“Shanghai!” said McTee, as light broke
on his memory. “What a night that was.”
“But you—”
“The Mary Rogers took a header for Davy
Jones’s locker; first mate drunk and ran her
on a reef; all hands went under except the three of
us; we drifted to this island.”
“Black McTee shipwrecked! By God, if we
get to port with our old tramp, I’ll get a farm
and stick to dry land.”
“Your ship?”
“The Heron, four thousand tons, White
Henshaw, skipper.”
“White Henshaw?” cried McTee in almost
reverent tones.
“The same. Old White still sticks to his
wheel. He’s as hard a man as you, McTee,
in his own way.”
They were pulling close to the freighter by this time,
and Salvain gave quick orders to lay the boat alongside.
In another moment they stood on the deck, where a
tall man in white clothes advanced to meet them.
“Good fishing, sir,” said Salvain.
“We’ve picked up three shipwrecked people,
with Angus McTee among them.”
“Black McTee!” cried the other, and even
in the dim light he picked out the towering form of
the Scotchman.
“It took a wreck to bring us together, Captain
Henshaw,” said McTee, “but here we are,
I’ve combed the South Seas for ten years for
the sake of meeting you.”
“H-m!” grunted Henshaw. “We’ll
drink on the strength of that. Come into the
cabin.”
They trooped after him, Salvain and the three rescued,
and stood in the roomy cabin, the captain and the
first mate dapper and cool in their white uniforms,
the other three marvelously ragged. Barefooted,
their hair falling in jags across their foreheads,
their muscles bulging through the rents in their shirts,
McTee and Harrigan looked battered but triumphant.
Kate Malone might have been the prize which they had
safely carried away. She was even more ragged
than her companions, and now she withdrew into a shadowy
corner of the cabin and shook the long, loose masses
of her hair about her shoulders.
The dark eye of Pietro Salvain was quick to note her
condition. He was a rather small, lean-faced
man with the skin drawn so tightly across his high
cheekbones that it glistened. He was emaciated;
his energy consumed him as hunger consumes other men.
“There is a berth for me below,” he said
to Kate. “You must take my room. And
I have a cap, some silk shirts, a loose coat which
you might wear—so?”
“This is Miss Malone, Salvain,” said McTee
before she could answer.
“You are very kind, Mr. Salvain,” she
said.
He smiled and bowed very low, and then opened the
door for her; but all the while his glance was upon
McTee, who stared at him so significantly that before
following Kate through the door, Salvain shrugged his
shoulders and made a gesture of resignation.
The captain turned to Harrigan. Henshaw was very
old. He was always so erect and carried his chin
so high that the loose skin of his throat hung in
two sharp ridges. In spite of the tight-lipped
mouth, the beaklike nose, and the small, gleaming
eyes, there was something about his face which intensified
his age. Perhaps it was the yellow skin, dry
as the parchment from an Egyptian tomb and criss-crossed
by a myriad little wrinkles.
