For a long time after Mark’s story ended, the two brothers sat still in the cabin, puffing at their pipes, thinking.... Mark watched Joel, waiting for the younger man to speak. And Joel’s thoughts ranged back, and picked up the tale in the beginning, and followed it through once more....
They were silent for so long that little Priss, in the cabin, drifted from waking dreams to dreams in truth. The pictures Mark’s words had conjured up merged with troubled phantasies, and she twisted and cried out softly in her sleep so that Joel went in at last to be sure she was not sick. But while he stood beside her, she passed into quiet and untroubled slumber, and he came back and sat down with Mark again.
“You brought the schooner into Tubuai?” he asked.
“Aye. Alone. Half a thousand miles. There’s a task, Joel.”
“And left it there?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Mark smiled grimly. “It was known there,” he said quietly. “Also, the three whom I had found aboard it were known. And they had friends in Tubuai, who wondered what had come to them. I was beginning to—find their questions troublesome—when the Nathan Ross came in.”
“They will ask more questions now,” said Joel.
“They must ask them of the schooner; and—she does not speak,” Mark told him.