hy
shouldn't he be, knowing that he held their lives in the hollow of his
hand? What imp of Satan wouldn't have been amiable?

Because the rogues did not run up the skull and crossbones; because they
did not swagger up and down the deck, knives and pistols in their sashes,
she couldn't be made to believe them criminals!

Amusing! She could not see that if he spoke roughly it was only an
expression of the smothered pain of his mental crucifixion. He could not
tell her he loved her for fear she might misinterpret her own sentiments.
Besides, her present mood was not inductive to any declaration on his
part; a confession might serve only to widen the breach. Who could say
that it wasn't Cunningham's game to take Jane along with him in the end?
There was nothing to prevent that. His father holding aloof, the loyal
members of the crew in a most certain negligible minority, what was there
to prevent Cunningham from carrying off Jane?

Blood surged into Dennison's throat; a murderous fury boiled up in him;
but he remembered in time what these volcanic outbursts had cost him in
the past. So he did not rush to the chart house. Cunningham would lash him
with ridicule or be forced to shoot him. But his rage carried him as far
as the wireless room. He could hear the smack of the spark, but that was
all. He tried the door--locked. He tried the shutters--latched.
Cunningham's man was either calling or answering somebody. Ten minutes
inside that room and there would be another tale to tell.

In the end Dennison spent his fury by travelling round the deck until the
sea and sky became like pearly smoke. Then he dropped into a chair and
fell asleep.

Cunningham had also watched through the night. The silent steersman heard
him frequently rustling papers on the chart table or clumping to the
bridge or lolling on the port sills--a restlessness that had about it
something of the captive tiger.

Retrospection--he could not break the crowding spell of it, twist mentally
as he would; and the counter-thought was dimly suicidal. The sea there; a
few strides would carry him to the end of the bridge, and then--oblivion.
And the girl would not permit him to enact this thought. He laughed. God
had mocked him at his birth, and the devil had played with him ever
since. He had often faced death hotly and hopefully, but to consider
suicide coldly!

A woman who had crossed his path reluctantly, without will of her own; the
sort he had always igno