Chapter II - Page 2

heavily, set his derby hat on the floor beside him and replied briefly: "I was."

Captain Murphy excused himself and drew Matt Peasley out of the room. "God knows," he whispered hoarsely, "religion should never enter into the working of a ship, and I suppose I'll have to get along with that fellow; but did you mark the Masonic ring on the paw of the Far-Down? And on the right hand, too! The jackass don't know enough to wear it on his left hand."

"Why, what's wrong about being a Mason?" Matt protested. "Cappy's a Mason and so am I."

"Nothing wrong about it--with you and Cappy Ricks. That's your privilege. You're Protestants."

"Well, maybe the chief's a Protestant, too," Matt suggested, but Mike Murphy silenced him with a sardonic smile.

"With that name?" he queried, and laughed the brief, mirthless laugh of the man who knows. "And he says he's from Belfast! Man, I could cut that Kerry brogue with a belaying pin."

"Why, Mike," Matt interrupted, "I never before suspected you were intolerant of a shipmate's private convictions. I must say this attitude of yours is disturbing."

"Why, I'm not a bigot," Murphy protested virtuously. "Who told you that?"

"Why, you're a Catholic, and you resent Reardon because he's a Protestant."

"Not a bit of it. You're a Protestant, and don't I love you like a brother?"

Matt thought he saw the light. "Oh, I see," he replied. "It's because Reardon is an Irish Protestant."

"Almost--but not quite. God knows I hate the Orangemen for what they did to me and mine, but at least they've been Protestant since the time of Henry VIII. But the lad inside there has no business to be a Protestant. The Lord intended him for a Catholic--and he knows it. He's a renegade. I don't blame you for being a Protestant, Matt. It's none of my business."

Matt Peasley had plumbed the mystery at last. He had been reading a good deal in the daily papers about Home Rule for Ireland, the Irish Nationalists, the Ulster Volunteers, the Unionists, and so on, and in a vague way he had always understood that religious differences were at the bottom of it all. He realized now that it was something deeper than that--a relic of injustice and oppression; a hostility that had come to Mike Murphy as a heritage from his forbears--something he had imbibed at his mother's breast and was, for purposes of battle, a more vital issue than the interminable argument about the only safe road to heaven.

"I see," Matt murmured. "Reardon, being Irish, has violated the national code of the Irish--"

"You've said it, Matt. They're Tories at heart, every mother's son of them."

"What do you mean--Tories?"