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 Dan has 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 had spoken. 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 welled suddenly 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; they never 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 and hard. 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 cold water, 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. When the 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.

Then, suddenly, he awoke. His head was splitting; his month was parched. He opened his eyes, sat up and looked about him—and remembered.

She was gone. So! She had tricked him to sleep and fled; thus had she sought to escape him. Perhaps she had signaled to the shore.

Then he heard her moving in her cabin, next to his. He swung his stockinged feet to the floor, and sat on the edge of his bunk, swaying uncertainly.

And he thought at the same time, though without knowing why, of his son. Red would be working with his men now; he would be bringing them back to the ship presently in a mood for anything. Black Pawl flung back his head. So be it! But—his own son!

The overwhelming misery of the man at thought of his son’s treachery broke down his heart within him. He got up, moving softly on his unshod feet, and noiselessly opened his cabin door.

Her door was closed. He stood, gazing at it. Then he realized there was something in his hand; he looked down and saw the bottle.

He drained it and waited. But—it would not bite. Cursing himself for a weakling and a coward, he strode forward and struck her door with his knuckles.

She opened it quickly, and saw him, but did not fall back before his eyes.

“Oh,” she said. “You were asleep.”

“I’m awake,” he answered harshly. “I’m coming in.”