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A Bookful of Girls
Blythe Halliday’s Voyage
CHAPTER I
THE CROW’S NEST
“You never told me how you happened to name her Blythe.”
The two old friends, Mr. John DeWitt and Mrs. Halliday, were reclining side by side in their steamer-chairs, lulled into a quiescent mood by the gentle, scarcely perceptible, motion of the vessel. It was an exertion to speak, and Mrs. Halliday replied evasively, “Do you like the name?”
“For Blythe, – yes. But I don’t know another girl who could carry it off so well. Tell me how it happened.”
Then Blythe’s mother reluctantly gathered herself together for a serious effort, and said: “It was the old Scotch nurse who did it. She called her ‘a blythe lassie’ before she was three days old. We had been hesitating between Lucretia for Charles’s mother and Hannah for mine, and we compromised on Blythe!”
Upon which the speaker, allowing her eyes to close definitively, took on the appearance of gentle inanition which characterised nine-tenths of her fellow-voyagers, ranged side by side in their steamer-chairs along the deck.
They had passed the Azores, that lovely May morning, and were headed for Cape St. Vincent, – the good old Lorelei lounging along at her easiest gait, the which is also her rapidest. For there is nothing more deceptive than a steamer’s behaviour on a calm day when the sea offers no perceptible resistance to the keel.
Here and there an insatiable novel-reader held a paper-covered volume before his nose, but more often the book had slid to the deck, to be picked up by Gustav, the prince of deck-stewards, and carefully tucked in among the wraps of the unconscious owner.
Just now, however, Gustav was enjoying a moment of unaccustomed respite from activity, for his most exacting beneficiaries were not sufficiently awake to demand a service of him. He had administered bouillon and lemonade and cracked ice by the gallon; he had scattered sandwiches and ginger cookies broadcast among them; he had tenderly inquired of the invalids, “’Ow you feel?” and had cheerfully pronounced them, one and all, to be “mush besser”; and now he himself was, for a fleeting moment, the centre of interest in the one tiny eddy of animation on the whole length of the deck.
Just aft of the awning, in the full sunshine, he was engaged in “posing,” with the sheepish air of a person having his photograph taken, while a fresh, comely girl of sixteen stood, kodak in hand, waiting for his attitude to relax. Half a dozen spectators, elderly men and small boys, stood about making facetious remarks, but Gustav and his youthful “operator” were too much in earnest to pay them much heed.
Blythe Halliday was usually very much in earnest; by which is not to be inferred that she was of an alarmingly serious cast of mind. Her earnestness took the form of intense satisfaction in the matter in hand, whatever that might be, and she had found life a succession of delightful experiences, of which this one of an ocean voyage was perhaps the most delectable of all.
In one particular Blythe totally disagreed with her mother; for Mrs. Halliday had declared, on one of the first universally unbecoming days of the voyage, that it was a mystery how all the agreeable people got to Europe, since so few of them were ever to be discovered on an ocean steamer! Whereas Blythe, for her part, had never dreamed that there were so many interesting persons in the world as were to be discovered among their fellow-voyagers.
Was not the big, bluff Captain himself, with his unfathomable sea-craft and his autocratic power, a regular old Viking such as you might read of in your history books, but would hardly expect to meet with in the flesh? And was there not a real Italian Count, elderly but impressive, who had dealings with no one but his valet, the latter being a nimble personage with a wicked eye who seemed to possess the faculty of starting up through the deck as if summoned by a species of wireless telegraphy? Best of all, was not Blythe’s opposite neighbour at the Captain’s table a shaggy, keen-eyed Englishman, figuring on the passenger-list as “Mr. Grey,” but who was generally believed to be no less a personage than Hugh Dalton, the famous poet, travelling incognito?
This latter gentleman was more approachable than the Count, and had taken occasion to tell Blythe some very wonderful tales, besides still further endearing himself to her by listening with flattering attention to such narratives as she was pleased to relate for his benefit. Indeed, they were rapidly becoming fast friends and she was seriously contemplating a snap-shot at his expense.
Mr. Grey, meanwhile, had joined the group in the sunshine, where he stood, pipe in mouth, with his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his reefer, regarding Gustav’s awkwardness with kindly amusement.
“There they go, those energetic young persons!” Mr. De Witt observed, a few minutes later, as Blythe and the Englishman walked past, in search of the Captain, whom Mr. Grey had suggested as the next subject for photographic prowess. “Do you suppose that really is Dalton?”
Mr. De Witt spoke with entire disregard of the fact that Mrs. Halliday appeared to be slumbering tranquilly. And indeed an interrupted nap is so easily made good on shipboard that Blythe used sometimes to beg her mother to try and “fall awake” for a minute!
On this occasion, as she walked past with the alleged poet, she remarked: “Even Mr. De Witt can’t keep Mamma awake on shipboard, and she isn’t a bit of a sleepy person on dry land.”
By way of response, Mr. Grey turned to contemplate the line of steamer-chairs, billowy with voluminous wraps, saying: “Doesn’t the deck look like a sea becalmed? See! Those are the waves, too lazy to break!”
“How funny the ocean would look if the waves forgot to turn over!” Blythe exclaimed, glancing across the gently undulating surface of the sea. “I don’t suppose they’ve kept still one single instant in millions of years!”
“Not since the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters,” her companion returned, with quiet emphasis; and Blythe felt surer than ever that he really was the great poet whom people believed him to be.
A moment later they had stormed the bridge, where they two, of all the ship’s company, were pretty sure of a welcome. They found the Captain standing, with his sextant at his eye, the four gold stripes on his sleeve gleaming gaily in the sunshine. Evidently things were going right, for the visitors and their daring proposal were most graciously received.
The fine old sea-dog stood like a man to be shot at; and as Blythe faced him, kodak in hand, the breeze playing pranks with her hair and blowing her golf-cape straight back from her shoulders, it was all so exhilarating that before she knew it she had turned her little camera upon the supposed Hugh Dalton himself, who made an absurd grimace and told her to “let her go!”
It was always a delightful experience for Blythe to stand on the bridge and watch the ship’s officers at their wonderful work of guiding the great sea-monster across the pathless deep. Here was the brain of the ship, as Mr. Grey had once pointed out, and to-day, when a sailor suddenly appeared above the gangway and, touching his hat, received a curt order, – “That is one of the nerves of the vessel,” her companion said. “It carries the message of the brain to the furthest parts of the body.”
“And I suppose the eyes are up there,” Blythe returned, glancing at the “crow’s nest,” half-way up the great forward mast, where the two lookouts were keeping their steady watch.
“Yes,” he rejoined, “that must be why they always have a pair of them, – so as to get a proper focus. Nicht wahr, Herr Capitän?”
And the little fiction was explained to the Captain, who grew more genial than ever
