Dan Merrithew | Page 2

full, he waited for her to complete the sentence.
"We," she continued, "of course meant no harm."
He did not reply for a moment, did not reply till her eyes fell.
"All right--thanks," he said simply and then hurried forward.
At sunset the Veiled Ladye was well on her way to New York, and the
Hydrographer was plugging past Hog Island light with her
cumbersome tows plunging astern.
It came to be a wild night. The tumbling blue-black clouds of late
afternoon fulfilled their promise of evil things for the dark. There were
fierce pounding hours when the wrath of the sea seemed centred upon
the Hydrographer and her lumbering barges, when the towing-lines
hummed like the harp strings of Aeolus.
It was man's work the crew of the Hydrographer performed that night;

when the dawn came and the wind departed with a farewell shriek, and
the seas began to fall, Dan Merrithew sat quiet for a while, gazing
vacantly out over the gray waters, wrestling with the realization that
through all the viewless turmoil the face of a girl he did not
know--never would know, probably--had not been absent from his
mind; that the sound of her voice had lingered in his ears rising out of
the elemental confusion, as the notes of a violin, freeing themselves
from orchestral harmony, suddenly rise clear, dominating the motif in
piercing obligato.
When he arose it was with the conviction that this meant something
which eventually would prove of interest to him. One evening some
three months before, he had visited the little sailors' church which floats
in the East River at the foot of Pike Street in New York, and listened to
a preacher who was speaking in terms as simple as he could make them,
with Fate as his text.
Fate, he said, works, in mysterious ways and does queer things with its
instruments. It may sear a soul, or alter the course of a life in seeming
jest; but the end proves no jest at all, and if we live long enough and
grow wise with our years, we learn that at the bottom, ever and always,
in everything, was a guiding hand, a sure intent, and a serious purpose.
It was a good, plain, simple talk such as longshoremen, dock-rats,
tugmen, and seamen often hear in this place, but it impressed young
Merrithew; for, although he had never accepted his misfortunes, nor
reasoned away the things that tried his soul in this philosophical
manner, yet he had always had a vague conviction that everything that
happened was for his good and would work out in the end.
The words of the preacher seemed to give him clearer understanding in
this regard, taught him to weigh carefully things which, as they
appeared to him, were on the face insignificant. This had led him into
strange trends of thought, had encouraged, in a way, superstitious
fancies not altogether good for him. He knew that, and he had cursed
his folly, and yet on this morning after the storm, on the after-deck of a
throbbing tugboat he nodded his head sharply, outward acquiescence to
an inward conviction that somehow, somewhere, he was going to see

that face again and hear that voice. That was as certain as that he lived.
And when this took place he would not be a tugboat mate. That was all.
Whatever he did thereafter he had this additional incentive, the future
meeting with a tall, lithe girl with dark-brown hair and gray eyes--brave,
deep eyes, and slightly swarthy cheeks, which were crimson as she
spoke to him.
CHAPTER II
DAN'S SEARCH FOR THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT
Daniel Merrithew was one of the Merrithews of a town near Boston, a
prime old seafaring family. His father had a waning interest in three
whaling-vessels; and when two of them opened like crocuses at their
piers in New Bedford, being full of years, and the third foundered in the
Antarctic, the old man died, chiefly because he could see no clear way
of longer making a living.
Young Merrithew at the time was in a New England preparatory school,
playing excellent football and passing examinations by the skin of his
teeth. Thrown upon his own resources, his mother having died in early
years, he had to decide whether he would work his way through the
school and later through college, or trust to such education as he
already had to carry him along in the world.
It was altogether adequate for practical purposes, he argued, and so he
lost little time in proceeding to New York, where he began a business
career as a clerk in the office of the marine superintendent of a great
coal-carrying railroad. It was a beginning with a quick ending. The
clerkly pen was not for him;