“Yeh. If you were rich you’d buy a lot of clothes and jewelry and an automobile. And then what’d you do? Wear your clothes out sitting in the automobile, huh?”
“I guess so…. I wouldn’t buy a boat, anyway…. I think he’s kind of good looking. Not very snappy looking, though. I wonder what he’s making?”
“Better go ask him,” Pete answered shortly. “I don’t know.”
“I don’t want to know, anyhow. I was just kind of wondering.” She swung herself slowly at arms’ length, against the wind, slowly until she swung herself over beside Pete, leaning her back against him.
“Go on and ask him,” Pete insisted, his elbows hooked over the rail, ignoring Jenny’s soft weight. “A pretty boy like him won’t bite you.”
“I don’t mind being bit,” Jenny replied placidly…. “Peter — …?”
“Get away, kid: I’m respectable,” Pete told her. “Try your pretty boy; see if you can compete with that saw.”
“I like peppy looking men,” Jenny remarked. She sighed. “Gee, I wish there was a movie to go to or something.” (I wonder what he’s making.)
“What horsepower does she develop?” the nephew asked, raising his voice above the deep vibration of the engine, staring at it entranced. It was clean as a watch, nickeled and red-leaded — a latent and brooding power beneath a thin film of golden lubricating oil like the film of moisture on a splendid animal functioning, physical with perfection. The captain in a once white cap with a tarnished emblem on the visor, and a thin undershirt stained with grease, told him how much horsepower she developed.
He stood in a confined atmosphere oppressive with energy: an ecstatic tingling that penetrated to the core of his body, giving to his entrails a slightly unpleasant sensation of lightness, staring at the engine with rapture.
It was as beautiful as a racehorse and in a way terrifying, since with all its implacable soulless power there was no motion to be seen save a trivial nervous flickering of rockerarms — a thin bright clicking that rode just above the remote contemplative thunder of it. The keelplates shook with it, the very bulkheads trembled with it, as though a moment were approaching when it would burst the steel as a cocoon is burst, and soar upward and outward on dreadful and splendid wings of energy and flame….
But the engine was bolted down with huge bolts, clean and firm and neatly redleaded; bolts that nothing could break, as firmly fixed as the nethermost foundations of the world. Across the engine, above the flickering rockerarms, the captain’s soiled cap appeared and vanished. The nephew moved carefully around the engine, following.
There was a port at the height of his eye and he saw beyond it sky bisected by a rigid curving sweep of water stiff with a fading energy like bronze. The captain was busy with a wisp of cotton waste, hovering about the engine, dabbing at its immaculate anatomy with needless maternal infatuation. The nephew watched with interest. The captain leaned nearer, wiped his waste through a small accumulation of grease at the base of a pushrod, and raised it to the light.
The nephew approached, peering over the captain’s shoulder.
It was a tiny speck, quite dead.
“What is it, Josh?” his sister said, breathing against his neck. The nephew turned sharply.
“Gabriel’s pants,” he said. “What are you doing down here? Who told you to come down here?”
“I wanted to come, too,” she answered, crowding against him. “What is it, Captain? What’ve you and Gus got?”
“Here,” her brother thrust at her, “get on back on deck where you belong. You haven’t got any business down here.”
“What is it, Captain?” she repeated, ignoring him. The captain extended his rag. “Did the engine kill it?” she asked.
“Gee, I wish we could get all of ’em down here and lock the door for a while, don’t you?” She stared at the engine, at the flickering rockerarms. She squealed. “Look! Look how fast they’re going. It’s going awfully fast, isn’t it, Captain?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the captain replied. “Pretty fast.”
“What’s her bore and stroke?” the nephew asked. The captain examined a dial. Then he turned a valve slightly.
Then he examined the dial again. The nephew repeated his question and the captain told him her bore and stroke.
“She revs up pretty well, don’t she?” the nephew suggested after a while.
“Yes, sir,” the captain answered. He was busy doing something with two small wrenches, and the nephew offered to help. His sister followed, curious and intent.
“I expect you’d better let me do it alone,” the captain said, courteous and firm. “I know her better than you, I expect.,.. Suppose you and the young lady stand over there just a little.”
“You sure do keep her clean, Captain,” the niece said. “Clean enough to eat off of, isn’t she?”
The captain thawed. “She’s worth keeping clean. Best marine engine made. German. She cost twelve thousand dollars.”
“Gee,” the niece remarked in a hushed tone. Her brother turned upon her, pushing her before him from the room.
“Look here,” he said fiercely, his voice shaking, when they were again in the passage. “What are you doing, following me around? What did I tell you I was going to do if you followed me any more?”
“I wasn’t following you. I—”
“Yes, you were,” he interrupted, shaking her, “following me. You—”
“I just wanted to come, too. Besides, it’s Aunt Fat’s boat: it’s not yours. I’ve got as much right down there as you have.”
“Aw, get on up on deck. And if I catch you trailing around behind me again.. his voice merged into a dire and nameless threat. The niece turned toward the companion-way, “Oh, haul in your sheet: you’re jibbing.”
FOUR O’CLOCK
They sat at their bridge on deck, shuffling, dealing, speaking in sparse monosyllables. The Nausikaa surged sedately onward under the blue drowsing afternoon. Far away on the horizon, the lazy smudge of the Mandeville ferry.
Mrs. Maurier on the outskirt of the game, gazed at intervals abstractedly into space. From below there came an indistinguishable sound, welling at intervals, and falling, and Mr, Talliaferro grew restive. The sound died away at intervals, swelled again. The Nausikaa paced sedately on.
They played their hands, dealt and shuffled again, Mr. Talliaferro was becoming distrait. Every once in a while his attention strayed and returning found Mrs. Maurier’s eyes upon him, coldly contemplative, and he bent anew over his cards…. The indistinguishable sound welled once more. Mr. Talliaferro trumped his partner’s queen and the gentlemen in their bathing suits surged up the stairs.
They completely ignored the cardplayers, passing aft in a body and talking loudly; something about a wager. They paused at the rail upon which the steward leaned at the moment; here they clotted momentarily, then Major Ayers detached himself from the group and flung himself briskly and awkwardly overboard. “Hurray,” roared Fairchild. “He wins!”
Mrs. Maurier had raised her face when they passed, she had spoken to them and had watched them when they halted, and she saw Major Ayers leap overboard with a shocked and dreadful doubt of her own eyesight. Then she screamed.
The steward stripped off his jacket, detached and flung a lifebelt, then followed himself, diving outward and away from the screw. “Two of ’em,” Fairchild howled with joy. “Pick you up when we come back,” he megaphoned through his hands.
Major Ayers came up in the wake of the yacht, swimming strongly. The Nausikaa circled, the telegraph rang. Major Ayers and the steward reached the lifebelt together, and before the yacht lost way completely the helmsman and the deckhand had swung the tender overside, and soon they hauled Major Ayers savagely into the small boat.
The Nausikaa was hove to. Mrs. Maurier was helped below to her cabin, where her irate captain attended her presently. Meanwhile the other gentlemen plunged in and began to cajole the ladies, so the rest of the party went below and donned their bathing suits.
Jenny didn’t have one: her sole preparation for the voyage had consisted of the purchase of a lipstick and a comb. The niece loaned Jenny hers, and in this borrowed suit which fit her a shade too well, Jenny clung to the gunwale of the tender, clutching Pete’s hand and floating her pink-and-white face like a toy balloon unwetted above the water, while Pete sat in the boat fully dressed even to his hat, glowering.
Mr. Talliaferro’s bathing suit was red, giving him a bizarre desiccated look, like a recently extracted tooth. He wore also a red rubber cap and he let himself gingerly into the water feet first from the stern of the tender, and here he clung beside the placid Jenny, trying to engage her in small talk beneath Pete’s thunderous regard. The ghostly poet in his ironed serge — he didn’t swim — lay again at full length on four chairs, craning his pale prehensile face above the bathers.
Fairchild looked more like a walrus than ever: a deceptively sedate walrus of middle age suddenly evincing a streak of demoniac puerility. He wallowed and splashed, heavily playful, and, seconded by Major Ayers, annoyed the ladies by pinching them under water and by splashing them, wetting Pete liberally where he sat smoldering with Jenny clinging to his hand and squealing, trying to protect her make-up.
The Semitic man paddled around with that rather ludicrous intentness of a fat man swimming. Gordon sat on the rail, looking on. Fairchild and Major Ayers at last succeeded in driving the ladies back into the tender, about which they splashed and yapped with the tactless playfulness of dogs while Pete refraining “Look out goddam you look out christ watcher doing lookout” struck at their fingers with one of his
