’s Landing.”

They arrived next morning, discovered they’d missed the West Wind by three days, and the report was not so favorable. Few people had been in for boat day, many could not stay over and the West Wind’s electric plant had broken down in the middle of the performance. At the Alexander cannery the show in the eating house had been more successful. No one could tell the showboat’s itinerary but knew she’d started down Cumberland Channel. The Argosy had already spent three days in pursuit but the captain pushed on doggedly. The poster, propped upright on the chart table, was a constant reminder of his own lack of vision. He glanced at it often and Royal asked if he knew Blanche La Toure.

“Couldn’t be two women with the same name,” he said. “Haven’t thought of her in years, but your mother and I worked in the same cast with a Blanche La Toure. That would be fourteen—fifteen years ago. A big, fine-looking woman with red hair. Don’t you remember her?”

Obviously Royal didn’t, but she was becoming as eager as her father to overtake the showboat. Occasionally she was distressed by the log book and the gas figures. They’d made a few calls and those only directly on their route, and the captain had not displayed his usual fire as merchant mariner. Aboard he kept the binoculars within reach and used them more than he had in the past three years. The morning of the fifth day he was scanning a distant shore when he suddenly thrust the glasses at Royal.

“Two girls dancing on a beach!” he shouted.

She looked. Two girls in bathing suits were most evidently practicing dance steps. A dinghy was drawn up on shore. Royal suggested they run over and ask where the West Wind was anchored.

“She won’t be anywhere but in Falls Bay.”

The Argosy had stopped there many times. It was well protected, attractive, and made up of secluded coves. Royal was prepared to search them all as she swung into the entrance but there, in plain view, lay the West Wind. They anchored nearby and rowed over. Royal knew their coming had been watched for she saw several figures, but when they pulled alongside only one woman sat on the afterdeck. She was big, fine-looking and had red hair.

Captain Dan stood up and bowed. “Perhaps you remember me,” he said as she stared at him blankly. “I’m Danforth Browne. We were together in The Girl of the Golden West.”

Her blank expression changed to amazement.

“Danforth Browne! The Girl of the Golden West! All across Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska! Then we went broke in Wyoming!” She had bounded out of her chair and was hanging over the rail.

“For the love of Pete! You! Here! In a boat!” She stared at him in disbelief. “And she—that girl— She must be Olga Dunseith’s daughter! Come up the front steps! I haven’t hugged you since you were a tot.”

They went aboard. She embraced and kissed them both and, an arm around each, led them to the afterdeck. She caught Royal by the shoulders and looked at her. “Olga Dunseith’s baby girl!” she said. “I’ll never forget your mother. She was a trouper! I’d have known you anywhere. Same hair. Same eyes.”

“But not the same face,” Royal said.

“No.” Blanche studied her again. “But there’s nothing wrong with yours, my dear. Bless your heart! The years you’ve taken off me!”

CHAPTER 12

An hour later Blanche and the captain were still talking. Royal was aware of some confusion below decks but this didn’t bother Blanche who explained she always sat on the back porch until the others had finished breakfast.

“Jack’s boat may sleep six, which doesn’t mean six can move around,” she said. Royal had been wondering how a fifty-footer could carry so many but Blanche didn’t think this at all astonishing. “Our song and dance team, Ed and Mollie, the Dancing Devines, are in the cabin forward. They’ll be up soon. And Peter Harkness—you should know him, Danforth! Though maybe he was after your time. He’d say so anyway. Been in tab shows on a small-time circuit. Tap dances, has a patter, plays the heavy in our skits, and he’d sing if we didn’t stop him. He sleeps in that little dog house.” She pointed to a hatch. “Jack calls it the after stateroom but if that’s a stateroom I hope I never see one.” She laughed lustily. “They’d have to fit me in with a shoehorn. Put on weight since you saw me, Danforth.” He said it was becoming. “Yes?” she jeered. “As though I didn’t know a woman my age has no business carrying excess baggage. But your father always was a gentleman, Royal. Taking to the sea hasn’t spoiled his manners.”

She beamed at him and got back on the track. “You were asking how we fitted in. Like sardines in a can, but we don’t mind. Jack sleeps on that driver’s bench under the canopy where we steer this boat. Calls it the captain’s berth, but I doubt if the name makes it any softer. The two girls and I bunk in the parlor-dining room. Jack calls it the main cabin. Got four berths. You know those shelves on chains.”

“Transom berths,” the captain said.

“You old sea dog! I’d always thought a transom was a window over a door to look through. Here comes Peter.”

She introduced him. At first glance he looked dapper, with a Burgundy scarf knotted at his neck and a trim waistline. Then Royal saw the lines around his eyes and how carefully his hair was combed to conceal the thin patch, and was sure he must be years older than her father. He talked a few moments and then excused himself to get his breakfast.

Blanche watched him go forward. “Take him a good hour and he won’t notice the girls have gone off with the rowboat.”

Captain Dan asked if Peter wanted to go somewhere. “I’d be glad to take him.”

“He hates rowboats, but he’d hate swimming more, so he likes to feel there’s one around. Girls promised to have it back by noon. We’re always up before the others. Gives us a crack at the bathroom without someone holding a stop watch on us. Everybody’s supposed to take care of himself. The girls are nice kids. Doris Day and Bette Malone. Trying to get a start dancing. Do bit parts in the skits but no one’ll ever make an actress of ’em. They try hard, though, and with only six to put on a—” She broke off as the Dancing Devines came aft.

They were in bathrobes, had evidently just wakened, and were too sleepy to appreciate fully this miraculous encounter with Danforth Browne. But they were astonishingly vivacious for so early in their morning. Royal guessed them at past forty but knew they wouldn’t look so later. They continued their wrangle as to which should cook the breakfast. It sounded like a well-rehearsed act.

“After three weeks aboard you’d think Mollie’d know you’re a lazy hound, Ed, and the only way she can get an egg is to cook it herself,” Blanche said. “Better not wait too long. I made coffee for the crowd but Peter’ll go on pouring it down his gullet while there’s any left.” The Devines fled for the galley. Blanche explained she was the official chef. “Remember, I always did like to cook,” she said. “I give them one good meal a day, make the coffee in the morning, and always get Jack a real breakfast. He works hard.”

“Who’s this Jack chap?” the captain asked. “The manager?”

“Jack Starr! You must remember him! He was in show business in your time. Sweetest fellow in the world. Always on the lookout for a spot for a friend, and if you were down he worked all the harder. I lost track of him for years. Heard he owned a movie theater and was doing fine. Even had a yacht with a crew, captain and cook. Society stuff. Then last spring he bobbed up in Hollywood. Had a tough run of luck, poor fellow. Lost his theater, hocked his boat and was hoping to rent it.”

“And that’s how he got the idea of a showboat!” the captain exclaimed. He looked relieved. An inspiration evolved from dire necessity was understandable.

“Might say the idea hit us both one night when we were having dinner,” Blanche said. “And it’s a crime how little we are paying for a two months’ cruise. Jack was sure a showboat would go over big. I got the gang together. The cast splits even. Only, after we’ve squared the boat and groceries, there’s nothing to share.”

“At a dollar and a half a head!” the captain said.

“Try to find the heads!” Blanche laughed. “Though we’re not kicking. It’s a lot better than laying out money to live on through the summer. But Jack’s low. Sort of feels he talked us into it.”

“Where’ve you stopped?” The captain threw himself into the project. “Plunder Cove?” She shook her head. “Biggest float town on the coast. Ought to get posters in there a week before. Two weeks would be better. Got a chart? I’ll mark a dozen places, give you names and—”

“No you won’t!” Blanche said. “I can’t even tell where I am on these fancy maps you folks call charts, let alone locate a new place. You tell Jack. He should be through now. Trying to get the electric plant to working before he goes somewhere to fill the water tanks. There’s not a clean dud aboard.”

“But you don’t use the fresh water tank for laundry!” Royal exclaimed in horror.

“What do you do? Spit on them?” Blanche asked. “Airing won’t work any more. This is the third round on my things.”

“There’s a fine falls with fresh water pools around the point,” Royal said. “Soft water. I intended to wash sheets this afternoon.”

“Sheets! You mean I can have clean ones!” Blanche catapulted from her chair. “Wait until I get Jack!”

Her introduction made the captain appear to be an intrepid mariner, a merchant with real vision, and a man of many parts. Jack seemed deeply impressed as they shook hands. He was in his middle fifties, had a keen face, was modest and very friendly. Royal liked him at once. And he was delighted to learn that fresh water in abundance was so near.

“I don’t know this coast,” he explained. “Used the West Wind mostly for business week-ends.” He turned to Blanche, “Let’s shift anchorage. Where’d those girls go with the dinghy?”

“They’ll be along,” she said comfortably. “And if they haven’t sense enough to go around the next corner looking for us they’re not worth stewing about.”

He laughed and said he was worrying about their only dinghy. Changing anchorage to the waterfall cove took only a short time. Royal was proud of the Argosy’s anchor routine, which was almost as efficient as that of the Scapa Flow. When the captain dropped the hook, she went into reverse to bite it in, and shut off the motor. Blanche, waiting on the West Wind’s deck with her laundry, watched the performance with amazement.

Later as Royal rowed her to shore she suddenly remarked in a tone of wonder, “Do you know, Danforth Browne is the last man in the world I’d have picked to run a ship. I bet he surprised even you and Wally.”

Royal said he had, and led her to the waterfall which tumbled down a cleft in the mountain in a setting of thick foliage. At the foot lay a pool, and another, and another, a succession of them, leading to the sea. Sunlight filtered through the delicate green of broad-leaved maple arching overhead. The sides of the pools were clean granite, mossy edged, with delicate ground flowers. Jeweled dragonflies flitted lazily over the water, and off against the dark green of an outspreading cedar were vivid red shafts of devil’s club.

“A laundry with stage scenery!” Blanche gasped. “And look how many pools. One for soaking, one for washing and plenty more for rinsing. It doesn’t happen to have a special one for bluing, does it?”

She set to work, while Royal went back for the others. Doris and Bette had caught up with their ship and were collecting laundry. The two dinghies ferried back and forth with earnest washermen and women. Jack organized a bucket brigade to carry water to the tanks, Peter joining with a firm understanding the girls would wash his socks and T shirts. This seemed only fair since they were the ones suspected of being especially wasteful of fresh water.

For hours drying garments hung from driftwood and an improvised clothesline. Then Mollie decided to shampoo her hair and immediately the laundry became a beauty shop and sun room.

Blanche didn’t toy with so minor a project. “For three weeks I’ve been measuring my bath with a medicine dropper,” she said, then walked to a pool and drew the cedar branches. She emerged looking like a new woman.

“Best day I’ve had since we came aboard,” she said. “If someone gives me transportation I’ll go rustle dinner. The Argosy’s invited.”

“Dinner’s already started,” Captain Dan said. “We’ll eat ashore. Passed a clam beach yesterday and two pails of clams have been sitting in cornmeal water to get rid of sand. Now they’re shucked. Makings of a chowder. The honest kind, salt pork, potatoes, onions and plenty of clams. None of that tomato or canned corn business.”

“Can he really make it?” Blanche asked Royal.

“Better than I do,” she said.

“Why, Danforth Browne! Who would have believed it! What shall we bring?”

“If you’ve got to insult my chowder with extras, bring them along,” he said. “I’m giving you chowder, sea biscuits, good coffee, and Royal’s jam. Bowls and spoons and cups. Everybody washes his own dishes in the pools afterwards.”

“That’s a man who knows how to do things!” Blanche said.

After supper they sat around a driftwood fire. The talk was all of show business. Peter tried out some gags and asked the captain how to slant them.

“Just like you’d do in any new town,” the captain said. “Work in local stuff. Get in some lines about boat night and the poker game, or canneries or handlogging.”

“Sure,” Blanche said. “That’s the reason some of our plays didn’t go over. Bet I could do a woman in a gasboat without half trying. Jack had the right idea for our closing act. Nothing cut and dried about it. He tells the cast the story plot and sends them on to act it. Make up their own lines as they go along. Kind of a free-for-all, never knowing what cue the man opposite is going to hand you, but when it works, it sure gets the people out in front.”

“The Commedia dell’Arte, eh!” the captain exclaimed. “But those old Italian traveling companies were trained to improvise.”

“You mean you’ve heard about it?” Blanche demanded in amazement. “Jack! Danforth even knew the name of that free-wheeling drama of yours.”

“Why not?” Jack said and came over to sit beside them. “He’s educated, darling, not just dumb like you,” and he gave her an affectionate pat. “But can he tell me how to loosen up this bunch so they don’t freeze because they haven’t any lines?” He turned to the captain. “Either they get started talking and are too scared to stop or they only pass the cue back, and the plot blows up. If we could put it over we could have a lot of fun.”

“Fun!” the captain said. “Without lines! Never knowing whether the other chap is going to feed you something or just leave you flat. I wouldn’t do it if you paid me for it!”

This brought a raucous laugh at the absurd idea of pay aboard the showboat. No one had made any money yet and didn’t expect to.

“But we could make money if we went at it right,” Mollie said. “What we need is an advance man. Somebody who knows the good stops, how to get the people out, and local stuff to work in our acts. And Danforth is exactly the one to do it.”

Royal’s heart missed a beat. It had been so wonderful until now—the jesting and happy people, all the good things of those early years. She’d been conscious of nostalgic twinges as she’d watched her father, so alive and eager, but the shaky venture of a showboat added to their own enterprise was frightening. The others could laugh at a two months’ excursion in the dull season. But the Argosy was their home and for the first time it was threatened by the captivating glamour of the old days. She stared into the fire as she waited for her father’s answer.

He smiled at Mollie. “I’ll be only too glad to spread the word up and down the coast,” he said. “But this other—” He paused a moment. “It’s hard to explain to show folks. But no man quits the game unless he’s really through. Going back wouldn’t mean anything. Not to you people, or to me.”

“That makes sense!” Blanche said. “More sense, Danforth, than I ever thought you had.” It brought a burst of laughter and she looked around. “What’s so funny about that?” she asked. “Plenty of us have hung on until the last sick pup is hung.”

“Thank you, Blanche,” the captain said. “I’ve told Jack about the good stops and he’s marked them on the chart. Plunder Cove. The logging camp at Pybus Bay. A half-dozen places. Tyee. Don’t pass up that town. It’s good for a two-night stand.” He made it sound like a metropolis with Indians earning money in the salmon season, a mission school, cannery workers, merchants and government officials. “We’ll be there in ten days to pick up Wally after our run up Timpkish Inlet and we’ll meet you. If we get in ahead we’ll put up the posters and have the whole town waiting for you.”

“We couldn’t get a finer boost,” Jack said.

Blanche was captured by the name when she discovered there was a salmon which the Indians considered worthy of their name for chief and next morning when the Argosy departed she yodeled, “Tyee, Tyee, Tyee-oh” across the water like a battle cry.

As they went out the entrance the captain chuckled. “Still on our way to Nimpkish Inlet,” he said. “Third time we’ve started for it. Ought to make it this time. If you still think it’s a good idea?”

“Better than ever, Cap’n.” She smiled at him, and knew he understood how much his answer last night had pleased her.

Nor would the Argosy be haunted by dreary might-have-beens or bitter regrets of missed opportunities. At least the inspiration of a showboat had been explored and now they both realized it was more precarious than a peddler craft, and had its own unique complications. Only Blanche’s rugged spirit could weld so much artistic temperament into a common purpose. Yet it had been an exciting encounter, and fun to remember, and in the next week if Royal found it difficult to take a passionate interest in whether a customer chose a two-quart or a four-quart saucepan she told herself that if it weren’t for just such dull items their home afloat could never have existed.

The Argosy arrived in Tyee on schedule. There were no signs of The Willing Slave but they found the West Wind moored at the Tyee cannery float. Blanche came aboard with their mail.

“Jack wanted to save you a trip up town,” she said, “and the freight agent asked about you. Says there’s a big shipment from Vancouver for the Argosy.” Royal and the captain exchanged triumphant smiles. “Jack’s putting up posters now,” Blanche went on. “First show’s here tomorrow night and a second two nights later at the Blueback cannery.”

“That’s only six miles from here,” the captain said. “Second nighters won’t mind going that far. How’s business?”

“Don’t ask, or I might tell you. Haven’t made expenses. It wasn’t Jack’s fault the electric plant went off again, though Ed and Mollie seem to think so. And the girls are droopy. Beginning to wonder why they came.” She snorted. “Sometimes when I watch them dance I wonder myself.”

“Two good nights will put you even.” The captain spoke with confidence. “The luck of the road is always spotty.”

“Sure, Danforth! Trouble is this gang didn’t cut their teeth on show business like you and I did. Glad you’re here to get their chins up. I’m cooking supper for the crowd.”

Royal told her they were expecting Wally and Eric but Blanche said, “The more the better,” and departed. The captain brought the freight. Every item had been filled and the letters were even cordial which the captain regarded as only natural.

“Now they know we meet our obligations.” He looked at the array of cartons with considerable satisfaction as he was leaving to hunt up Jack and help with the posters. “Should have ordered more. Having a showboat moored ahead of us will bring out a crowd.”

Between customers Royal spent the afternoon unpacking stock. She had barely finished when The Willing Slave arrived and tied up astern. Wally and Eric came aboard to report a fine time and that the owner of the two diesel donkeys was boasting of the efficiency and economy of this new equipment.

“He was ready to dump them in the salt chuck when we got there,” Wally said. “But you ought to hear him now!”

Royal told them about the showboat and their date for supper aboard the West Wind.

“Blanche is counting on your coming,” she said. “She especially invited you. She’s wonderful. You can’t help but like her.”

Eric accepted instantly, and for both of them. “Wally and I can stand a party after the way we’ve been working.” He started to leave. “I’ve got to get over to the cannery and check in,” he said. “Want to come, Wally?”

“Guess I won’t,” he said so soberly Royal looked at him in surprise.

It didn’t seem possible there had been a misunderstanding and they’d reported the work had gone well. Yet she knew Wally was troubled about something. She told him about their meeting with the showboat, and then watched him read the business letters and look at the big shipments, with every item filled.

“Dad had the right idea about spreading the money around,” he said, but she missed the jubilance she had expected. “Looks like we’re set for a good season.”

“Yes,” she said. “Now suppose you tell me what’s on your mind. There’s something.”

“Never fooled you yet!” He laughed and told her Eric had a new job at a logging camp and needed a helper. “It’s only for the first two weeks in August, and I’d have a chance to work on those big machines they’re putting in.”

“Of course you’re going?” she asked.

“Told him I would. But afterward—” Wally gulped. “Eric says I ought to go to a trade school. Only way to learn to be a real mechanic. That’s what he did. And he’s been looking for a kid who’d help his father and mother on their chicken ranch. Says it’s too much work for them and I’d earn my board and room. Then with what I could save, and maybe an odd job or two, I could swing it. Eric says he did.”

“Wally Browne! How wonderful! And neither of you said a word about it when you came in!”

“I told him not to.”

“But you needn’t have looked so glum! I even thought you and Eric might have quarreled.” He stared in astonishment. “I know,” she said. “When you’re worried you always think of the worst that could happen. And all the time you knew you had this chance!”

“Means I wouldn’t be aboard this winter.”

“You weren’t last winter, or the winter before, and nobody expected you to finish this year.”

“Yes,” Wally said, and then he added, “Wonder how Dad’d feel about it? Of course I wouldn’t have to do it this year.” She started to protest, and he said quickly, “There’s no sense in getting all steamed up about something I’m not even sure I want to do. It’s just an idea I’ve told you.” He looked almost sorry that he had and she knew he didn’t want to talk about it. It must mean a great deal to him. She was sure of this when he said, “Besides, I can still learn a lot working here with Eric.”

She smiled. “You’d better get scrubbed up for supper. And tell Eric we’re eating early.”

Aboard the West Wind they found Blanche stirring an enormous pot of chili beans which smelled wonderful.

“Hello!” she called. “And here’s Wally. Lot more of him than when I saw him last. And you’re Eric! Take them around, Royal, and tell them who all these people are. Then come back, get your plates and find a place to sit.”

The party spread from the crowded main cabin to the deck. Blanche was everywhere, talking, laughing, sending a man to the galley for more food or hot coffee. She seemed casual, almost careless, but Royal saw she was aware of every guest. No one tried to find a place to sit, at least not for long. Jack called it a buffet supper, gasboat style, but Royal thought how much fun the gay informality was. She’d been fearful lest they’d find the showboat crew in low spirits and now she wondered that she’d forgotten these people were never down for long. She heard Doris and Bette speaking almost lyrically to Eric about how thrilling the country was and what the cruise had meant to them. Their only complaint was the dearth of sand beaches for dancing practice. He promised to mark a chart with those he knew. He also promised Jack to help him with the electric plant and he told Blanche he’d wash the dishes.

“I’ve got to see the manager of the Blueback cannery before he quits for the night,” he warned her. “Can I start the dishes now?”

She laughed and said they’d let him off this time. “But I’ll take a rain check on your offer, and I never forget to cash them in,” she said.

Eric and Wally had almost as good a time as the captain. Royal watched the three males she’d brought and felt a glow of pride. They were the very nicest men at the party. Then Eric was beside her.

“I’ve got to get to the cannery,” he said. “Like to take a boat ride?”

“I’d love it,” she said. “I’ll say good night to Blanche.”

She found her in the galley making a pot of fresh coffee. “Leaving?” Blanche asked, not at all surprised. “I like your young man. So did the others. Even Mollie sheathed her claws.”

“But he isn’t mine! He’s just a friend of Wally’s.”

“Sure,” Blanche said. “And that’s why he never takes his eyes off you. Run along. Men hate to be kept waiting.”

Eric started The Willing Slave’s motor and helped her aboard, let in the clutch, and they swung toward the lights of Blueback cannery. For a few moments they didn’t speak but she had a sense of nearness as they stood together in the dark wheelhouse. Later he asked about the showboat people and she told about Blanche and how she’d known her mother.

“Isn’t she a grand old girl?” he said. “Bet the captain’s getting a big bang out of this. She told me he’d dug up a lot of local jokes. I’m going to see that show.” He explained he might be late as he had a job on a purse seiner.

“You’ll find us down in front,” she said. “Anyway, the real fun is afterwards when everybody talks it over. We’ll all go aboard the West Wind.”

They had reached the cannery. Eric tied up the boat, said he’d be only a moment and ran toward the lighted building. Royal waited on the float. The dark night was wonderful for phosphorescence. She knelt to peer into the water, where a school of herring left trailing sparklets as they fled before a spangled salmon. She was still watching when Eric returned.

“Look at this ling cod!” she exclaimed. “With his big head all tinseled. Even his whiskers glitter. Don’t you love it when the waves show fire?”

“Did you remember what I told you about letting out plenty of cable in a blow?” he asked quickly.

“Of course,” she said, and gave him her hands to pull her up. Suddenly they were very close. He put his arms around her and they kissed. It had happened without warning, and so naturally. She had the feeling that he was almost as surprised as she. He released her and she drew in her breath. She hoped they weren’t going to have to talk about it, and he didn’t speak of it as they went to the boat. He helped her aboard and started the motor.

“Better get you back or they’ll think I’ve run away with you,” he said. “Didn’t mean to stay there so long, but the manager’s a talky fellow. Everything’s going fine at the Blueback, which is lucky, with all I have to do for the Tyee. How long’s the Argosy staying?”

“Through both shows,” she said.

He nodded and they stood at the wheel in companionable silence. That was what the kiss had meant really, she thought. Pam and Nancy must have kissed boys in high school and Eric must have kissed any number of girls. He must know it would be new to her after all she had told him when coming home from Nancy’s party. The memory of how much she had revealed had brought moments of self-consciousness when they’d been together, but now she found she didn’t mind his knowing. It was even easier to thank him for what he’d done for Wally. She’d postponed saying it before because thanks seemed to bother him.

“Wally will like my mother,” he said. “Those two will get along. Hope he decides to do it.” He skirted a point and turned toward the cannery. “He’s quite a lad. Wants to figure things out for himself. Guess you know that.” He maneuvered The Willing Slave alongside the float.

“Wait while I tie up this craft,” he said. “Tonight I’m going to walk you home.”

CHAPTER 13

Jack Starr came aboard the Argosy next morning and found Royal finishing the dishes.

“Have an idea I want to tell you,” he said. He was evidently bursting with it. “Got a place we can talk?”

She led him to the wheelhouse where it was quiet and she could watch the showroom. Wally had gone with Eric and the captain was hurrying to get off to the West Wind with his latest local humor for Blanche’s skit. Ideas seemed to be rampant this morning.

Jack plunged into his at once. “After what the captain’s done to get out a crowd, our show tonight’s got to be good,” he said. “But the closing act is terrible. Ever hear of Tosca?”

“No,” she said.

“It’s an opera but the story is a honey for one of these commedias. Got real punch. Set in Rome but it could have happened here, or anywhere. I’d have to cut it for a one-act play but here’s the general idea. Tosca’s quite a gal. In the play she wears a white dress, big sleeves, long full skirt. You know,” and his motions suggested an impressive robe. “You’d look great in it. Just your style. Everybody in town is nuts about her. But she, and I mean you, is in love with Mario, a poor artist fellow. That’s Ed.” Royal blinked and tried to imagine being in love with Ed. “You two are sitting on a bench in a garden talking, when a friend of Ed’s runs in. Doris will be him. He’s a political prisoner, and he’s escaped and the police are after him. Ed hides him behind a bush. Bette and Mollie will be the police who come looking for him. Ed, I mean Mario, refuses to betray his friend and they take him to jail. You try to save him but the police won’t listen to you, just drag him off to the jail, which is right beside the garden. You can even hear him screaming. Now that wouldn’t be hard to do, would it?”

“I suppose not,” she said.

“Then comes the real drama. By this time the audience will be pulling for you. They know Mario only tried to help a friend and they’re tickled to death you had the nerve to speak up for him. So when the heavy enters they’re all against him at the start. Peter plays the heavy. He’s Scarpio, chief of police, and he’s fallen for you. But you think he’s only sorry for you and wants to help you, and you don’t know he’s a double-crosser. So to save Mario you show him where this friend is hidden.”

“But I wouldn’t do that!” Royal said.

“To save the man you love from being shot! Sure you would. You’ve got real fire and a lot of courage. You’d do anything to save Mario. And when Scarpio explains they’ll have to pretend to shoot Mario just to satisfy the police, you believe him. Not right away of course—but Scarpio says they’ll use blank cartridges and explain to Mario about the deal so he’ll fall over and look dead. Besides, Scarpio writes a paper giving you both safe conduct out of the country. Then you’ll be free, and be together.

“You see, Royal, there’s no other way for you to save him. And Scarpio is smooth. Peter’ll play him all right. He’s seen Tosca. So you finally agree, and when they bring Mario out of prison, put him up against a wall and aim their rifles, you sit there thinking it’s all going like Scarpio promised. When the police have gone, you run over with your paper to show Mario how you are both free and can leave the country. But you see he’s dead. Then Scarpio laughs.”

“Yes,” Royal said tensely. “Go on!”

“That’s your scene. Here’s the villain who’s murdered the man you love, double-crossed you and now he’s laughing because you are in his power. What would any real woman do? You stick a dagger in him. Tyranny and treachery have been avenged! Blackout! Curtain! That’s the end.” He paused. “Do that, Royal, and you’ll bring down the house. It’s sure-fire.”

“But, Jack! I couldn’t!”

“Sure you can. I know from the way you listened. You were Tosca all the way through.”

“Who wouldn’t be, with such a story? But that doesn’t mean I can act her!”

“I don’t want you to act her. I’m just asking you to go out there tonight and be Tosca.”

“Does Blanche want me to do it?” she asked.

“Not unless you’re willing. She wouldn’t let me off the boat until I’d promised not to try to talk you into it. And I didn’t try to,” he said virtuously. “We just hoped the story’d get you.” He looked crestfallen as he stood up to go.

“It did get me!” Royal said. “Why wouldn’t it? Honestly, Jack, if I thought—” She stopped. “But it would be too awful if I spoiled it for you!”

“Wouldn’t be the first commedia that’s been spoiled. And we’re not putting this on Broadway. Chances are nobody out front ever heard of Tosca. What’s the difference if it does blow?” He shrugged and smiled at her.

He seemed so unconcerned, Royal wondered if her protests hadn’t sounded rather silly. Of course he knew she wasn’t an actress. She asked about rehearsals and he explained that the cast talked over the plot, agreed on entrances, and Blanche dug up costumes. He worked the lights, a dark stage to set the scene and a quick blackout on the final line. The blackout sounded merciful.

“But you’d have to promise not to tell Dad or Wally,” she said. “They’d make me nervous.”

“Mean you’ll do it?” His face lighted. “Great! You’ll be a knockout in that dress. Wait till Blanche hears this,” and he rushed to the West Wind.

During the day Royal had recurrent attacks of stage fright. At supper she felt almost traitorous when she explained to the captain she would be backstage helping Blanche with costumes and make up, but he was delighted that Blanche had asked her. In the cannery the big canning room was ready for the evening show. Tarpaulins had been stretched for dressing room and wings, the props had been carried over and the captain had agreed to stand at the front door to greet the patrons. It was like the old days on the road.

Gasboats began to arrive early and townspeople came by beach and road. Captain Dan had made good on his promise to get out a crowd. When Royal left the Argosy she was relieved to see The Willing Slave was not yet in. It would be hard to dissemble before Eric and Wally and they’d be sure to guess she was up to something.

Backstage, at the cannery, she found a peephole in the tarp, saw Eric and Wally arrive as the show began. They caught the captain’s wave from the front row and went down to join him. Royal was in a daze as she watched the opening act. But as the audience roared with delight at local jokes, and recognized Captain Dan as the author and he beamed with pleasure, she knew how much this success meant to him. And he was so blissfully unaware of the debâcle which was to follow when his daughter proved to be a tongue-tied failure. The blow to his pride would be terrible. Nothing she could do would hurt him more and she couldn’t understand how she’d ever agreed to such a fantastic idea. Resolutely she concentrated on being Tosca.

The need to do so carried her through that first moment of panic when the lights went on to reveal her sitting on a bench. Then suddenly the man beside her wasn’t Ed at all, but the poverty-stricken Mario. To her astonishment she found she actually had a voice as she talked of their hopes for a future in a new land of opportunity. She was frightened for him when he insisted on hiding his friend, and from then on she was really Tosca trying to save the man she loved. As she sensed the growing tension in the audience she felt an intoxicating sense of power. In an odd corner of her mind she recognized a strange elation in this marvelous release of any consciousness of self and wondered if it were what her father and mother had known. She was aware of people out in front, glorying in her devotion and sharing her grief, and she was Tosca in a Roman garden discovering she had been betrayed into the murder of her lover.

Impassioned, she pulled out her dagger and turned on Scarpio, who was waiting for the moment to laugh. As she rushed at him he retreated in terror and fell to the floor as her thrust caught him.

The lights went out and Jack hurried her to a wing as the audience stamped and clapped and shouted.

“It’s a curtain call!” he exulted. “They’re yelling for you!”

He shoved her out with Scarpio leading her by the hand as the lights went on. They bowed and the shouts grew louder. Only after the third return with the entire cast, holding hands and bowing, was the audience satisfied.

Captain Dan was waiting backstage. Tears were in his eyes as he took her in his arms. “Royal!” he said brokenly. “I’ve known this always.”

No one knew or cared what he’d known as people crowded around her, showboat crew and friends from the audience all mixed together, everyone explaining to everyone else that this was her first appearance.

“If you hadn’t bumped off that rat I’d have gone up and done it for you,” the foreman of the cannery said as he patted her on the shoulder. “I was out there pulling for you.”

It was Blanche who finally managed to get them started at disassembling the stage. Eric and Wally were impressed into service.

“We can talk on the boat,” she said. “Right now we’ve got to get this place ready for them to can salmon in the morning.”

Eric carried an armful of props as he and Royal crossed the float. Royal said she ought to go to the Argosy and take off her costume.

“Keep it on,” he said. “You’re lovely in it.” There was a new note in his voice, and then he added, “Besides, you’ve got to remember you’re an actress.”

“Don’t be silly. I couldn’t do it again if I tried. But weren’t you and Wally scared when the lights went on and you saw me on the stage?”

He didn’t answer for a moment. “Wally was. But I wasn’t. I knew you’d do it. I think—maybe I’ve known it all along. I should have.”

She smiled. She suspected he’d been listening to the captain but later she knew it was the excitement of the showboat people which had stirred him. They were still bubbling with it as they gathered in the main cabin. That wonderful old fable of actor heritage had come true, and that this stage tradition of theatrical families was centered on a girl from a peddler boat only made it the more dramatic.

“It’s in the blood and you can never kill it,” Peter said. “That girl’s born for the footlights. She was bound to know it sometime.”

Jack jumped to his feet. “A toast!” he shouted. “In the long years ahead we’ll have reason to remember this night.”

It was all very thrilling, even though Royal knew stage folk were effervescent. She saw a quick look of envy in Doris’ eyes and felt sorry for her. It wasn’t Doris’ fault she didn’t come from a theatrical family.

“Please,” she begged. “I wasn’t acting. Jack’s story was so real.”

Peter snorted. “Too real! That laugh of Scarpio’s was the best piece of business in the play. And she cut it off.”

The others were still chortling over Peter’s terrified collapse before Royal’s fury when Blanche took the captain and Royal by the arm and led them to a corner.

“You too, Eric,” she said as she saw him standing there. “No reason you shouldn’t hear. I’ve got to get this off my chest, Danforth. We saw something real tonight. Something we never saw even in the old days. Why are you hiding this girl up here? Anyone with all that fire selling pots and pans!”

“Hiding!” the captain spluttered. “I never—”

“Amounts to the same thing,” Blanche said. “And it’s time she had her chance. Maybe she can make it, maybe she can’t. But after what she did tonight she’s got a right to find out.” She turned to Royal. “You want to, don’t you? It’s in your blood.”

“Why—why—I don’t know. I—” Royal looked at her father. She knew she sounded stupid, but it was all so sudden. Blanche was waiting for the answer. Eric was staring at her. “You mean the stage?” she said. “When I was a youngster of course I did. I never thought of anything else until we had the Argosy.”

“I knew it!” Blanche looked triumphantly at Captain Dan. “She’s going back to Hollywood with me.” She turned to Royal. “It’ll be grand to have you. I’ve put by a few nickels, still make eating money in character parts. My place is big enough for the two of us, and you know you’re welcome.”

“But I shouldn’t—” Royal began, then wondered how to tell this impulsive woman she couldn’t accept so much on so slim a hope.

“No buts!” Blanche said. “You won’t owe me a thing if that’s bothering you. Doesn’t begin to square what Olga Dunseith did for me once. Guess Danforth doesn’t know about that, but Olga never talked about other people’s business. You know that, Danforth.” He nodded and started to say something but Blanche was rushing on. “All I’m offering you, Royal, is a chance to try. You’ve got the tough job, and I don’t have to tell you how tough it is. Maybe you know as much about the heartbreaks in this business as I do. Kids remember a lot. At least you must know if you discourage easy it’s not your game. I’d guess you don’t.”

“I don’t think I do,” Royal said. “But I wouldn’t want to promise—”

“No need to decide tonight,” Blanche said. “You’ve got a month to think it over. Jack’s taking us to Vancouver the middle of August in time for his next charter party. Bet he’s glad they’re not show folks.” She laughed. “I told him if we ever did this again, which we won’t, I’ll know how to pick them next time. Well, live and— Royal! That second pot of coffee! Grab it off the stove.”

Royal hurried to the galley and settled the coffee with cold water. As she brought it back she saw Eric’s feet disappearing up the companionway. It was late but everyone else was talking. Blanche and the captain were on a transom in a corner and looked as though they would go on for hours. Royal tried to appear composed as she poured fresh cups and chatted, and then suddenly she wanted to get away from all the talk and laughter.

She went on deck and stepped off the boat. The Willing Slave was dark and so was the Argosy. Even Wally had gone to bed. His door was closed as she went to her stateroom. She knew she must think things out. So much had happened in one day. She felt dazed, even frightened. That other world which she’d thought was far behind her had come out of the past without warning. It was like steering through a fog for hours in a tiny universe all her own, and suddenly glimpsing the vague outline of an unexpected island.

She’d thought she wouldn’t go to sleep for hours, but the next thing she knew it was morning, and very late. When she went on deck The Willing Slave was gone. Eric and Wally had departed early to be back in time to help Jack with the West Wind’s electric plant that afternoon.

“It’ll be a busy day aboard the Argosy,” the captain said. “After last night a lot of women will want another look at you.”

His pride was unmistakeable. Royal had hoped they wouldn’t have to talk about last night while her own thoughts were so confused. She had dreaded the compulsion of his love and admiration, and even more that urgency which was so much a part of him. But as he spoke of Blanche’s offer and she realized what a valiant effort he was making to assume she’d need time to think it over, she began to have a sense of ease. Until then it had seemed like an earth-shaking decision, but he treated it as a simple matter. It would be to him, she thought with a feeling of envy. All his life change had been only a bright promise for the future, never this dreadful feeling of tearing up deep roots. But he couldn’t quite conceal his exultation.

“Remember what I said about a seventeenth birthday?” he asked. “I knew something would work out. And don’t let Blanche discourage you. She can’t help looking at the worst side, but she knows as well as I do you’ll get somewhere. Wouldn’t have wanted to take you back with her if she hadn’t believed in you. You’ll be the one to lift the name of Browne to the place it belongs. Take it farther than I ever did—or could. I always knew that. So did your mother.” He turned away and she saw tears in his eyes. Then his voice firmed. “Royal Browne in lights!” he said.

She’d hoped he wouldn’t say this even while she’d known it was inevitable, but she managed a smile. “Sure, Cap’n!” she said and looked out at the float. “And here come our first customers!” she cried. “Before we’ve even started to get the display ready.”

She was grateful for the steady stream of women who dropped in all day on pretexts of shopping errands. She grew a bit weary of explaining the idea of a Commedia dell’Arte and their awed wonder that she’d had no lines, but at least she didn’t have to think. And she had little time to spend with the showboat people. To them Blanche’s offer was the miraculous, fairy tale ending to a dramatic story. No one questioned but what she’d board the West Wind when they went south in August.

Shoppers were still lingering in the deckhouse when The Willing Slave tied up astern the Argosy in late afternoon. Eric and Wally waved as they hurried past to the showboat. It was after supper when Royal heard the staccato exhaust of the electric plant and knew Jack must be a happy man, freed at last from Mollie’s caustic comments.

Eric stopped in on his way back and said he’d been afraid he wouldn’t see her before the Argosy pulled out for the Blueback cannery.

“But you’re coming for the evening show!”

He shook his head. “Can’t,” he said. “Wally and I are leaving at noon for Watt’s cannery.”

She was surprised. The three boats had planned to run together to Watt’s Bay, only a day’s travel to the south. It would be the last cannery show and perhaps the last of their convoy cruising. Eric explained a purse seiner had broken down and by getting in late the next night they could be on the job early in the morning.

“We might be finished that evening when you people pull in,” he said. “At least we’ll be sure of seeing the show the next night. And I told Jack we’d put up the posters. Give them two days’ notice.”

“Oh!” she said with relief. “I thought perhaps you were tired of show people. They are a sort of crazy lot.”

“Nothing crazy about Blanche,” he said. “She’s a real Tyee! A lot of fun too. After supper she gave me a written release on my promise to do the dishes. Wrote it out legal style.” He read it to her. “ ‘I, Blanche La Toure, of the yacht West Wind, in lieu of valuable services to an electric light plant, do hereby release Eric Ward from further servitude.’ ” He grinned and put it in his pocket. “Told her I’d keep it. Might come in handy sometime. Want to take a walk?”

“I need one,” she said. “I’ll get my coat.”

They followed the shore to the point and sat on a big boulder. Neither had mentioned Blanche’s offer. Royal decided Eric wasn’t going to.

“All day I’ve been wanting to talk to you,” she said suddenly. “You know I can’t go away this year! It wouldn’t be fair to Wally. Not when he has this chance to go to school and get started at what he wants to do.”

“At fourteen, a year or two doesn’t make so much difference,” he said.

“But it does! And—” She paused. He’d sounded as though she were antique. “I can wait as well as he can.”

“And when would you ever get such a chance again?” he asked.

“Never! You know that! It was just by accident.”

“Sure,” he agreed. “And half the luck is knowing when to grab it.”

“Then you think I ought to go?”

“I know you shouldn’t let Wally stop you. He’ll be all right. He knows what he wants to do.”

“And you think I don’t?” she asked.

She watched him scraping soft green moss off the boulder and piling it in careful heaps. “Do you?” he asked at last.

“That’s what makes it all so hard,” she burst forth. “I’m in so many pieces. There’s the Argosy. It’s our home. You know what she means. And there’s Dad, and how proud he’s always been of me and how anxious he is to have me go. It means more to him than anything he ever did! You’d laugh if you heard what he said this morning.”

“No, I wouldn’t,” he said gruffly. “What was it?”

“ ‘Royal Browne in lights!’ He actually believes that could happen. Of course Blanche doesn’t, but she thinks I ought to go. So do the showboat people.”

He went on collecting moss. “How are you going to know if they’re not right if you don’t try it?” he asked. “You said last night you used to think about the stage.”

“But I was just a youngster! And I didn’t know anyone but actors!” Eric didn’t answer. He wasn’t very helpful. She had hoped for real advice, not just a blank wall to bounce her problems on. “Perhaps you wouldn’t have been a mechanic if your father hadn’t been one,” she said.

“Maybe. Some kids get set early. And you’ve had a funny life. Different from most people.” She stood up, a little hurt. “Anyway,” he went on quickly, “I bet Blanche never offered a chance like this to anyone else. And she doesn’t expect you to decide right away.”

They didn’t speak of it again on their return and he left her at the door of the deckhouse. The captain was visiting aboard the West Wind but Royal went below. Wally was in bed and she stopped in his stateroom. She hadn’t seen him since the show.

“Gosh, Royal! You were a knockout!” he said. “You ought to’ve heard what people said to Eric and me today about your acting. Everybody was saying how you had a chance to go to Hollywood and I told Dad I’d be through at the logging camp and back aboard by the middle of August. So you don’t have to worry about us.”

He seemed to think it was all decided. His easy acceptance that she’d leave the Argosy was a shock. After all, she’d been the one who truly felt it was their home, but she spoke only of his plan to go to trade school.

“Eric and I talked that over,” he said. “I can do it next year or the year after. I’m as far ahead as Eric was at my age. And see where he got to.” This was so close to hers and Eric’s talk on the point that evening she was startled. Wally saw her look of surprise. “Sure Eric did!” he insisted. “Got a boat and a business he knows will keep it going. A job he likes, and he’s settled in a country he’s sure he wants to live in.”

“Is that what you want?” she asked soberly.

“Not exactly. I’m going in for real logging machinery. Big stuff. Eric’s got a catalogue in his boat of the kind they’ll be using up here some day. It would drive you crazy. Power to throw away! Course, I’d have to learn a lot of mathematics. Might even have to go to college,” and he broke off with an embarrassed grin. “But I’m coming back to this country. I know that much already.”

“Then why do you think I don’t want to live here?” she demanded. This talk of country from Wally had left her with a sense of insecurity. He sounded as though she was an outsider. “The Argosy’s been my home too!” she said.

“Sure,” he agreed, and frowned in perplexity. “Only with you it’s different. Maybe, I’ve been lucky not having to be anyone especially. So I could just be myself. It’s a lot easier than when people are counting on you.”

CHAPTER 14

After the excitement at Tyee, the show in the Blueback cannery was an anticlimax, although the patrons were enthusiastic and the attendance gratifying. Blanche counted the receipts and said the company could be paid up to date. The captain was sure Watt’s cannery would be even better. “Wally and Eric have the posters up and there’ll be a good turnout.”

They planned to depart early the next day, which Royal didn’t take too seriously. Departure hours meant almost as little to the show people as to the captain and the two boats finally departed in mid-morning. At suppertime they were off Laredo Bay, five miles from the cannery. Captain Dan megaphoned a suggestion they turn in and anchor. It would be a short run in the morning.

It was a small, pleasant cove. The two boats rode to their cables beneath a mountain. Blanche invited everyone aboard for supper. Jack was grateful for the early stop.

“I’d have passed this up and kept on slogging,” he said. “We’re in luck to have a man along who knows the coastline.”

“Took me three years to learn there’s usually a hole a boat can duck into,” the captain said. “Remembered we’d stopped here a couple of times. Sort of liked it.”

After supper as they sat on the afterdeck enjoying the peace and quiet, a small gasboat came from an inner cove and slowed as it approached.

“Looks like a southeaster blowing up,” the stranger called. “Glass is dropping.”

“Might be,” the captain agreed, “but it won’t be bad this time of year. It’s those long stretches of southeast weather in winter that I don’t like. And I’ve taken plenty of them.”

The man stared a moment, then nodded and went on. They watched his boat turn at the entrance. “Must be on his way to the cannery store,” the captain said.

“Do you suppose he stopped just to warn us about the weather?” Jack asked.

“In a friendly country like this a man doesn’t want to pass without saying something,” the captain explained. “Doesn’t seem neighborly. With that mountain right alongside, nothing can bother us in here.”

As he and Royal rowed back to the Argosy she thought the dark night held a menace. She looked at the barometer, and it had been dropping fast. She went forward and let out extra cable. The captain glanced at her reproachfully and said he’d only have to winch it in the next morning. He was still not reconciled to the new ground tackle.

“You don’t have to use it all just because Wally put it aboard,” he said. “Got on three years without it.”

“At least I didn’t ask you to put down the big anchor,” she laughed. She’d thought of doing so but decided her uneasy fears weren’t reasonable in what seemed so snug a harbor.

At midnight she was awakened by the unmistakable shudder of a slipping anchor. She listened, felt it again, dressed and went on deck. A southeaster was on. The wind was shrieking on the signal halyards and the Argosy was sailing up on her cable, crossing over and bringing up with a jerk. Each time Royal felt the telltale shudder. She ran to her father’s door.

“We’re dragging!” she shouted. “Come up quick!”

When he joined her they stood in the wheelhouse and tried to determine how far they had dragged. It was much too dark to get a bearing except from the riding light of the West Wind, and it was never still.

“I’ll start the motor and you get up the anchor,” she said. “We’ll run to the head of the bay and put down the big hook.”

“Stick your head outside and feel that gale,” he said. “I couldn’t lift the anchor against it.”

“But we can’t just wait here!” Royal cried. “If it lets loose again—”

She was terrified as she looked out the wheelhouse windows. Everything was black above the silver of the breaking waves. She had a feeling, as the Argosy rode up on its anchor and the compass swung under the binnacle’s pencil light, that they were in upper space. No one could call across the gale to the West Wind, and it was folly to think of getting a dinghy overside. They could only wait and watch, and hope the anchor would hold.

“Might dig itself in deeper now,” the captain said.

She didn’t speak. The gusts were stronger and the bay was afire with phosphorescence that streamed past like masses of diamonds. Waves were crested with it as they broke and flowed in brilliant surges. It was beautiful, and terrible.

Suddenly the anchor pulled free and the Argosy swung broadside to the gale. They could not see but knew they were traveling fast toward shore. Royal started the motor.

“But don’t let in the clutch until I’m sure we won’t smash the propeller on a rock,” she shouted, and ran aft.

The shore was terrifyingly close, afire with phosphorescence as waves broke over the rocks, but there was still time to pull out under power. She dashed back to the wheelhouse, fighting the wind, and threw in the clutch, spun the wheel over.

“Maybe!” she sobbed. “Maybe!”

They might hit before they got under way, and she stood tense and expectant, gripping the spokes. The feel of power ran through the boat as it headed into the wind. No jarring crash came. With her feet and hands, and her whole body, she could sense the Argosy’s struggle. Ahead was the West Wind’s light, veering wildly. At last she felt she could look astern. The brightness of waves breaking on the shore was receding, but abruptly she felt the jar of the anchor catching and knew she had run past it.

Royal eased the throttle. She didn’t know what to do next, knew only that the Argosy was safe for the moment.

“It’s blowing harder,” the captain said.

Royal turned to look astern at the dreaded shore, and off to starboard she saw three brilliant jewels, ruby, sapphire and diamond. A boat had come into the bay, and instinctively she reached for the whistle cord, pulled a succession of frantic toots.

The boat came on. Only its lights showed. At last they disappeared as it pulled up alongside and she could see a black hull. A voice shouted. It was Eric’s.

“Get this line forward and make it fast!” he yelled as he passed the rope to the captain. “We’ll drag you off.”

“But the anchor’s down!” Captain Dan said.

“The light one?”

“Yes. And we’re almost on the beach!”

Royal heard Eric’s laugh. “Wally was sure it would be the light hook,” he said. “Make that line fast and we’ll get out of here. Full power in the Argosy when we start.”

The Willing Slave went forward. Royal felt the tug of the line and opened the throttle. They moved into the wind, dragging the anchor past the showboat’s riding light, on into the shelter of the lee shore. Somehow, in quieter waters, after much shouting and confusion, with Wally aboard and The Willing Slave fast alongside, they got the light anchor up and the big one down.

“You won’t budge now,” Eric said.

“I’ve never been so glad to see anyone in my life!” Royal cried. “How did you know where we were?”

“Handlogger told us two boats were in here,” he said, and then Wally came into the wheelhouse. “We did it, fellow,” Eric said. “You had the hunch. Good thing The Willing Slave’s got that much speed.”

“What were you doing in Laredo Bay with the glass dropping?” Wally demanded of his father. “I told you this was no place to lie in a sou’easter. Wind comes over that mountain like a williwaw. Everyone knows it’s the worst hole along the coast. And the handlogger warned you.”

“Yes, I remember now, you did tell me, lad,” the captain said quietly. “And I forgot. Must have given you a bad time coming up the channel. But you got here!”

Eric’s swift glance at the captain held amazement, and almost admiration. Wally’s wrath collapsed and all four waited in awkward silence.

“I’ll make a pot of coffee,” Royal said quickly. “We need it. I’m still shaking.” She started aft. An anchor watch was exhausting. So was a rescue. She was thinking she didn’t have energy to start the fire when Eric shouted.

“The West Wind’s dragging!”

Royal looked across the bay. A light flashed in a porthole of the showboat, then in another, and the craft definitely was moving. Eric leaped to his boat and started the motor while Wally threw off the lines.

“Stay aboard!” Eric shouted. “The Argosy might need you.”

“I can go,” Royal cried as she leaped down to The Willing Slave.

“Good girl!” Eric said. “I can use you.”

They fell astern and turned down with the wind. The gale was really blowing now as they came about and hung a little way off the West Wind. It was fantastic to see the brightly lighted craft, like an excursion boat on a mad carousel, drive toward shore. Suddenly it stopped.

“They’ve hit the beach!” Eric said.

He worked in closer. Frantic figures were rushing back and forth on deck.

“She hit stern first,” Eric said. “Now she’s swinging broadside. We’ve got to get a line aboard.” He swung about, dropped back. “You’ll have to take the wheel, Royal, while I pass the line. Think you can?”

“I’ll try,” she said, gripping the spokes as Eric went aft to get the cable ready.

Royal wasn’t sure she could put The Willing Slave close enough without crashing. The feel of wheel and throttle were unfamiliar. She tried once, missed, dropped back, tried again. Eric, holding the line, stood at the wheelhouse door. His presence, and his calm voice, gave her confidence.

“More throttle,” he said. “Easy. Easy does it. More port. Starboard! Quick! You’re doing fine. Drop back now! Ahead! There! Hard starboard!”

He passed the line to Jack Starr and shouted to make it fast in the bow. “Swing away!” he said to Royal. “But easy!” He ran aft and made the line fast.

Royal pulled off to starboard and set the throttle at half speed. She felt the pull as the line straightened, and then Eric was beside her, opening the throttle and swinging the wheel. She could feel they were moving, even against the gale.

“You’re a sailor!” he said. “Another minute and she’d have hit the rocks broadside.”

Royal felt limp.

“We can pull ’em out,” Eric said. “I told Jack to get up his anchor as soon as we’re clear. Then we can tow them to the head of the bay.”

It was a long drag against the gale. Royal stood beside Eric, their shoulders touching as The Willing Slave rolled in the waves. The gale tore at both boats. The West Wind veered from side to side and threatened to snap the line. Royal didn’t dare take her eyes off it for a moment. She and Eric talked in monosyllables. There was no time for anything but quick orders, yet she was aware of a sense of confidence and understanding. She thought of the hours of terror as they struggled to save first the Argosy, and then the West Wind. She was weary, she was drained, and yet she had a feeling of deep content. All the fear was behind her.

A half hour later the West Wind was securely moored with two anchors under a lee shore. Eric took in the tow line and dropped back to make fast alongside the showboat. He and Royal went aboard.

No one knew what injury she had suffered, but the damage to her passengers was evident. Green with fright, they were huddled in the main cabin, expecting the boat to sink at any moment and demanding to be taken off. It was all Eric could do to persuade them to wait at least until he and Jack had time to examine the stern. They went aft, leaving Royal to deal with the panic. Peter’s face was almost the color of his pale lavender pajamas as he urged the need of getting ashore at once, though now he spoke of the dinghy as a lifeboat.

“We don’t want to be drowned like rats!” he declared with fury.

Blanche looked at him and burst into laughter. “Now if someone will help me get these top sleeping shelves down we’ll have a place to sit. If I’m going to drown I’d like to do it in comfort.”

Even when the transom berths were lowered the cabin was a shambles with bedding, clothing and frightened people. Jack and Eric returned to report the rudder and propeller were shattered and there was a slight leak in the stern.

“Nothing dangerous,” Eric said. “Jack will have to man the pump occasionally.” He looked at the disheveled group. “Can’t do anything more till daylight. You’re so close to the Argosy we can hear your whistle. Let’s go back, Royal.”

They cast off and the wind swept The Willing Slave astern. Royal thought it was blowing harder than ever as Eric struggled to come alongside the Argosy. He helped her aboard. She looked down at him, thinking of all they’d been through together.

“Now it’s all over, Eric, it was fun, wasn’t it?” she said, and then quickly, “I’ll help you make fast alongside.”

“I don’t want to pound your hull all night,” he said. “I’ll drop an anchor. See you in the morning.”

Royal wakened late, and to a beautiful calm day. The southeaster had blown itself out, the air was clear and fresh and even the treacherous mountain looked benign. Eric came aboard for breakfast and they relieved the anchor watch. They’d been too tired in the night to see humor in the panic of the show people but now the idea of the pajama-clad Peter considering a rowboat in such a storm seemed inexpressibly funny. They rowed over to the West Wind to find Blanche and Jack having coffee on the afterdeck. Captain Dan began a deep apology for his error in judgment of the anchorage but Jack insisted no one was to blame but himself.

“Always had a skipper and should have known I’m not a real sailor,” he said. “Nor have I a good angel watching over the West Wind. I’m only glad you didn’t lose the Argosy.”

“We would have except for The Willing Slave,” Royal said.

The captain nodded. “Guess Providence saw it had too tough a job and got in touch with Wally and Eric. Just in time too. West Wind hurt bad?”

“We were right about the propeller and the rudder,” Jack said. “Both gone. Made sure this morning. Still leaking some. Well—that’s that. She’s mortgaged, and insured. They’ll about cancel out.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I asked for it. I’m not the first man to lose a ship on this coast.”

“You haven’t lost her!” Eric said gruffly.

“Up this coast! With a stern smashed! And no place to haul out closer than Vancouver!”

“You can put her on the ways in Nanaimo and I’ll tow you there! Get a new wheel and rudder and she’s as good as ever. We can start this morning, soon’s you get the crowd off.”

Jack looked inquiringly at Blanche.

“Sure, Jack,” she said. “And we’ve got to be at the Watt’s cannery early enough so people’ll know there’ll be a show.”

“And we ought to be pulling out,” the captain said. “Those posters won’t mean much if they don’t see the showboat. How soon can you move aboard the Argosy?”

“With me behind them?” Blanche laughed. “You’d be surprised. Have the props and clothes up here in no time. I’ll go tell them.”

She walked forward almost majestically. Eric watched her in amazement and Royal smiled. Evidently it had not occurred to Eric the evening show would go on, but to Blanche and the captain anything else would be incredible. The cast made a valiant effort to share this rugged spirit but didn’t look too happy as bags and bundles were brought on deck. Wally and Eric ran the Argosy alongside and in fifteen minutes the transfer was made. Blanche carried up a final box, filled with groceries.

“Argosy will need them with this gang,” she said. “I left plenty for you and Eric, Jack. How long will it take to get to Nanaimo?”

Eric said he didn’t know. The tide ran strong in Johnstone Straits and with a tow they’d have to travel with the ebb and lay-up through the flood. “But I’ve got to be back here in a week,” he said. “Where will I pick you up, Wally, for that job at the logging camp?”

Wally looked at the captain. “Where’s the Argosy going to be?” he asked.

“Make it Plunder Cove,” the captain said without a moment’s hesitation. “There’s a real place to give a show. Boat night.”

Everyone was on deck when the West Wind left in tow of The Willing Slave. The captain blew the whistle and they shouted farewell.

“Jack’s the sweetest fellow in the world,” Blanche said. “And what he’s put up with! Didn’t have this bad luck coming.” She wiped her eyes. “What do you want me to do, Royal? Stow the folks or get a meal. Or both? I can’t wait to get in that galley. It’s a real kitchen, not the cupboard I’ve been using.”

“Better stow first,” the captain said. “Then they won’t feel so downhearted. Wally and I’ll sleep in the deckhouse so we can eat breakfast in peace. Put Ed and Mollie in my stateroom. They get up last.”

“Do you mean you’re taking us on for the rest of the tour?” Blanche asked.

“Of course. It was my fault you were wrecked. I couldn’t do anything less if I wanted to. And I don’t.” He chuckled. “Got a charter, a show on the road, and a peddler boat all in one. How’s that, Royal?”

“I hoped you would do it,” she said, and she meant it.

The Argosy got underway at once and reached Watt’s cannery in early afternoon. The captain and Blanche rushed into preparations. The story of the wreck and a resolute company of actors made excellent publicity and they had their largest crowd. But Royal, watching from the front, knew the spirit of the cast didn’t live up to advance notices. It was so flat a performance, even the captain was dismayed. Royal left him explaining that people of artistic temperament couldn’t be expected to recover quickly from the shock of last night and went back to the Argosy. She heard someone moving below and a moment later Doris and Bette appeared with their bags. Doris explained that a cannery boat was leaving to take mail across the channel to put it on a steamship on its down trip.

“We’ll be in Vancouver tomorrow night,” she said. “This cannery boat will wait for us. Me—I’m not taking another chance of drowning to do a dance act.” She picked up her bag. “Tell Blanche if we have anything coming she can send it to us in Hollywood.”

She started out, and met Ed, Mollie and Peter at the door.

“Sneaking, eh?” Ed said. “Why didn’t you tell us of a chance to get free of this mess? Pack up, Mollie, while I get the boat to wait for us.”

Peter said nothing. He disappeared forward and in a few minutes was rushing after the girls. The Dancing Devines’ departure was less abrupt. They halted for a quick handshake, and Mollie said something about a farewell to Blanche and Captain Dan. Royal was still breathless when her father and Blanche returned.

“Where’s everybody?” Blanche asked as she looked around the deckhouse.

“Gone,” Royal said. “To Vancouver.”

“Gone!” Blanche gasped. “All of them?”

Suddenly she laughed, laughed until tears came as Royal told what had happened. “Danforth, I’ll bet this is the first time in show business that a manager was left stranded by his troupe.”

She wiped her eyes and looked at the captain and Royal. “Must the show still go on, Danforth?” she asked. “I could try hard to be a one-woman cast, and where’d that get us? But”—and her face lighted—“I like this country and I’d like to stick through the billings.”

“That would be wonderful, Blanche!” Royal cried.

“I can work my passage. Always did want to sell things. Only job I never tried.”

The captain stood up and bowed. “You’d more than earn your passage by just being aboard,” he said. “And you know we mean it.”

“Thank you, Danforth. I love you for that.” She dabbed at her eyes, then suddenly became very energetic. “Royal, help me count tonight’s take.” They were busy for several minutes.

“A hundred and three head!” Blanche exclaimed. “Best we’ve done yet. It isn’t honest money after what we gave them, but Jack Starr doesn’t have to know it, and it’ll help on his busted rudder, or whatever it was he broke.”

That night Blanche shared Royal’s stateroom, but when Royal wakened in the morning the other berth was empty. As Royal stretched, and from habit looked out a porthole, Blanche came in with a tray.

“A real bedroom like this, we ought to enjoy it,” she said as she set their breakfast on the dresser between the berths. “No better way to start a morning than with coffee in comfort.” She filled the cups. “Danforth said you liked toast brown and with plenty of butter. I gave him and Wally bacon and eggs.”

Royal said Blanche shouldn’t have done so much, but it was wonderful to be spoiled. She felt completely luxurious. Blanche said it was a pleasure to have a real kitchen “with windows all around.” She reported that Wally and the captain had gone to the cannery to get the props and the Argosy wouldn’t pull out that day. The manager’s wife wanted to buy things for her children and would be down in the afternoon. Royal settled back against the pillows.

“After all we’ve been through we can stand a little rest,” Blanche said.

Royal buttered her toast and thought of what she had been through, so much more than Blanche suspected. She knew she had made certain discoveries and had explored others, but doubted she was ready to put the results in words. Some were vague, but others so crystal clear she startled herself by stating them.

“Blanche, I’m not going south with you,” she said. “I knew it the night we almost lost the Argosy. Only—I hope Dad won’t be too disappointed.” The older woman looked at her steadily but said nothing. “Now I think he was really the reason I ever thought of going. Perhaps that sounds—” She hesitated, trying to be honest. He’d never asked her to live out his life or to follow his ways. “Maybe,” she went on after a moment, “it was only because he was so proud of me, and I was so proud that he was. Does that make sense? It sounds funny, but I hope you understand. It’s just that I’m a different kind of person. I think now I always was, only I didn’t know it. I’m just beginning to find it out. It’s hard to explain how anyone—”

“You don’t have to explain to me,” Blanche said gently. “I knew you weren’t coming, knew it the night you found it out. Think I’m blind or dumb?” She picked up the tray. “And don’t worry about Danforth Browne. He’s going to be hurt at first, but down in the bottom of his heart he’ll know you’re right. He knows people and he’ll understand you’re not passing up something that really counts. I’m going upstairs and do the dishes.”

She sounded brusque at the end but she turned at the door. “It took Hollywood and a shipwreck to prove you’re a true daughter of Olga Dunseith,” she said, her face twisting strangely. “That’s the finest thing I can say about any woman.”

In the next week the Argosy bloomed. Royal had never dreamed an outsider could fit so well into a peddler craft. Blanche, like the captain, loved people and when she said to a customer, “That’s exactly the blouse for you,” the woman knew she meant it. Royal had always been afraid of seeming too insistent but evidently such an idea never occurred to Blanche as she plunged into others’ problems. Each stop, each family, was a fresh challenge, a new public, which she must not fail.

“Danforth,” she said one evening. “I thought this peddler boat idea was crazy, but it’s no different than the days of the old road companies. This—new show every night. Always moving. Always a new audience.”

Royal smiled, thinking she understood her father better, and she also understood the delight of these two in toying with fresh schemes and sudden inspirations. When Blanche learned there were no movies on the coast they spent an evening planning a motion-picture boat. Lack of a hall and screen, or even enough electrical power, didn’t stop them. Blanche skipped over such minor details as easily as did the captain. Wally listened to the idea and was definitely worried, but Royal knew it was only an entrancing vision. She dared to tell hers, a floating dress shop. The captain protested women on the coast had no occasion for many clothes.

“Show a woman a dress she likes and she’ll find a place to wear it!” Blanche exclaimed. “How about those logging camps? Don’t tell me they don’t have card parties or a get-together over a cup of tea. And those young fellows at the cannery shows! They’d like fancy shirts. Royal’s got an idea. You should have done it long ago, Danforth. The Argosy could be a lot more exciting than a showboat. Imagine a dress shop landing at that float town tomorrow!”

The Argosy’s arrival at Plunder Cove provided as much excitement as even Blanche desired. The Willing Slave was in and moored and the captain tried a spectacular landing. Providence didn’t stand beside him, however, and he rammed the float with a crash that shook the entire community. Eric popped up on deck.

“Ride ’em, cowboy! Ride ’em!” he shouted.

The captain waved. “Only trying to give you a job,” he called. “How are you, you old scissors grinder? Come aboard.”

Eric stayed for supper. He’d brought fresh trout. Royal and Blanche had gathered red huckleberries for a pie. It was a gay meal. News of the West Wind was good. Jack would have the boat in commission in time for his next charter, and Blanche’s story of the captain as a stranded show manager was very funny.

“But I stayed for the whole run,” she said. “I like this country. Signed on to work my passage till middle of August. Might even be running Wally’s engine by the time you bring him back.”

After supper Eric said he had to run across the harbor. “I need a crew,” and he glanced at Royal. She picked up her jacket.

Out in the bay he shut off the motor and they looked back at the Argosy’s lighted deckhouse.

“I’ll never forget how glad I was to hear your voice the night you saved her,” Royal said. She thought of her terror and the storm, and her relief when he shouted in the darkness.

He put an arm around her. “And I won’t forget how scared I was on our run to get there in time. But we made it! Are you going back with Blanche? No one said anything about it at supper, and I didn’t dare ask.”

“But, Eric, you knew I wasn’t going! You must have known it even when you tried to talk me into it.” He didn’t answer, and after a moment she went on, “Why—this is my country. I belong here!”

He smiled and shoved in the clutch. The Willing Slave started on across the bay. They stood together side by side, their shoulders touching, as they watched a new moon rise over the mountain peak.

“It’s a grand country, Royal,” Eric said. “For us.”

THE END

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