self would save a lot o' bother
all around."

"What's it about, anyway?" says Chips.

"How do I know?" answered Sails. "I don't go poking my nose into
Yankee Swope's business, you can bet your bottom dollar I don't. I
take my orders, and let it go at that. Same as you. Same as the
others. There's Fitz up there now, chinning with him, and I bet Fitz
don't know much more of his game than you and me. He takes his orders
just like we do."

"That's right. We ain't hired to think. Not in this ship," agreed
Chips.

"Do you think, Roy, that Beulah--that she jumped--herself?" The lady's
voice was trembling.

"I don't know, dear. I think maybe she did. But Beasley thought--oh,
well, what does it matter now?"

"Beasley thought he did it. I knew--I felt it was him, oh, long, long
ago. It would be like him, Roy. He has never dropped a hint that
would incriminate himself, but I have known his guilt of the other
thing--for which you suffered--ever since our marriage. When he
dropped the mask, revealed himself in his true character--oh, I knew he
must be guilty. And I was helpless."

"My God, five years!" muttered Newman. "How could you stand it?"

"It was not so hard, except at first," said the lady. "Too much horror
numbs, you know. And one thing made it endurable--he has spared me the
intimacy of marriage. It is true, dearest; I am as much a maid as I
was five years ago. He is that kind of a man, Roy. It is not women he
lusts for, it is--oh, it is blood. There is something horrible in his
mind, a diseased spot, an unnatural quirk, that drives him to
abominable cruelties. It is some tigerish instinct he possesses; it
makes him kill and destroy, it makes him inflict pain. Oh, Roy, it is
his pleasure--to inflict pain."

"Lynch doesn't like it," said Sails, in reply to some question I had
missed hearing.

"Little good not liking it will do him," was Chips' opinion. "He'll do
what the Old Man wants him to do, just like the rest of us."

"Has he ever used you--as victim?" said Newman, a new, hard note in his
voice.

"No, no, not in that way," answered the lady. "It is to the crew he
does that. He has never hurt me physically."

"But mentally, eh?" remarked Newman, "He enjoys refinements of
cruelty, also? Mental torture, when he finds a mind intelligent enough
to appreciate subtleties? That is it?"

"Yes, that is it," said the lady. "It was horrible at first. But
afterwards, when I had f