Blow The Man Down: A Romance Of The CoastDay, Holman
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Blow The Man Down: A Romance Of The Coast
Day, Holman
Love stories; Ship captains -- Fiction; Yachts -- Fiction
She did not turn to look at him. “I have something else on my mind,
Arthur, besides lolling below listening to Wally Dalton fiddle
love-tunes. And this passage, here, Captain Mayo! What is it?” Her
finger strayed idly across a few hundred miles of mapped Atlantic Ocean.
“It's Honeymoon Channel,” replied the navigator, demurely. His new
ecstasy made him bold enough to jest.
“Oh, so we are learning to be a captain, Miss Alma?” inquired Beveridge
with a wry smile.
“It would be better if more yacht-owners knew how to manage their own
craft,” she informed him, with spirit.
“Yes, it might keep the understrappers in line,” agreed the man at
the door.. “I apply for the position of first mate after you qualify,
Captain Alma.”
“And this, you say, is, Captain Mayo?” she queried, without troubling
herself to reply. Her tone was crisply matter of fact.
Beveridge blinked at her and showed the disconcerted uneasiness of a man
who has intruded in business hours.
Captain Mayo, watching the white finger rapturously, noted that it was
sweeping from the Arctic Circle to the Tropic Zone. “That's Love Harbor,
reached through the thoroughfare of Hope,” he answered, respectfully.
“Oh, I say!” exclaimed Beveridge; “the sailors who laid out that course
must have been romantic.”
“Sailors have souls to correspond with their horizon, Arthur. Would you
prefer such names as Cash Cove and Money-grub Channel?”
Mr. Beveridge cocked an eyebrow and stared at her eloquent back; also,
he cast a glance of no great favor on the stalwart young captain of the
_Olenia_. It certainly did not occur to Mr. Beveridge that two young
folks in love were making sport of him. That Julius Marston's daughter
would descend to a yacht captain would have appeared as incredible an
enormity as an affair with the butler. But there was something about
this intimate companionship of the chart-room which Mr. Beveridge did
not relish. Instinct rather than any sane reason told him that he was
not wanted.
“I'm sorry to break in on your studies, Miss Marston,” he said, a bit
stiffly. “But I have been sent by your father to call you to the cabin.”
Mr. Beveridge's air, his tone of protest, conveyed rather pointed hint
that her responsibilities as a hostess were fully as important as her
studies as a navigator.
“I must go,” she whispered.
Relief was mingled with Captain Mayo's regret. He had feared that this
impetuous young woman might rebel against the summons, even though the
word came from her father. And her persistent stay in his chart-room,
even on the pretext of a fervid interest in the mysteries of navigation,
might produce complications. This wonderful new joy in his life was too
precious to be marred by complications.
She trailed her fingers along his hand when she turned from the
chart-table, and then pinched him in farewell salute.
“Good night, Captain Mayo. I'll take another lesson to-morrow.”
“I am at your service,” he told her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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