“Give me your hands.”
She clasped his hard wrists and felt herself flying. The setting sun came level into his beard and upon all his tall lean body, and dripping water on the deck she stood and looked at him with admiration. “Gee, you’re hard,” she said. She touched his forearms again, then she struck him with her fist on his hard high chest. “Do it again, will you?”
“Swing you again?” he asked. But she was already in the tender, extending her arms while sunset was a moist gold sheathing her. Again that sensation of flying, of space and motion and his hard hands coming into it; and for an instant she stopped in midflight, hand to hand and arm braced to arm, high above the deck while water dripping from her turned to gold as it fell. Sunset was in his eyes: a glory he could not see; and her taut simple body, almost breastless and with the fleeting hips of a boy, was an ecstasy in golden marble, and in her face the passionate ecstasy of a child.
At last her feet touched the deck again and she turned. She sped toward the companionway and as she flashed downward the last of the sun slid upon her and over her with joy. Then she was gone, and Gordon stood looking at the wet and simple prints of her naked feet on the deck.
SIX O’CLOCK
They had raised land just about the time Major Ayers won his wager, and while the last of day drained out of the world the Nausikaa at halfspeed forged slowly into a sluggish river mouth, broaching a timeless violet twilight between solemn bearded cypresses motionless as bronze. You might, by listening, have heard a slow requiem in this tall nave, might have heard here the chanted orisons of the dark heart of the world turning toward slumber. The world was becoming dimensionless, the tall bearded cypresses drew nearer one to another across the wallowing river with the soulless implacability of pagan gods, gazing down upon this mahogany-and-brass intruder with inscrutable unalarm. The water was like oil and the Nausikaa forged onward without any sensation of motion through a corridor without ceiling or floor.
Mr. Talliaferro stood at the sternrail beside Jenny and her morose hatted duenna. In the dusk Jenny’s white troubling placidity bloomed like a heavy flower, pervading and rife like an odor lazier, heavier than that of lilies. Pete loomed beyond her: the last light in the world was concentrated in the implacable glaze of his hat, leaving the atmosphere about them darker still; and in the weary passion of August and nightfall Mr. Talliaferro’s dry interminable voice fell lower and lower and finally ceased altogether; and abruptly becoming aware of an old mislaid sorrow he slapped suddenly at the back of his hand, with consternation, remarking at the same time that Pete was also restive and that Jenny was agitating herself as though she were rubbing her body against her clothing from within. Then, as if at a signal, they were all about them, unseen, with a dreadful bucolic intentness; unlike their urban cousins, making no sound.
Jenny and Pete and Mr. Talliaferro evacuated the deck. At the companionway the ghostly poet joined them hurriedly, flapping his handkerchief about his face and neck and the top of his unnurtured evaporating head. At that instant Mrs. Maurier’s voice rose from somewhere in astonished adjuration, and presently the Nausikaa put about and felt her way back to open water and stood out to sea. And not at halfspeed, either.
SEVEN O’CLOCK
Years ago Mrs. Maurier had learned that unadulterated fruit juice was salutary, nay, necessary to a nautical life. A piece of information strange, irrelevant at first draught, yet on second thought quite possible, not to mention pleasant in contemplation, so she had accepted it, taking it unto her and making of it an undeviating marine conviction. Hence there was grapefruit again for dinner: she was going to inoculate them first, then take chances.
Fairchild’s gang was ultimately started from its lair in his quarters. The other guests were already seated and they reo garded the newcomers with interest and trepidation and, on Mrs. Maurier’s part, with actual alarm.
“Here comes the dogwatch,” Mrs. Wiseman remarked brightly. “It’s the gentlemen, isn’t it? We haven’t seen any gentlemen since we left New Orleans, hey, Dorothy?”
Her brother grinned at her sadly. “How about Mark and Talliaferro?”
“Oh, Mark’s a poet. That lets him out. And Ernest isn’t a poet, so that lets him out, too,” she replied with airy feminine logic. “Isn’t that right, Mark?”
“I’m the best poet in New Orleans,” the ghostly young man said heavily, mooning his pale, prehensile face at her.
“We were kind of wondering where you were, Mark,” Fairchild told the best poet in New Orleans. “We got the idea you were supposed to be on the boat with us. Too bad you couldn’t come,” he continued tediously.
“Maybe Mark couldn’t find himself in time,” the Semitic man suggested, taking his seat.
“He’s found his appetite, though,” Fairchild replied. “Maybe he’ll find the rest of himself laying around somewhere near by.” He seated himself and stared at the plate before him. He murmured, “Well, well,” with abstraction. His companions found seats and Major Ayers stared at his plate. He murmured, “Well, well,” also. Mrs. Maurier chewed her lip nervously, putting her hand on Mr. Talliaferro’s sleeve. Major Ayers murmured:
“It does look familiar, doesn’t it?” and Fairchild said:
“Why, it’s grapefruit: I can tell every time,” He looked at Major Ayers. “I’m not going to eat mine, now. I’m going to put it away and save it.”
“Right you are,” agreed Major Ayers readily. “Save ’em by all means,” He set his grapefruit carefully to one side. “Advise you people to do the same,” he added at large.
“Save them?” Mrs. Maurier repeated in astonishment. “Why, there are more of them. We have several crates.”
Fairchild wagged his head at her. “I can’t risk it. They might be lost overboard or something, and us miles from land. I’m going to save mine.”
Major Ayers offered a suggestion. “Save the rinds, anyway. Might need ’em. Never can tell what might happen at sea, y’know,” he said owlishly.
“Sure,” Fairchild agreed. “Might need ’em in a pinch to prevent constipation,” Mrs. Maurier clasped Mr. Talliaferro’s arm again.
“Mr. Talliaferro!” she whispered imploringly. Mr. Talliaferro sprang to the breach.
“Now that we are all together at last,” he began, clearing his throat, “the Commodore wishes us to choose our first port of call. In other words, people, where shall we go tomorrow?” He looked from face to face about the table.
“Why, nowhere,” answered Fairchild with surprise. “We just came from somewhere yesterday, didn’t we?”
“You mean today,” Mrs. Wiseman told him. “We left New Orleans this morning.”
“Oh, did we? Well, well, it takes a long time to spend the afternoon, don’t it? But we don’t want to go anywhere, do we?”
“Oh, yes,” Mr. Talliaferro contradicted him smoothly. “Tomorrow we are going up the Tchufuncta river and spend the day fishing. Our plan was to go up the river and spend the night, but this was found impossible. So we shall go up tomorrow. Is this unanimous or shall we call for a ballot?”