“Feel as though you’re leaning on your face!” he cried. “Don’t be afraid of your face—it won’t fall out!”
Then he made her send air through her nose with her mouth open—which made her look a little ludicrous, but then, was there ever a genuine singer who cared how she looked when she sang? And he made her sing “La-la-la-la-la,” over and over again, and told her she ought to feel her tongue wag up from the bottom of her throat, and talked a great deal about a mysterious region in back of her teeth, and put her through the ordeal of the “silent attack.” And then—oh, well, there was nothing much left to do but sit back and enjoy the fruits of tireless patience. But they plunged into arpeggios, for good measure, and the impresario kept nodding, pleased and more pleased—though he had an eagle eye on her all the time, too.
She was really singing now—had got all untied—the tin whistle was cast out. After a little supplementary staccato work he turned to her with mild, appealing eyes, which glistened very suspiciously.
“This may be the last chance we’ll have together like this,” he said softly, “before the offer comes. While you’re still one of my songbirds, let me hear you sing some of the old pieces, like _Annie Laurie_ and the _Last Rose of Summer_. I’ll play along and just dream.”
“Yes,” she replied warmly. “You’re an angel! I’ll sing anything you like.”
And so she sang him the old songs down in the stuffy little cabin; and his eyes kept right on glistening, though he smiled up at her from time to time quite happily. Yes, she sang as no one, surely, had ever heard her sing before. The impresario had tuned her up for big money; but now she was singing just for him.
When he had finished, stealthy forms might have been detected moving away from the passage outside—not only songbirds, but seamen too, the mate and the ship’s cook and the cabin boy; while up on deck Captain Bearman, who had been secretly listening himself at one of the ventilators, was roaring and cursing because his ship was lying all unmanned, at the mercy of the elements.
It was really a shocking state of affairs.
The wind, capricious in the extreme, settled on the last day out from Borneo into an uncompromising head wind. The schooner laboriously plowed along toward Sandakan, on the Bornean north coast; it was necessary to tack constantly, and progress was heavy. The glass stood low. The air was thick and murky.