Excerpt
Chapter One. The “Stella Maris” and Mrs Vansittart.
“Well, young man, what do you think of her?”
The question was addressed to me in a very pleasantly modulated female voice, carrying just the slightest suspicion of an American accent. For the fraction of a second I was a wee bit startled. I had not had the ghost of a suspicion that anyone was nearer me than the gang of labourers who were busily engaged in unloading a big delivery wagon and transferring the contents, in the shape of numerous packing cases, to the deck of the vessel which I was scrutinising. It was afternoon of a grey day in the latter part of October three years ago; and the scene was one of the wharves of the east basin of the London Docks, round which I had been prowling in search of a ship. I had been thus engaged ever since nine o’clock that morning, interviewing skippers and mates, so far unsuccessfully, when I was “brought up all standing” by finding myself in close proximity to a white-hulled, ship-rigged craft of, I estimated, some two thousand five hundred tons measurement.
She was steel-built, with steel lower masts, bowsprit, and lower and topsail yards; and even if she had not been sporting the ensign of the New York Yacht Club at her ensign staff and its burgee at her main royal-mast-head, I should still have known her for a yacht from the perfection of her lines, the dainty and exquisite beauty of her shape, the whiteness of her decks (notwithstanding their somewhat littered condition), the beautiful modelling of her boats, her polished teak rails, and generally the high finish and perfect cleanliness of her deck fittings. She was as heavily rigged as a frigate; moreover, although no guns were visible, I observed that her main-deck bulwarks were pierced with six ports of a side, in the wake of which steel racers were bolted to the deck; also she sported hammock rails, which I had never seen before except in pictures of old-fashioned wooden men-o’-war. A gilt cable moulding ornamented her sheer strake; a beautifully carved and gilded full-length figure of a woman wearing a star of cut-glass facets on her forehead formed her figurehead; and her quarters were adorned with a considerable amount of gilded scroll-work. Her elliptical stern bore, in large gilded block letters, the words: Stella Maris. New York.
As the enquiry with which I have opened this story reached my ears, I wheeled round and found myself face to face with a little lady. She was very richly dressed in silk and furs, quite colourless as to complexion, but with a fine pair of deep violet eyes and a quantity of dark chestnut hair loosely coiled under an immense hat rigged with black ostrich plumes. I put her down in my own mind as being something over thirty-six years of age, and I subsequently learned that I was not very far out.
Her eyes were dancing with amusement as I wheeled sharply round upon her; and as my hand went up to my cap she laughed a low, musical laugh.
“Guess I startled you some, didn’t I?” she remarked in that pleasant voice of hers....