They looked so bonny, the pair of Morgans, Leoncia thought; and at the
same time wondered why the English word had arisen unsummoned in her
mind rather than a Spanish equivalent. Was it because her heart went out
so generously to the two Gringos that she must needs think of them in
their language instead of her own?
To escape the perplexity of her thoughts, she dangled the scarf again,
was discovered, and laughingly confessed that it was she who had caused
their violence of waking.
Three hours later, breakfast of coffee and fruit over, she found herself
at the wheel taking her first lesson of steering and of the compass
under Francis’ tuition. The _Angelique_, under a crisp little breeze
which had hauled around well to north’ard, was for the moment heeling it
through the water at a six-knot clip. Henry, swaying on the weather side
of the after-deck and searching the sea through the binoculars, was
striving to be all unconcerned at the lesson, although secretly he was
mutinous with himself for not having first thought of himself
introducing her to the binnacle and the wheel. Yet he resolutely
refrained from looking around or from even stealing a corner-of-the-eye
glance at the other two.
But Captain Trefethen, with the keen cruelty of Indian curiosity and the
impudence of a negro subject of King George, knew no such delicacy. He
stared openly and missed nothing of the chemic drawing together of his
charterer and the pretty Spanish girl. When they leaned over the wheel
to look into the binnacle, they leaned toward each other and Leoncia’s
hair touched Francis’ cheek. And the three of them, themselves and the
breed skipper, knew the thrill induced by such contact. But the man and
woman knew immediately what the breed skipper did not know, and what
they knew was embarrassment. Their eyes lifted to each other in a flash
of mutual startlement, and drooped away and down guiltily. Francis
talked very fast and loud enough for half the schooner to hear, as he
explained the lubber’s point of the compass. But Captain Trefethen
grinned.
A rising puff of breeze made Francis put the wheel up. His hand to the
spoke rested on her hand already upon it. Again they thrilled, and again
the skipper grinned.
Leoncia’s eyes lifted to Francis’, then dropped in confusion. She
slipped her hand out from under and terminated the lesson by walking
slowly away with a fine assumption of casualness, as if the wheel and
the binnacle no longer interested her. But she had left Francis afire
with what he knew was lawlessness and treason as he glanced at Henry’s
shoulder and profile and hoped he had not seen what had occurred.
Leoncia, apparently gazing off across the lagoon to the jungle-clad
shore, was seeing nothing as she thoughtfully turned her engagement ring
around and around on her finger.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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