The After House by Mary Roberts Rinehart Contents I. I PLAN A VOYAGE II. THE PAINTED SHIP III. I UNCLENCH MY HANDS IV. I RECEIVE A WARNING V. A TERRIBLE NIGHT VI. IN THE AFTER HOUSE VII. WE FIND THE AXE VIII. THE STEWARDESS’S STORY IX. PRISONERS X. “THAT’S MUTINY” XI. THE DEAD LINE XII. THE FIRST MATE TALKS XIII. THE WHITE LIGHT XIV. FROM THE CROW’S NEST XV. A KNOCKING IN THE HOLD XVI. JONES STUMBLES OVER SOMETHING XVII. THE AXE IS GONE XVIII. A BAD COMBINATION XIX. I TAKE THE STAND XX. OLESON’S STORY XXI. “A BAD WOMAN” XXII. TURNER’S STORY XXIII. FREE AGAIN XXIV. THE THING XXV. THE SEA AGAIN CHAPTER I. I PLAN A VOYAGE By the bequest of an elder brother, I was left enough money to see me through a small college in Ohio, and to secure me four years in a medical school in the East. Why I chose medicine I hardly know. Possibly the career of a surgeon attracted the adventurous element in me. Perhaps, coming of a family of doctors, I merely followed the line of least resistance. It may be, indirectly but inevitably, that I might be on the yacht Ella on that terrible night of August 12, more than a year ago. I got through somehow. I played quarterback on the football team, and made some money coaching. In summer I did whatever came to hand, from chartering a sail-boat at a summer resort and taking passengers, at so much a head, to checking up cucumbers in Indiana for a Western pickle house. I was practically alone. Commencement left me with a diploma, a new dress-suit, an out-of-date medical library, a box of surgical instruments of the same date as the books, and an incipient case of typhoid fever. I was twenty-four, six feet tall, and forty inches around the chest. Also, I had lived clean, and worked and played hard. I got over the fever finally, pretty much all bone and appetite; but—alive. Thanks to the college, my hospital care had cost nothing. It was a good thing: I had just seven dollars in the world. The yacht Ella lay in the river not far from my hospital windows. She was not a yacht when I first saw her, nor at any time, technically, unless I use the word in the broad sense of a pleasure-boat. She was a two-master, and, when I saw her first, as dirty and disreputable as are most coasting-vessels. Her rejuvenation was the history of my convalescence. On the day she stood forth in her first coat of white paint, I exchanged my dressing-gown for clothing that, however loosely it hung, was still clothing. Her new sails marked my promotion to beefsteak, her brass rails and awnings my first independent excursion up and down the corridor outside my door, and, incidentally, my return to a collar and tie.