Joel, left in the after cabin, felt terribly lonely. He wanted Priss with him, laughing, at his side. His longing for her was like a hot coal in his throat, burning there. And she had taken sides with Mark, against him.... His shoulders shook with the sudden surge of his desire to grip Mark’s lean throat.... Ashore, he would have done so. But as things were, the ship was his first charge; and a break with Mark would precipitate the thing that menaced the ship.... He could not fight Mark without risking the Nathan Ross; and he could not risk the Nathan Ross. Not even.... His head dropped for an instant in his arms, and then he got up quickly, and shook himself, and set his lips.... No man aboard must see the trouble in his heart....
He went through the main cabin, and climbed to the deck. There was some sea running, and a wind that brushed aside all smaller sounds, so that he made little noise. Thus, when he reached the top of the companion, he saw two dark figures in the shadows of the boat house, closely clasped....
He stood for an instant, white hot.... His wife, and Mark.... His little Priss, and his brother....
Then he went quietly below, and glanced at the chart, and chose a course upon it. The nearest land; he and Mark ashore together.... His blood ran hungrily at the thought....
XI
Priscilla went on deck that night so angry with Joel that she could have killed him; and Mark played upon her as a skilled hand plays upon the harp. It was such a night as the South Seas know, warm and languorous, the wind caressing, and the salt spray stinging gently on the cheek. The moon was near the full, and it laid a path of silver on the water. This path was like the road to fairyland; and Mark told Priscilla so. He dropped into a gay little phantasy that he conceived on the moment, a story of fairies, and of dancing in the moonlight, and of a man and a woman, hand in hand....
She felt the spell he laid upon her, and struggled against it. “Tell me about the last fight, when the little brown girl was killed,” she begged.
He had told her snatches of his story here and there; but he had not, till that night, spoken of the pearls. When Priss heard of them, she swung about and lifted up her face to his, listening like a child. And Mark told the story with a tongue of gold, so that she saw it all; the lagoon, blue in the sun; and the schooner creeping in from the sea; and the hours of flight through the semi-jungle of the island, with the blacks in such hot pursuit. He told her of the times when they surrounded him, when he fought himself free.... How he got a great stone and gripped it in his hand, and how with this stone he crushed the skull of a young black with but one eye. Priss shuddered with delicious horror at the tale....