each man listened greedily for the answer.
“In four months, possibly three if the season closes early,” Wolf Larsen said.
She caught her breath and stammered, “I—I thought—I was given to understand that Yokohama was only a day’s sail away. It—” Here she paused and looked about the table at the circle of unsympathetic faces staring hard at the plates. “It is not right,” she concluded.
“That is a question you must settle with Mr. Van Weyden there,” he replied, nodding to me with a mischievous twinkle. “Mr. Van Weyden is what you may call an authority on such things as rights. Now I, who am only a sailor, would look upon the situation somewhat differently. It may possibly be your misfortune that you have to remain with us, but it is certainly our good fortune.”
He regarded her smilingly. Her eyes fell before his gaze, but she lifted them again, and defiantly, to mine. I read the unspoken question there: was it right? But I had decided that the part I was to play must be a neutral one, so I did not answer.
“What do you think?” she demanded.
“That it is unfortunate, especially if you have any engagements falling due in the course of the next several months. But, since you say that you were voyaging to Japan for your health, I can assure you that it will improve no better anywhere than aboard the Ghost.”
I saw her eyes flash with indignation, and this time it was I who dropped mine, while I felt my face flushing under her gaze. It was cowardly, but what else could I do?
“Mr. Van Weyden speaks with the voice of authority,” Wolf Larsen laughed.
I nodded my head, and she, having recovered herself, waited expectantly.
“Not that he is much to speak of now,” Wolf Larsen went on, “but he has improved wonderfully. You should have seen him when he came on board. A more scrawny, pitiful specimen of humanity one could hardly conceive. Isn’t that so, Kerfoot?”
Kerfoot, thus directly addressed, was startled into dropping his knife on the floor, though he managed to grunt affirmation.
“Developed himself by peeling potatoes and washing dishes. Eh, Kerfoot?”
Again that worthy grunted.
“Look at him now. True, he is not what you would term muscular, but still he has muscles, which is more than he had when he came aboard. Also, he has legs to stand on. You would not think so to look at him, but he was quite unable to stand alone at first.”
The hunters were snickering, but she looked at me with a sympathy in her eyes which more than compensated for Wolf Larsen’s nastiness. In truth, it had been so long since I had received sympathy that I was softened, and I became then, and gladly, her willing slave. But I was angry with Wolf Larsen. He was challenging my manhood with his slurs, challenging the very legs he claimed to be instrumental in getting for me.
“I may have learned to stand on my own legs,” I retorted. “But I have yet to stamp upon others with them.”
He looked at me insolently. “Your education is only half completed, then,” he said dryly, and turned to her.
“We are very hospitable upon the Ghost. Mr. Van Weyden has discovered that. We do everything to make our guests feel at home, eh, Mr. Van Weyden?”
“Even to the peeling of potatoes and the washing of dishes,” I answered, “to say nothing to wringing their necks out of very fellowship.”
“I beg of you not to receive false impressions of us from Mr. Van Weyden,” he interposed with mock anxiety. “You will observe, Miss Brewster, that he carries a dirk in his belt, a—ahem—a most unusual thing for a ship’s officer to do. While really very estimable, Mr. Van Weyden is sometimes—how shall I say?—er— quarrelsome, and harsh measures are necessary. He is quite reasonable and fair in his calm moments, and as he is calm now he will not deny that only yesterday he threatened my life.”
I was well-nigh choking, and my eyes were certainly fiery. He drew attention to me.
“Look at him now. He can scarcely control himself in your presence. He is not accustomed to the presence of ladies anyway. I shall have to arm myself before I dare go on deck with him.”
He shook his head sadly, murmuring, “Too bad, too bad,” while the hunters burst into guffaws of laughter.
The deep-sea voices of these men, rumbling and bellowing in the confined space, produced a wild effect. The whole setting was wild, and for the first time, regarding this strange woman and realizing how incongruous she was in it, I was aware of how much a part of it I was myself. I knew these men and their mental processes, was one of them myself, living the seal-hunting life, eating the seal-hunting fare, thinking, largely, the seal-hunting thoughts. There was for me no strangeness to it, to the rough clothes, the coarse faces, the wild laughter, and the lurching cabin walls and swaying sea-lamps.
As I buttered a piece of bread my eyes chanced to rest upon my hand. The knuckles were skinned and inflamed clear across, the fingers swollen, the nails rimmed with black. I felt the mattress-like growth of beard on my neck, knew that the sleeve of my coat was ripped, that a button was missing from the throat of the blue shirt I wore. The dirk mentioned by Wolf Larsen rested in its sheath on my hip. It was very natural that it should be there,— how natural I had not imagined until now, when I looked upon it with her eyes and knew how strange it and all that went with it must appear to her.
But she divined the mockery in Wolf Larsen’s words, and again favoured me with a sympathetic glance. But there was a look of bewilderment also in her eyes. That it was mockery made the situation more puzzling to her.
“I may be taken off by some passing vessel, perhaps,” she suggested.
“There will be no passing vessels, except other sealing-schooners,” Wolf Larsen made answer.
“I have no clothes, nothing,” she objected. “You hardly realize, sir, that I am not a man, or that I am unaccustomed to the vagrant, careless life which you and your men seem to lead.”
“The sooner you get accustomed to it, the better,” he said.
“I’ll furnish you with cloth, needles, and thread,” he added. “I hope it will not be too dreadful a hardship for you to make yourself a dress or two.”
She made a wry pucker with her mouth, as though to advertise her ignorance of dressmaking. That she was frightened and bewildered, and that she was bravely striving to hide it, was quite plain to me.
“I suppose you’re like Mr. Van Weyden there, accustomed to having things done for you. Well, I think doing a few things for yourself will hardly dislocate any joints. By the way, what do you do for a living?”
She regarded him with amazement unconcealed.
“I mean no offence, believe me. People eat, therefore they must procure the wherewithal. These men here shoot seals in order to live; for the same reason I sail this schooner; and Mr. Van Weyden, for the present at any rate, earns his salty grub by assisting me. Now what do you do?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“Do you feed yourself? Or does some one else feed you?”
“I’m afraid some
