ul, how sane, how loving!

Suddenly I heard a sound of sobbing, the merciless sobbing of a woman's
breast. Distinct above the hollow breathing of the sea it assailed me,
poignant and insistent. Wonderingly I looked around. Then, in a shadow
of the upper deck, I made out a slight girl-figure, crouching all alone.
It was Grey Eyes, crying fit to break her heart.

"Poor little beggar!" I muttered.

CHAPTER II

"Gr-r-r--you little brat! If you open your face to him I'll kill you,
kill you, see!"

The voice was Madam Winklestein's, and the words, hissed in a whisper of
incredible malignity, arrested me as if I had been struck by a live
wire. I listened. Behind the stateroom door there followed a silence,
grimly intense; then a dull pounding; then the same savage undertone.

"See here, Berna, we're next to you two--we're onto your curves. We know
the old man's got the stuff in his gold-belt, two thousand in bills.
Now, my dear, my sweet little angel what thinks she's too good to mix
with the likes o' us, we need the mon, see!" (Knock, knock.) "And we're
goin' to have it, see!" (Knock, knock.) "That's where you come in,
honey, you're goin' to get it for us. Ain't you now, darlin'!" (Knock,
knock, knock.)

Faintly, very faintly, I heard a voice:

"No."

If it be possible to scream in a whisper, the woman did it.

"You will! you will! Oh! oh! oh! There's the cursed mule spirit of your
mother in you. She'd never tell us the name of the man that was the ruin
of 'er, blast 'er."

"Don't speak of my mother, you vile woman!"

The voice of the virago contracted to an intensity of venom I have
never heard the equal of.

"Vile woman! Vile woman! You, you to call _me_ a vile woman, me that's
been three times jined in holy wedlock.... Oh, you bastard brat! You
whelp of sin! You misbegotten scum! Oh, I'll fix you for that, if I've
got to swing for it."

Her scalding words were capped with an oath too foul to repeat, and once
more came the horrible pounding, like a head striking the woodwork.
Unable to bear it any longer, I rapped sharply on the door.

Silence, a long, panting silence; then the sound of a falling body; then
the door opened a little and the twitching face of Madam appeared.

"Is there somebody sick?" I asked. "I'm sorry to trouble you, but I was
thinking I heard groans and--I might be able to do something."

Piercingly she looked at me. Her eyes narrowed to slits and stabbed me
with their spite.