"Father," she cried, "look! Isn't he simply stunning! The Greek ideal--and on a tugboat!" Her dark eyes lightened with mischief. "Do you suppose he'd mind if I spoke to him?"
"He'd probably swear at you," said young Ralph Oddington, with a grin. Then, seized by a sudden impulse for which he afterwards kicked himself, being a decent sort of chap, he drew his cigarette case from his pocket and, as the tug came to a standstill, tossed a cigarette across the intervening space. It struck the man in the back, and as he turned, Oddington called,
The tugman's lips parted, giving a flashing glimpse of big, straight, white teeth. Then they closed, and for an instant he regarded the speaker with a hard, curious expression in his quiet gray eyes, and the proffered cigarette, as though by accident, was shapeless under his heel.
It was distinctly embarrassing for the yachting party; and partly to relieve Oddington, partly out of curiosity, Virginia Howland leaned over the rail with a smile. "Please pardon us, Mr. Tugboatman. We didn't mean to offend you; we--"
The young man again swept the party with his eyes, and then meeting the girl's gaze full, he waited for her to complete the sentence.
"We," she continued, "of course meant no harm."
He did not reply for a moment, did not reply till her eyes fell.
"All right--thanks," he said simply and then hurried forward.
At sunset the _Veiled Ladye_ was well on her way to New York, and the _Hydrographer_ was plugging past Hog Island light with her cumbersome tows plunging astern.
It came to be a wild night. The tumbling blue-black clouds of late afternoon fulfilled their promise of evil things for the dark. There were fierce pounding hours when the wrath of the sea seemed centred upon the _Hydrographer_ and her lumbering barges, when the towing-lines hummed like the harp strings of Aeolus.
It was man's work the crew of the _Hydrographer_ performed that night; when the dawn came and the wind departed with a farewell shriek, and the seas began to fall, Dan Merrithew sat quiet for a while, gazing vacantly out over the gray waters, wrestling with the realization that through all the viewless turmoil the face of a girl he did not know--never would know, probably--had not been absent from his mind; that the sound of her voice had lingered in his ears rising out of the elemental confusion, as the notes of a violin, freeing themselves from orchestral harmony, suddenly rise clear, dominating the _motif_ in piercing obligato.