THE grim story which the missionary had heard from Black Pawl stayed in his mind; he could not put it aside. He thought upon it constantly, wondering, seeking, puzzling for the key.
He hesitated to speak of it again to Black Pawl. Since that night of confidences the Captain had avoided him, with something shame-faced in his manner, as if he regretted having spoken. The man of the church was not one to harass another; he knew Black Pawl must hate to think or speak of that which had passed. But the missionary’s mind dwelt on it constantly; he watched Black Pawl, and pondered.
There is a certain comfort and solace in talking of our own miseries. It is as though, by revealing them to others, we shift the burden of the load from our own shoulders. Black Pawl, until he spoke to the missionary, had never tasted this measure of comfort; and having tasted, it wasinevitable, finally, that he should seek it again. The missionary understood this, as he considered the matter; and so he waited with some patience, and in the end, as he expected, Black Pawl brought up the tale once more.
“I’ve been wondering, Father,” he said with a mockery of respect in his tones, “just what you meant by saying you pitied me for what must surely come.”
The missionary did not answer at once; and when he did, it was with another question. “Black Pawl,” he said, “are you sure your wife and your child are dead?”
The Captain laughed bitterly. “Sure.”
“You told me the—evil men—denied the thing.”
“At first, yes,” said Black Pawl. “But at the last, just before I broke his neck, seeking to save the worthless life in him, the chief of them admitted the whole.”
The missionary considered, eyes afar with his thoughts. “Was there any way,” he asked, “by which you might have known them, if you had ever found the two? Not your wife only, but—your daughter.”
“Aye,” said Black Pawl. “I would know.” His voice was dead in his throat.
“But you never saw the child.”
“No.”
“How could you know?”
The Captain flung about, and asked harshly: “Should I not know my own?”
There was a gentle persistence in the missionary. He ignored the rebuff. “Cap’n Pawl,” he said, “there are strange chances in this world. It is impossible ever to besure.”
“It isnotimpossible,” said the Captain. “For Iamsure.”
“That dying man may have lied.”
Black Pawl threw back his head. “Father,” he said, “I thought of that. I called him a liar. And he showed me a drawer hidden in the cabin of their filthy schooner; and from the drawer he picked out for me a wedding-ring. I knew it. So was I sure.”
“So—the wedding-ring.” It was as though the missionary spoke to himself; then he asked: “Have you the ring?”
“Aye,” answered Black Pawl.
The man of the church considered a moment.
“You gave her other—jewels, I have no doubt,” he suggested. “Did this man have them as well?”
Black Pawl shook his head. “She was not one for such baubles. There was only a little locket. When I left her, at the last, with our son, we made a daguerreotype of him, that she might wear it in this locket about her throat. It was not worth the stealing, or it was lost before the end. At least, this man had it not.”
“You asked him for it?”
“No. When he showed me the wedding-ring, he was in five seconds of death.”
“What was that locket like?” the missionary pursued.
But Black Pawl could endure no more. “Man,” he cried, “have done!” His voice broke with a laugh. “This digging in dead years is fool’s work, Father,” he said. “Have done with it, for good and all.”
For a space of minutes the missionary stood musing, while Black Pawl paced the deck behind him, now and again roaring orders to laggers amidships. In the end he paused, then drew near the missionary again.
“Why do you pity me, Father?” he asked. “You’ve not told that.”
The calm eyes looked up at him; and the man of the church answered steadily: “Because of the thing that is before you, Cap’n Pawl.”
Black Pawl laughed. “Aye, you said that. Prophesy, Father—prophesy! Whatisbefore me?”
“You love your son?” asked the missionary. Black Pawl’s face twisted, and he laughed again.
“Oh, aye!” he said.
“Because heisyour son, blood of your blood,” the man of the church defined. “But—you also hate your son.”
The Captain was smiling grimly. “Have it so. This is paradox, not prophecy.”
“There is evil in him,” said the missionary. “The blood that you gave him, the life you have shown him—these have bred evil in the man. And you have justice in you; and because of that justice, you hate the evil in Red Pawl. I pity you, Captain, because some day you must choose between the blood-son whom you love and the evil son whom you hate. And that will not be an easy choice.”
Black Pawl snapped his fingers. “Fiddle!” he exclaimed. “I’ve laid hands on him as a boy; I can do it still. I can chastise, if there’s need.”
“Red Pawl is no longer a boy,” replied the missionary. “He isthe worst of you, alive before your eyes, my friend.”
“Well?” the Captain challenged. “Is it not something to see your sins so plainly?”
The missionary hesitated; then he held out his hand and smiled. “Captain,” he said, “you are a man, and my friend. Whether you believe in their worth or no, you have my prayers.”
“They’ll do no harm, at the least,” answered Black Pawl; and a simple and honest gratitude for this friendship was behind the mockery in his tones.
ON the second day afterward, theDeborahran into the fringes of bad weather. In mid-morning the wind began to rise unpleasantly; the glass was falling, and the skies were overcast. Black Pawl had been driving the schooner under full canvas. He was a bold man without being a reckless one, and when the signs turned against him, he ordered topsails furled and reefs in fore and main. It was Dan Darrin’s watch on deck, and Dan went forward to direct the work. Black Pawl was aft, with the old missionary. The mate was below in his cabin, Ruth in hers.
When the work was under way, the Captain turned and said: “Best come below, Father. This wind’s a rough one.”
The old missionary shook his head. His cheeks were ruddy with the buffets of wind and spray, and his eyes were shining. “There’s still sap enough in this old body of mine to like it,” he said.
Black Pawl laughed. Then he caught Dan Darrin’s eye and bade him watch for a space. He meant to go below for his storm gear and return to take the deck. It was in his mind to be no more than a minute below; but when he dropped down the companion, the ship, and the brewing storm and the sea were all forgotten in what he beheld.
The door of the girl’s cabin was open. Beyond this open doorway Ruth was struggling in the arms of Red Pawl. She was fighting silently, pushing at him with her hands against his breast. And Red was laughing, and whispering to her.
At the sight Black Pawl felt something surge in his breast that he had not known was there, a hot flood of passion and anger. For an instant he stood quite still, choking against the beating of his own heart; and his face turned black. The girl saw him, and called softly across the cabin:
“Cap’n Pawl—please.”
He had time to mark, even then, that her voice was level and unafraid.
As she spoke, Red Pawl turned his head, andover his shoulder beheld his father. He loosed the girl, and turned, half crouching. He moved forward two steps, to the cabin table, and rested his great hands on it, and gazed at Black Pawl eye to eye.
That instant the flood of passion in the Captain’s heart burst its bounds. He leaped forward with the swift and silent ferocity of a beast; and at sight of his convulsed face, the girl shuddered. But she held her ground in the corner, watching. The cabin was so small that there was no room for any maneuvering; the table in the center left only narrow ways about the sides. It was like witnessing the battle of two lions in a pit.
Black Pawl, in his charge, seemed not to see the table. He struck it with his thighs; and stout as it was, and secure as it was in its place upon the floor, it was wrenched loose and flung against Red Pawl, bearing him back; and for an instant he was pinned against the wall, the table against his legs, his father’s huge knotted fists lashing at him.
Since Red was a child, Black Pawl had never struck him in anger. And now, at those first blows, the son was whipped to a fury as fierce asthat of Black Pawl. He ducked, bent his back, and thrust the table from his knees; he came on Black Pawl then, from the side, head down. He got his arms about the other’s middle; their two bodies crashed down upon the table, smashing it to splinters.
The sudden tumult in the cabin had brought the missionary and Dan Darrin, running. Pinned in his son’s arms, Black Pawl saw them, and he called in stern, sure tones:
“Dan, on deck! Take the ship. Father, stand away. I’ve a lesson to teach here.”
Dan obeyed instantly; the missionary paused by the companion, watching. Tighter Red Pawl’s arms wound about his father, as though he would crush the older man.
Red was the stronger. He was built broad, built thick, built solid upon the ground, whereas Black Pawl was lean and long. Nevertheless, Black Pawl had more of the lore of rough and tumble; and through the years his strength had ripened, not decayed. Held down now by the heavier man, crushed in that viselike grip, he cooled to a deadly ferocity; then worked his long arm up for a blow that, when it fell, rockedRed’s head upon his shoulders. For an instant only the other’s muscles slacked, but the instant was enough to let Black Pawl get his elbow beneath the other’s throat, and thrust up and away. Red was finally forced to yield, for if he had not, his head must have been torn from his shoulders. He writhed back, shifting to obtain a fresh hold, and Black Pawl squirmed to one side, and to his feet, and so was free. He stepped back, breathing deep into his strangled lungs; instantly Red sprang to his feet, lowered his head and charged.
Black Pawl was too wise to send home a blow a-top that lowered head. He had seen many an unwise man break a fist thus and lose thereby. As Red came near, he stepped to one side with a lagging foot, and Red stumbled over this foot, and went into the cabin wall with a crash that would have stunned a weaker man. As he straightened, Black Pawl met him with a blow full in the face that drove Red’s head back against the paneling. Then the younger man ducked, and blocked with cunning elbows and shoulders hunched high, and strove again to come to closer quarters.
Black Pawl was still too nimble for him. It was like a bullfight. Red was the bull, and Black Pawl’s blows pricked him again and again as he charged fruitlessly upon and past the older man. In the end, Red understood that what he wished to do could not be done in this way; he must stand and fight. And so he changed his tactics. Standing back, he took his ease and caught his breath while Black Pawl pushed the fighting. Red was content to guard, take what blows came, and wait till his strength was restored again.
When he was ready, he lifted his head and began.
In such fighting as this, Black Pawl had all the advantage; he was taller, and swifter of foot, and he had three inches the reach of the other man. His knuckles cut Red’s cheek, smashed Red’s mouth, beat a tattoo upon his face that would have killed another man. As for Red, he did not strike for the head. He was plugging at Black Pawl’s ribs, but Black Pawl’s fists had a way of tapping Bed’s biceps or wrists in a fashion that took the strength from these blows. Meanwhile, he landed almost at will upon his son; and any one of a dozen blows he struckwould have plunged a weaker man swiftly into oblivion.
After a time this became plain to both of them. Red realized that Black Pawl could not hurt him, that he could endure the worst the older man could send; and Black Pawl knew this as quickly as his son. Nevertheless, he would cut Red to pieces with his blows. The mate must weaken in the end. He struck, and struck, and struck again.
Red lowered his head into the shelter of his left shoulder and rested his right arm, fending with the left. And he began to wait, and wait, and watch for the chance he sought. Soon or late, his father’s chin must come within reach of that waiting fist. And when it did—
His chance came quickly. He ducked a straightforward blow that slid across his shoulder, and brought Black Pawl’s face within a few inches of his own. Before the Captain could guard, Red’s right whipped up squarely on the chin, a little to the left of the point, where the full jolt of it was instantly communicated through jawbone and skull to those nerves which bear to the muscles the messages of the brain.Black Pawl went spinning backward, slack and weak and helpless; and Red gathered his breath and leaped.
There was no more than a second’s space between Red’s blow and his charge, but that second was long enough for the sickness to pass—long enough for Black Pawl to gain control of his shaking body once more. Then Red had him around the waist again; he felt his son’s hip thrust against his thigh and knew what was coming—the throw for which there is no guard, no defense except to yield to it. Black Pawl let himself go limply, but as his feet left the floor, his hands reached out and got the grip he sought. His long fingers closed on his son’s neck. He sank them home, pressing—pressing.
He was in the air, all his weight flying. Yet his hands still gripped the other’s throat. So the momentum of his own throw dragged Red Pawl forward, overbalancing him. He fell a-top Black Pawl in a rolling heap, and Black Pawl’s thumbs sank in between the great muscles at the side of the neck, and the gullet in front. Their paralyzing pressure stopped Red’s breath, stopped the blood in the great arteries that feedthe brain. He felt insensibility enveloping him; then with a mighty effort he flung his elbow into Black Pawl’s throat and broke the hold. For an instant again he was free of that choking terror. They were grappling, entwined like snakes in a knot upon the floor.
Black Pawl’s hand slid beneath his son’s arm; and with all his strength he drove his thumb in against the tender flesh that covers the ribs at the armpit. There is no more excruciating pain; Red Pawl screamed with it, and fumbled frantically for his father’s wrist.
Instantly Black Pawl’s fingers found the other’s throat again; Red slackened and choked, and was limp. Black Pawl shook him, once, and twice; and then he flung him to one side, and rose upright, and stood gazing down upon his prostrate son.
His shirt was torn away; his iron-gray hair was down about his eyes. Blood smeared his shoulder and his mouth. Still he was an heroic and unconquerable figure, strong and sure. The girl who had watched it all in silence from the doorway now uttered a soft, almost breathless cry. Black Pawl looked toward her, and laughedthrough his bloody lips, and then looked down again upon his son, who was choking back to life. The missionary had stood impassive by the companion throughout the fight, watching the two men.
All three now watched the man on the floor. Red Pawl groaned and gasped, and so at last could breathe again. He sat up weakly, supporting himself on his arm. Black Pawl bent and lifted him with a hand upon his collar; he slapped Red harshly on the cheek.
“On deck!” he said. “On deck with you. And sharp, now!”
With one murderous look at his father, Red Pawl turned and staggered to the companion. Halfway up, he paused and looked again at the Captain through level eyes. Black Pawl laughed and waved a careless hand. “Sharp, there!” he said.
Red went up to the deck, disappearing from their sight. When he was gone, his father glanced uncertainly around and began to tremble and sway upon his feet. Then he sank softly to the floor, and leaning heavily against the cabin wall, he closed his eyes.
The girl came running to him, sobbing; and when he opened his eyes and saw her face bent above him, he smiled; the old mockery danced in his eyes, and he flung an arm about her neck and drew her down and kissed her, still laughing.
“I’ve earned that, haven’t I?” he challenged.
She crimsoned and into her eyes flashed a look of hurt and sorrow. The old missionary turned from one to the other, but said nothing.
“Come, you don’t grudge that kiss?” Black Pawl demanded of her gayly.
She answered quietly: “I’d have—given it. I’m sorry that you took it so.”
“Then give it,” the Captain bade her.
And she bent and kissed him on the forehead, her hand upon his hair. And the heart in his bosom leaped at the caress.
“Was not that a fight worth seeing, Ruth?” he cried. “Worth winning?”
“It was terrible,” she told him. “Oh, even though he is your son, I’m afraid for you. There was death in his eyes, Cap’n Pawl.”
At that the Captain laughed again, and stumbling to his feet, stood swaying above them.“Fiddle!” he said. “He’s fanciful. But he’s not a man to fear, not Red Pawl.”
The girl looked at the missionary, and saw her own fear mirrored in his eyes, and something of sorrow as well. But she said no more.
AFTER the fight with his son, a change came over Cap’n Pawl, a change which made the missionary uneasy.
Black Pawl said to him next day: “Well, Father, you were a true prophet. The thing came about as you said. But you see, it is finished, with no harm done after all.”
“It has come,” said the missionary. “But it is not finished.”
“You’re a persistent prophet, at least,” the Captain answered. “What more will there be?”
The other replied: “Have you marked the mate’s fashion of whispering among the crew?”
“Yes; Red was always a whisperer.”
“Is there no harm to be foreseen in that?”
Black Pawl chuckled and waved his hand. “I’m harsh with my men, but they love me,” he boasted. “They even tell me what Red whispers to them. Not one would listen to him.”
“Not one?” the missionary asked; and Black Pawl said again:
“Not one.”
He spoke surely. But there was doubt in him; there was a dreadful doubt which he would not admit, but could not down. He had seen, as well as any man, the blackness of Red’s heart in the man’s eye after their conflict. He had seen the evil in the man; and because Red was his son, and because Red was evil, Black Pawl’s heart was near the breaking-point.
He hid this, or sought to hide it, as he was accustomed to hide all the tragedy in his life. He became more boisterous, more bold, more given to the mockery of his laughter. A devil of recklessness came to life in him. The native decency of him was drowned in the agony of Red’s self-betrayal. Red was his son, his only blood in all the world; and if Red Pawl were worthless, what was there left in life? What use in righteousness?
Hand in hand with this recklessness of despair, there was another and uglier impulse stirring in him. There had never been for him but one woman; there never could be another, he told himself, whom he would not scorn. And yet—he could not scorn Ruth Lytton.
There was tenderness in him for her; and because he had always told himself he could never harbor tenderness for any woman, he would not accept this feeling for what it was. He respected her, yet told himself that no woman deserved respect, since the one woman had proved lacking. He liked Ruth; yet he swore that no woman was worth liking, since one had been false. Yet a tender affection for Ruth grew in him, persisted. Since it was neither liking nor love, what could it be? He knew, and laughed, scorning himself, and her, and all the world.
But in the days that followed the fight, his thoughts came back and beat and beat again along this groove. And he watched her, wondering, wondering. The thought of her tormented him. That she was fair and clean and fine was torture to him who believed none fair nor clean nor fine. Unconsciously, he matched her against Red Pawl, his son; and because she was good where Red was evil, he thought he hated her.
Yet he had fought for her—yes, and won for her. He laughed unpleasantly at the thought. He remembered her kiss upon his forehead, and the touch of her gentle hand upon his hair, andhis heart ached at the memory. When he thought of that other kiss which he had taken from her, he was revolted. Yet he had taken such kisses before, and never loathed himself for them. Since she was so fair, why was she not fit for such kisses as other women gave? Why were her lips softly upon his forehead sweeter than her lips against his own?
He flung the mystery aside. Forget! Not worth the wondering! But he could not forget.
Black Pawl was more unhappy in these days than he had ever been before. For he knew now, more surely than ever, how much he loved Red Pawl. His son and hers, son of the one woman he had loved. His memories lingered about the baby that had first come to sea with him; and he contemplated the manhood to which that baby had come, and his heart ached. Alone, his head bowed upon his arms. There were times when he longed to go to the missionary for aid and counsel; but he put the wish away. This was a load that he alone must bear. Whatever his son was, he, Black Pawl, had made him so.
He wanted, desperately, at first, to go to the boy and wipe the strife away; he wanted to makeup with his son. His memory went back to the days of comradeship when Red was still a lad, and he was sick with longing for their return. He thought of the black chapters of the life he had led his son; and he lashed his own soul with the whips of memory. He tried, once, on the second day, to speak to Red as though nothing were amiss between them; but the mate gave him a level stare from dark and lowering eyes, and Black Pawl turned away. No words had passed between them since their battle. Black Pawl knew in his heart that no words of the old comradely sort would ever pass between them again.
He accepted this, at last, with the old reckless laugh. There was whisky in a bottle in his cabin. He drank deep of it.
It was not like Black Pawl to surrender to man or God; but in these days he was near surrender. He drank with a certain regularity, as the days passed. He was never fuddled; his eye was never clouded. But he was never quite sober; there was always a reckless bravado, an unreasoning and unreckoning carelessness about him.
On deck, one day, Black Pawl talked with RuthLytton. The girl had sensed something of the sorrow and misery that enveloped him. She was drawn to him by a sympathy which was stronger than she knew. She pitied him profoundly, and would have helped him, and tried, in unostentatious ways, to cheer and comfort him; and when she knew there was liquor in him, she was sorry and uneasy.
He asked her this day how she liked the voyage. She told him she was happy. This was not true. She was too sorry for him to be happy. He reminded her of the stiff gale they had fought, at the time of his battle with his son. “Were you frightened?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No,” she said. “I was not afraid.”
He touched her hand suddenly, and held it, chuckling. “You’re a pretty nervy thing, for a woman, seems to me.”
“I am not often afraid,” she said.
He caught her shoulder and turned her toward him then. “Ever afraid of me?” he asked.
She smiled. “No.”
“Not even when I grabbed that kiss—in the cabin?”
“No, I could never be afraid of you,” she told him, eyes meeting his bravely.
Dan Darrin came just then, with a question, and while he and the Captain spoke together, the girl moved away and went below. Black Pawl, watching her, scarce heard what Darrin was saying. Damn the girl, so clean and brave and good! She’d best be afraid of him. He thought he might teach her that trick, some day.
When Dan was gone, he cursed himself for a black dog because of his thought. But—the drink was in him, and his heart was sick for Red Pawl, and there was nothing in the world ahead.
WHEN Black Pawl boasted to the missionary that the men forward were so loyal they brought him word of Red Pawl’s talk to them, he spoke the truth. When he said there was not one of them who listened to the mate, he was mistaken. There was one—Spiess. Spiess had always received more than his share of rough usage; the man was a natural target for harsh words and for blows. Furthermore, he had not that fundamental good nature which made the others of the crew laugh at Black Pawl’s cheerful buffets. Also he lacked that sympathy of heart which dwelt in the others, and let them see the despair which the Captain hid behind his amiable violence.
Spiess listened to Red Pawl, and listened assentingly. Red made a dupe of the man, using him for his own ends. The mate hated his father; also he feared him. He called down death, in his thoughts, upon the Captain’s head;but he would never have dared strike the blow himself. He might have done it, a dozen times. Black Pawl was careless of his own safety. He never wore about him one of the revolvers which were kept in the cabin. Darrin was like him in this; but Red Pawl habitually went armed. The Captain trusted to his fists, and with some reason. He was the match of any two men aboard, saving perhaps his son, in using those lean fists of his.
Red Pawl told Spiess this, one day. “You talk and curse at him, under your breath,” the mate said openly to the other. “But what good is that? He masters you with his open hands. You can never touch him with them. Remember, he told you to bring better than fists next time.”
And Spiess, gripping the wheel-spokes, said under his breath: “Aye; and I will.”
Red Pawl laughed. “You will—thus; and you will—so,” he derided. “But you do—nothing, save take what he gives, and mouth at him behind his back.”
“I will,” Spiess told him. And he glanced at the mate sidewise. “When I do, like is, you’ll be on my back.”
Red Pawl was past caution by this time, in his hatred of the Captain. “When you do,” he said, “I’ll be left master o’ theDeborah. I’ll beatyour back, notonit. And—I’ll see the log is entered in a fashion you’d like.Whenyou do!”
Spiess looked at him suspiciously. He was not a trusting man. “When I do,” he said sullenly, “you can log and be damned.”
Then Black Pawl came up from below, and Red moved away from the wheel, and the Captain laughed at them both.
That boast of Black Pawl’s—that his men told him Red Pawl’s whisperings—was in his mind next day when old Flexer, who had sailed twelve years in Black Pawl’s ships, came to him. Flexer had been boat-steerer, and by the same token harpooner, in the boat of the lost third mate whose place had never been filled. He lived with the other harpooners just forward of the cabin. He and his fellows were neither flesh nor fowl—they were not of the crew; they were not of the cabin. Theirs was an intermediate status, and they had privileges. The crew, for example, never came aft of the try-works except upon duties assigned them; but the harpooners werefree of the schooner from knight’s-heads to galley, just at the break of deck. There were three of them; one was an islander, and one was of Cape Verde. Flexer, of New England stock, kept himself somewhat aloof from the other two. Also, he had his cronies forward.
He found an opportunity, one day when Red Pawl was below, to speak with the Captain; and he wasted no words in the matter. “Black Pawl,” he said in the tone of an old friend rather than that of an underling, “you’re a bold man; and there’s boldness in me too. I’m minded to tell you a thing that will bring your anger on me.”
Black Pawl looked at the other with narrowed eyes; then he chuckled, and warned the man: “Best look sharp. I’m like to knock you the deck’s length if I’m displeased with you. I’m a harsh man with my fists, Flexer.”
“Aye,” said Flexer gently. “But—not harsh in your heart, sir.”
Black Pawl looked astonished. “You’ve marked that?” he mocked.
Flexer said stubbornly: “You mark this, sir. The mate means harm to you.”
The Captain’s face set for a moment; then he said cheerfully: “So I guessed, in the cabin t’other day, when he tried to crush my in’ards in his arms.”
“Aye, I’ve heard of that,” Flexer said. “But—that was honest fighting, fists and feet. I’m meaning worse.”
For a moment he thought Black Pawl would strike; and he guessed there was liquor in the Captain. But the master of the ship held his hand. “What worse are you meaning, Flexer?” he asked.
“This,” said Flexer: “that if the fools for’ard believed half he whispered to them, there’d be a knife in your back in an hour.”
Black Pawl laughed aloud. “Fiddle, man!” he cried. “I’ve had knives in every inch of me, back and front. They no more than let a little blood.”
“Red Pawl would rather they let out a little life,” said Flexer.
Black Pawl flung the warning aside. “Even Red can’t always have his d’ruthers,” he replied.
“There is the minister,” Flexer urged.“And—there is the girl. They shipped with you, on your ship—not Red Pawl’s. And even if they had not, even if they were strangers ashore, even then, Black Pawl, it would be for you to guard against this son of yours.”
“Did I not curb him in the cabin?”
“I tell you no. I tell you there is death in his eye, for you; and worse for them.”
“For her?”
“For her.”
Black Pawl twisted away. “And why not?” he demanded. “Why is she better than another woman, to be so guarded? Let her take life, rough as it comes, as others do.”
Flexer looked in his captain’s eye; and there was flat condemnation in his gaze. Before his eyes the Captain’s fell.
“Old wives’ tales, Flexer,” he said mockingly. “Forget them; and be still, man—be still.”
RUTH LYTTON was sick with unhappiness for the sake of Black Pawl. She was sorry for him because his son was false; she was sorrier for him because Black Pawl was false to himself. He was drinking more and more; there was an ugly note in his voice, and an ugly devil in his eye. If she could have hated him, she would not have been unhappy; but since in spite of herself she had a tender liking for the man, she was miserable.
She found her only release from this unhappiness in the occasional hours she spent with Dan Darrin; yet she did not at first understand the significance of this. Love needs to be recognized. His counterfeit is never modest, never hidden; but love may slumber, and love may hide. Ruth Lytton’s discovery of the fact that she loved Dan Darrin came about quite simply, in this fashion:
It was in the late afternoon; she and Dan weretogether on the quarter. The wind had fallen at noon; it was so near a flat and dead calm that the schooner’s sails were not drawing. The sun was going down in a blaze of crimson, hot and still. Dan had sent men aloft to tar the rigging here and there; and one of these men was working on the main yard, above the quarter where they stood. Dan and the girl had been talking about the weather. It did not matter what they talked about, what words they spoke. They had come to that point where even silence is a rich communion. Nevertheless, it chanced they were talking about the weather, and specifically, about the approaching sunset.
Then the man on the yard, high above them, had occasion to shift his tar-pot; and in the shifting let it slip and fall. He bellowed down his warning: “’Ware below.” Ruth looked up swiftly and saw the heavy bucket falling.
According to the laws of physics, a falling object drops sixteen feet in one second, sixty-four in two—in a vacuum. The man on the yard was perhaps forty, perhaps fifty feet above the deck. So, even allowing for the resistance of the still, hot air, it was no more than two secondsbetween the time the bucket started to fall and the time it would reach the deck. Nevertheless that space of time was for Ruth Lytton as long as eternity. She looked up at the man’s cry, and saw the bucket half way down, descending with a ponderous and deadly majesty, slowly, inevitably as doom itself. Dan Darrin had not yet looked up; his nerves and his muscles were slower tuned than hers. He would not have time to look up before the bucket dropped upon his head.
Ruth, in that instant of time, saw the whole tragedy of it. The tar-pot was heavy with tar; it would strike Dan squarely; it would surely crush in his head, destroy him. And her heart went so sick within her that she could not stir. She could not breathe; she could only watch that black bucket like doom descending. Dan Darrin would be killed before her eyes; it were better that she herself should die. Why? Why? She knew the answer—and all within that space of two seconds or less. Why was she sick at heart at his peril? Because she loved him! That was why.
Then the bucket struck a line, and was deflected, and fell upon the deck six feet from Dan; and the world swam before her. She saw Dan look up to the white face of the man on the yard, and bawl: “You swipe! Come down and scrub away that mess. And sharp!” And the man came tumbling placatingly down the stays, and dropped to the deck, and Dan cuffed him to his task. By that time Ruth had her life back again; her cheeks were still white, her lips still and trembling, but—she could live, for Dan was safe.
And she loved him!
He was going right on with their talk, where he had let it fall when the man’s cry came down to them.
“Yes,” he said, “the sunset’s all you say. Beautiful enough. But—there’s no life in it, no pith. It’s quiet, calm. It’s sleep, or death—the death of the day. Give me the rising sun, when the world takes fire from it. It spurs you, and drives you. When the sun sets, I want to go to bed.” He smiled at his own words. “When it’s rising, I want to drink, or fight, or make love to a woman.” And his cheeks reddened at that.
Ruth wanted to get away from him. She could not trust her tongue; it would betray her. Shesaid huskily: “Then I’m going to come up and see the sun rise in the morning. Will you let me come?”
He said: “Of course. I’ll be on deck then, too.”
She fled from him, so swiftly that he was concerned, and wondered if he had hurt her. But she, face down on her bunk in her cabin, was thinking: “He said it made him want to make love to a woman. And I said I’d come up and see it with him. Oh, will he think I meant he must make love to me?”
She was disturbed and unhappy over that, until she began to wonder how he knew he wanted to make love to women as the sun rose. Had he ever done it? Who was the woman? And—how dared the man have done this thing?
“I won’t go on deck in the morning,” she told herself.
But she did.
The sunrise was what Dan had promised her it would be. The calm had held through the night; and the sea was burnished like bronze, over its blue, when the first light stole across the water. Dan on the quarter wondered whetherthe girl would come. Probably not. She would sleep through it all, drowsily warm and soft. He smiled as he thought of her, sleeping.
But she was not asleep. She was awake, telling herself she would not go up to the deck, and dressing as swiftly as nimble hands could manage her garments. Before the first gray of the sky had begun to warm with rose, Dan saw her at the top of the companion, a white shadow in the white light of morning.
He called to her softly. “You did come. I thought you would sleep through.”
She said: “Yes, I came.”
“And in time, too! The best of it is before the sun comes clear of the sea.”
She looked to the east. “How long will that be?”
“Twenty minutes—or maybe half an hour.”
“Then I needn’t have hurried.” She was managing a steady voice. But she was so full of the thing she had discovered yesterday that she could hardly breathe. They moved together to the after rail, where they could look out between the starboard and the stern boats. She caught his eye, once, in a sidewise glance; and he wassmiling. Why? She became furiously crimson. He was laughing at her; he had remembered! He thought she had come for that.
He said: “When there’s one low cloud, a dark one, it’s finer. To-day the line of the sea is like the line of a knife’s blade.”
She nodded, looking off to that blue-bronze line against the warming colors of the sky. He was watching her, not the sky. She pointed up to where a star still gleamed; and they saw its cold light wiped out by the warm brush of the coming sun. “You see,” she told him, “your sunrise is death too—death of the stars, and of the night.”
He shook his head. “No; the night is death, and the stars are ghosts. When the sun comes, the night wakes into life, and forgets the stars.”
She said, watching him: “I never heard you talk like that. You are—quiet, when others are around.”
“I told you the sunrise did things to me,” he laughed. And something trembled in her. Was he beginning? Would he never begin? There was no reservation in the flooding tide of the love she had for him. Now that she knew it for whatit was, she could not hold it back. And—his eyes were hers. She was in them; she could see herself in them. It was not that he did not care.
“You’re cold,” he said, looking at her in a way she could not understand. She shook her head.
“No, no, don’t talk about me,” she answered. Her guards were down with that; she felt that she had laid herself open. She had betrayed herself by that appeal. She dared not look at him.
Dan watched her; and then he said huskily: “I want to talk about you.”
She could no longer think, no longer wonder, no longer fight. She could only hold her tongue, pray that he might not guess she wished him to go on. Whether he guessed or not, he did go on. “Will you let me? Don’t be—angry, if I do.”
She said through stiff lips: “See! There’s the sun!”
He did look where she pointed, long enough to glimpse the first red rim above the distant sea. Then his eyes swept back to her. He said:
“Please!”
She was furiously impatient with him. Why was the man so slow? “Please what?” she asked.
He had one of her hands; she had not known that. He kissed it, in a hurried, fumbling, unskilled way. She said: “Oh, you said you liked to do this to women—when the sun—That’s all it is.”
She thought she was very cool and unmoved, and that he would be crushed. She wanted him to be crushed. But—he heard her voice trembling; and he swept an arm about her. “Ah!” he cried, laughing softly. “It was you. I—Just you!”
She pressed her hands against him, straining away from him. “Who were the women you liked to—make love to?” she demanded.
That was surrender; and he knew it, and so did she. “You! Always just you. I’ve known I wanted to; but there never was a woman before you.”
When he had kissed her, and she had kissed him, she began to cry against the rough shirt that covered his broad chest. And her tears conquered him, so that he pleaded with her to wipethem all away. So she knew she was mistress of the situation, and she looked up at him, laughingly. She said, like a little girl reciting a lesson: “My mother told me to trust a man named Dan.”
Then her arm went around his neck; and they were thus when Black Pawl stepped out on deck from the companion.
They heard him and turned; and Black Pawl stared at them with frowning brows, and asked:
“Well, Ruth, shall I thrash this one for you, too?”
She said softly: “No, Black Pawl. For—I love this one.”
Black Pawl still stared, till she was a little afraid of him in spite of the boast she had made; then he wrenched his eyes away from her, and swept them around the horizon, and spoke to Darrin.
“There’s wind coming, Dan,” he said. “Get the stuff on her; we’ll be moving on.”
BLACK PAWL was right. There was wind coming, and plenty of it—too much of it. It began cheerfully enough—just a brisk breeze across a sunlit sea. But the clouds that poked up above the horizon were not cheerful; and when they obscured the sun, and the rain began to drive across theDeborah’sdecks, Black Pawl had the canvas coming in. It was time. The first squall caught them under jib and topsails; and the foretopsail went with a crack and a splinter and a whipping tear of canvas. The topmast was broken off short, and dangled and slatted back and forth; and the fore rigging, thus slacked, worked itself into a swift and dangerous confusion.
Black Pawl had been careless; and he knew it, and knew the affair was fault of his and not of the mates. He was just enough to blame himself and no one else. He went forward himself, a tower of strength, and helped clear away thetangle and cut loose the wreckage and make all secure; by that time the full strength of wind and rain was lashing them, and they hove to, to ride it out. Every hatch was closed and fast; the scuttles over the fo’c’stle and steerage and cabin companions were shut and secured, and were opened only when some one came up on deck or went below. The deck-litter was stowed; life-lines were strung fore and aft; and the boats were lashed more securely on their bearers.
A whaling vessel, and even a whaling schooner, is built not for speed but for strength. TheDeborahwas cut square across the stern; and her bows were blunt, meeting at a right angle under the bowsprit. The waves struck her with shattering, jarring blows. She was heavy with her store of oil in the casks below; and she rose sluggishly to the seas. But she was stout as she was heavy; the thundering waves could not start her timbers. Given proper handling, she would ride any sea and weather any storm.
It was nightfall before all was fast and secure. Black Pawl had held the deck all day; he held it the night through, while the pressure of the gale waxed steadily, until a man could not standwithout support in the face of the wind. It was like a giant’s hand that pushed against their chests; they crouched to it, clutching hand-holds, taking the lee of every shelter that offered.
Some water came over theDeborah’ssluggish bows during the first day and night. Toward dawn a mightier wave climbed bodily inboard, over the knight’s-heads. The heavy windlass and bitts, made for sternest toil, broke the first force of the wave, and saved the fo’c’stle scuttle; but the cable-boxes just aft of the foremast were ripped bodily from the deck and slung back the length of the vessel like cannon-balls in the deluge of water. There was one man on deck forward. He held to the windlass till the water had passed him by. Black Pawl and his son were on the quarter, with a third man helping them at the wheel. They were all half drowned; and the wave and the cable-boxes carried away the stern boat and the spare equipment on the skids there. In the darkness Black Pawl shouted, and his son and the seaman answered. So they stuck to their task, and in an hour the black of night faded to the lifeless gray of day; and the sheeting rain lashed and bit at them.
That day through, and hour by hour, the storm grew worse. Ruth and the missionary kept the cabin, by Black Pawl’s orders. The Captain never left the deck; and Dan Darrin and the mate took turns and watches with him there. At noon of that day the galley was smashed by a wave that came over the side; and thereafter plates and knives and pans sifted overside with each fresh rush of water. Black Pawl laughed in the teeth of the storm, and howled to Dan Darrin:
“She’s stripped clean as a hound, now, ready to fight.”
“Aye,” Dan told him. “And she’s a fighter.”
That second night was the worst. The tempest reached its highest pitch at dusk; but there was no slackening of its strength as the night wore through. Black Pawl could only tell his mates, from hour to hour, that it was no worse. “The break will come,” he shouted into the storm; and the wind whipped his words away as though it mocked and played with him.
Black Pawl ate little while the gale endured. No man could eat, on that racking, pitching deck. He kept up his strength with whisky, raw fromthe bottle; and the stuff burned into his blood and warmed him and numbed him.
Dan Darrin remonstrated with him more than once. “Let that be; and put red victuals into you, sir,” he urged. But Black Pawl laughed at him.
“This is my meat,” he told Dan, lifting the bottle. “This is mine; you stick to yours.”
Dan had never seen him so strong, so powerful and so sure. It was as though he fought the fury of wind and sea, alone, breasting the tempest for the sake of those aboard the schooner, and protecting them with his own strong body. It was like a personal triumph in battle for Black Pawl when on the third morning the wind perceptibly slackened, and the ravenous teeth of the waves became blunted and dull.
Nevertheless all that day and all that night theDeborahwas rocked and swung and racked in the hammock of the seas; and it was not till the fourth day that they saw the sun through the graying clouds, and Black Pawl got a sight at her. On this last day, the Captain had eaten something; but he had not left the deck, and he had not slept. “There’s land hereabouts,” hetold Dan Darrin when Dan protested. “I’ll rest when I know just where we are—and not before.”
They were able, by this time, to take some stock of the damage the storm had done. At first glimpse, theDeborahwas a derelict, shattered and helpless. But that was to the casual and ignorant eye. True, the bowsprit was split, the foremast sprung, the rigging broken here and there, and hopelessly snarled forward. But the mainmast was as stoutly seated as before the tempest; and they were taking no water save the normal leakage of a healthy ship. The hull was sound.
“However,” Black Pawl decided, when he knew what there was to know, “however, we’re in no trim for the long way ahead. We’ll make land, Dan, and put in a day or so in fetching her back to shape again. It’s no great job; and it’s got to be done.”
Dan agreed with him. A whaler carries in herself everything she is likely to need in three or four years away from home, save only food and firewood. They could find shelter among the islands and repair the rigging and strengthen or replace the split bowsprit and the racked foremast. They would want sticks that could be counted on in the rough waters about the Horn.
When they got their sight at the sun, and Black Pawl pricked their location upon the chart, he nodded with satisfaction and clapped Dan on the back. “No more than half a day’s run,” he told the second mate. “There’s shelter, and water, and islanders to help us if we need. Run her in, Dan—you and Red Pawl. I’m minded to sleep a bit before we’re there.”
They made the island at late dusk, but Red Pawl would not try the passage into the lagoon in the dark, and he stood off and on till morning. Then they worked in, and anchored a mile or more offshore. There was no town there—the place was little more than a coral atoll; but there were a few native huts. And there was the shelter they needed for their own security while they made their repairs. The mate set the work afoot as soon as the anchor was in the mud; and he and Dan Darrin drove them, while Black Pawl slept roundly in his cabin below.
The Captain slept the clock around, and woke at noon; and he woke in the after-grip of thewhisky he had drunk. His body was burning and sick and sore; his eyes were hot as coals in his head; his lips were parched and swollen, and his mouth did not taste like his own mouth to him. He woke, and groaned, and rolled to the floor and dressed himself; and in a black mood he came out into the cabin and found whisky and drank again.
The reaction from his battle with the storm affected Black Pawl in two ways. His soul was sunk in a vast depression; he could see no light nor glory in the world. But his body was hot with the intoxication of victory, and a more tangible drunkenness. He was in a mood to damn the world; and when he saw Red Pawl, he hated his son; and when he saw Ruth Lytton, he cursed her in his heart. Sight of Red Pawl brought back his old misery of disappointment in this man whom he had fashioned. Sight of the girl brought back the memory of the picture she had made in Dan Darrin’s arms. Why should it be Dan Darrin? Was he not a better man than Darrin? The girl was a fool. She could never be afraid of him, she had said. He told himself she might be taught that fear.
On deck, Black Pawl found fault with the fashion of one of Red Pawl’s orders to the men; and Red answered him hotly. Black Pawl knocked him down with a furious blow. Red Pawl picked himself up and nursed his anger; and the Captain hated Red, and hated himself the more, and hated the world most of all. There was no laughter in him to-day; he was ghastly white, his eyes sank in their sockets—not a man to cross with impunity.
The girl watched him commiseratingly; and once she came to him and said: “Cap’n Pawl, don’t you want to go below, and sleep? You do need the rest, you know.”
“I’m sick of sleeping,” he told her curtly.
The missionary joined his urgency to the girl’s. “You’ll be ill, sir,” he said. “You’ve won the fight; the ship’s safe. Take your rest.”
Black Pawl jeered at him. “Keep to your gods, Father,” he said. “What do you know of the needs of men?”
“I know that men need God,” said the missionary. “And—never man more than you, Black Pawl.”
“Get out of my way,” Black Pawl commanded. “I spurn your God!” And as the missionary moved quietly to one side, he added with a hint of the old mockery: “Now, there, Father. If there were a God, would He not strike me down for that blasphemy?”
“God strikes when He wills,” said the missionary. “It is never necessary to dare Him.”
Black Pawl’s laughter was hollow; he cursed and swung away down the deck.
That was mid-afternoon. Till dark the men worked on theDeborah’srepairs. That night Black Pawl kept his cabin. He was drinking steadily. He sought oblivion. But the liquor would not bite, and he cursed the feeble stuff, even as he poured it down his throat. He did not sleep. Once he got up and prowled through the cabin. On the cabin table there was a scarf, a light thing that Ruth Lytton had dropped there. Black Pawl lifted it and ran it through his hands, head bowed; and his thoughts were ugly. In the end his teeth set, and he tore the thing to bits in his hands.
In the morning Red Pawl came to him. The mate said they must go ashore and hew out timbers to make a rough splint for the bowsprit.Black Pawl laughed in his face. “Aye, and ashore you’ll teach my men to be rid of me, I doubt,” he accused.
Red Pawl gave back no word, but there was a flat defiance in his eyes. The Captain waved his hand. “Go along,” he said. “I’ll send Darrin and his men as well.”
“I’m not needing them,” said Red Pawl.
“I say they go,” Black Pawl roared at him; the mate turned away without further dissent.
When the Captain went on deck a little later, he found the boats in the water alongside, ready to start for the island. The missionary and the girl were there. The missionary came to Black Pawl and said:
“I want to go and see these natives, if you’ve no objection, sir.”
“Go. Tell them about your God,” Black Pawl laughed at him. They were all going, leaving him. He felt, suddenly, very lonely; and then he thought with a fierce and ugly triumph: “But she’s not going—not the girl. She’ll be here with me.”
He saw that she was preparing to enter Dan Darrin’s boat; and he went toward her andsaid, with something like entreaty in his voice: “Stay aboard with me, Ruth. Will you not?”
She smiled at him and said at once: “Of course, if you want me.”
“I do,” he told her.
The missionary hesitated, as though he were unwilling to leave them together. “Shall I stay?” he suggested.
“No; no, go—you and your God!” Black Pawl told him harshly. The missionary looked toward Ruth; she nodded, and he stepped down into the boat.
They watched the two craft pull away from the schooner’s side. And Black Pawl saw that Spiess was at the after oar in Red Pawl’s boat; and he saw Red lean to whisper to the man. The Captain’s lips twisted with pain at the sight, as though Red had stabbed him. He knew, by now, that Red meant murder. Well, then, why did he not strike?
“Dan’s boat is going faster; he’s beating,” said Ruth, at his side; and Black Pawl looked down at her, and his eyes were hot. He glanced along the deck. There were two men forward; the cook was working in the litter and wreckageof his galley. Save for these three, he and the girl were the only persons left upon theDeborah.
Sick of life, sick of decency, sick of hope and striving, he surrendered to the devils that besieged him. Damn the girl! She should learn to be afraid before he was done with her.
“Come below,” he said to her. “I’m a mind to lie down.”
WHEN Black Pawl said, “Come below,” his voice was harsh and sick and broken. The girl looked up at him briefly, her eyes sober and wistful; and then she smiled and asked:
“Do you mind? I’d like to wait and see which of them gets to the beach first. They’re racing, you see.”
Black Pawl took this delay as though it had been a respite. He was glad to wait, glad she had put him off. He tried to lie to himself in the matter, tried to hustle her impatiently to do his bidding. Nevertheless the relief in his heart would not be denied. He knew it for what it was, and he cursed himself for a weakling.
To her he only said dourly: “All right. But the mate’s boat is the faster.”
“I don’t care,” she told him challengingly. “Dan’s is ahead, and staying ahead. And Danhas more of a load, too. More men with him that aren’t rowing.”
He grinned at her, and said jeeringly: “He’s a wonderful Dan, you think.”
“I do think he’s wonderful,” she agreed, and looked up at Black Pawl cheerfully. “I—love him.”
Black Pawl’s eyes darkened. Why should she love Dan? In his sober moments, the Captain knew Darrin for a brave and capable officer. Now he swore to himself that Dan was worthless and beneath respect. To the girl he said: “Fiddle! You talk of your love as the Father talks of his God.”
Her eyes misted a little; and she nodded. “Yes, I do,” she told him. “But—I don’t believe He minds.”
“Aye,” said Black Pawl sardonically. “I’ve heard that tale.”
“I never really understood how much it meant, how true it was, till—I knew Dan,” she said softly.
Black Pawl banged the rail with his fist, as though he would smash the words she hadspoken. He flung his hand toward the beach. “See, Red’s overtaking him,” he taunted.
“He is not,” she protested. “He is trying; but he never will.”
The Captain said: “I’ll make a bet with you on that!”
“What will you bet?” she demanded.
“A kiss against a—cask of oil.” He watched her covertly, and hated himself for the word he had said.
She did not answer him directly; she was looking toward the beach, and she said: “It’s too late. See; Dan is there.”
He saw the men leaping from the second mate’s boat on the sand a mile away. “Aye,” he said. “So—the cask of oil is yours. There’s nothing better for the soft skin of your cheeks. Good sperm—”
“But I didn’t take your wager,” she reminded him gravely.
“If I’d won, I should have collected,” he told her. “Take your winnings and be glad you won.”
She looked at him, studied the drawn face and the sunken eyes of the man; and her heart welledsuddenly with pity for him. He was sick on his feet, sick with the poison of fatigue and the poison of drink, and she touched his arm with sudden contrition. “Come,” she said, “I shouldn’t have kept you here on deck. You ought to be in bed. Come.”
He was somehow disappointed, yet relieved. That they should go down into the cabin at his bidding was victory; that they should go at hers—It robbed him of this much of conquest. Also, she was not afraid of him. He wanted her to be afraid; he wanted to see panic fear in her eyes and to hear her cry out with fright. But—there was no fear in her—for him.
“I’m going to put you to bed,” she said, “and make you comfortable, and put you to sleep. You’re almost sick, Cap’n Pawl. You are sick, only you’re so strong it takes a long time to beat you down.”
“I’m needing no nurse,” he said sullenly. The initiative was out of his hands. He was trying to recapture it, but he was strangely and utterly helpless.
“Oh, yes, you do,” she said laughingly. “Men never know they’re sick till they drop; theynever want to give in. I know. My mother—My mother was—good in sickness. She knew how to take care of sick people. And so do I. You’ll see.”
The man thought, with a jarring abruptness, of another woman who had known how to tend the sick. He remembered, on that voyage she had taken with him, he had been ill—the only real sickness in his life. And she had tended him; and the memory of those attentions had been bittersweet to him through all these years. He thought of her, as he submitted unconsciously to Ruth’s guidance.
She led him into his own cabin. “Lie down, on your bunk,” she said. And when he hesitated, with a pretty air of command: “Do as I say, sir.”
He sat on the edge of the bunk, and stretched his length upon it. Then he twisted upright, abruptly. The girl was taking off his heavy shoes. He said harshly: “Here! Don’t you—”
“Sh-h-h!” she told him. “Be still.”
This was not what he had planned. But he lay still. She unlaced his shoes, but she could not pull them off his feet. They were stiff andhard. She said, panting with the exertion of it: “You’ll have to pull them off, I’m afraid. I can’t.”
How slight was her strength compared to his! He could break her between the fingers of one hand. Yet she was not afraid of him. He hated her, even while he submitted to her ministrations. Helplessness possessed him. Let her have her way; he would have his in the end.
When his boots were off, she drew blankets over him to the chin. “Now,” she said, “your eyes. They’re terribly tired. I’m going to bathe them.”
He said: “Fiddle! Let me be.”
She laughed and disappeared, and came back in an instant, with a basin of water and a bit of cloth; and she made him lie still while she laved his hot eyelids with the cloth. He rebelled; but the touch of her hands on his forehead was infinitely soothing. He tried to believe these light touches of her fingers woke fires in him. Yet he wanted most of all to lie still, and rest, and sleep....
Her fingers were so soothing on his forehead; presently she brought a larger cloth, wet in coldwater, and laid it across his brow and his eyes. He jerked it away; but she protested softly:
“No, no, let it stay. It will make your head better, make you rest.”
His wife, too, had had this foolish notion that there was virtue in a cold compress.
The girl was stroking his forehead lightly, with the tips of her fingers, and running her fingers through his hair, around and around, softly, on his temples.
“I think you’ll go to sleep presently. It’s what you need. You’re so tired.”
He tried to sit up; he protested. “Let be. I’m well enough. Let be.”
She pressed him gently down again, smiling into his hot eyes. “No, no. Lie still, and fall asleep.”
“I’m not sleepy,” he answered harshly.
She laughed at that. “Don’t tell such stories. You can hardly hold your eyes open. And—don’t talk. Sleep.”
Black Pawl hated himself for submitting; but he could do nothing but submit. Sleep rolled over him in waves, higher and higher. He was like a rock up which the tide was lapping. Whenthe tide should cover him, he would sleep.... No chance, then. Yet he was so sleepy, so terribly sleepy.
The world was receding; it was gone. He was asleep—at peace.
The girl did not at first know when Black Pawl dropped into the deeps of slumber. He moved uneasily from side to side; and she continued stroking his forehead. But after a little, in his twistings, the compress was dislodged, and she saw his eyes were closed, and did not open as they had opened before.
She went up on deck for a space, and gazed off toward the shore. She could see the boats drawn up on the beach, but nothing of the men.
Presently she descended to her own cabin and began to brush her hair.
Black Pawl’s slumber was fitful and uneasy and haunted by dreams. The man was too tired for restful sleep; his nerves had yielded to the girl’s soft touch, but when she was gone, he twitched where he lay, and his arms and legs writhed and twisted. Now and again he groaned, and once he brushed at the cold compress with his hand.