The tin box with the ship’s money, some thousand dollars, and the log lay on the deck. He placed them on one side and then stood erect and walked to the rail. He gazed aft at the far-away shore as if visualising something there.
“Nothing’s ever got me like she has, right by the neck. I reckon it’s a punishment on me for having invented rat traps.”
“Well, go down and tell her and get it over, same as sea sickness.”
“Bud, I could no more tell her than I could walk into a blazing fiery furnace like those chaps in the Scriptures.”
“Because, Bud—well, there’s two reasons. First of all she’d laugh at me, maybe.”
“Oh. Lord, no, she ain’t a girl. This one I’m telling you of is running a little store of her own in Cable Street, kind of fancy work business—I’ve known her a year. O’Brien is her name, Zillah O’Brien. She’s running a fancy work—”
“I know, you’ve told me; are you engaged to her?”
“Well, we’ve been keeping company,” said Hank, “and it amounts to that.”
“You mean you are—then you’ve no right to bother about Tommie.”
“Well, you may make your mind easy. So far as I can see she’s harpooned—that fellow harpooned her.”
“Yep, remember her face when he ran away? And ever since she hasn’t been the same—”
“But, Bud, she couldn’t care for him after the way he’s landed us?”
“No, but she cared for him before, and maybe she cares for him still, Lord only knows—women are funny things. Anyhow, you’ve no right to think of her with that other girl in tow. Why, Hank, you’ve always been going on about women being saints and all that and now, you old double-dealing—”
“It isn’t me,” said Hank. “I guess it’s human nature. But I’ll bite on the bullet—after all it’s not so much as a girl I care for her, but just for herself.”
“Well, bite on what’s her name as well—Beliah—”
“All the same, keep thinking of her—and catch hold of the wheel. I want a quiet smoke.”
Half an hour later Jake wandered on deck with the mop and the bucket. He look subdued, and a few minutes later Tommie’s head and shoulders appeared.
“The place is pretty clean now,” said T. C. “Maybe some of you will get at where the food’s stowed and find out what we can have to eat. I’m going along to the galley to get the fire on.”
The wind held steady all that day and half the following night, then it died to a tepid breeze just sufficient to keep steerage way on the schooner.