She thought she was very cool and unmoved, and that he would be crushed. She wanted him to be crushed. But—he heard her voice trembling; and he swept an arm about her. “Ah!” he cried, laughing softly. “It was you. I—Just you!”
She pressed her hands against him, straining away from him. “Who were the women you liked to—make love to?” she demanded.
That was surrender; and he knew it, and so did she. “You! Always just you. I’ve known I wanted to; but there never was a woman before you.”
When he had kissed her, and she had kissed him, she began to cry against the rough shirt that covered his broad chest. And her tears conquered him, so that he pleaded with her to wipe them all away. So she knew she was mistress of the situation, and she looked up at him, laughingly. She said, like a little girl reciting a lesson: “My mother told me to trust a man named Dan.”
Then her arm went around his neck; and they were thus when Black Pawl stepped out on deck from the companion.
They heard him and turned; and Black Pawl stared at them with frowning brows, and asked:
“Well, Ruth, shall I thrash this one for you, too?”
She said softly: “No, Black Pawl. For—I love this one.”
Black Pawl still stared, till she was a little afraid of him in spite of the boast she had made; then he wrenched his eyes away from her, and swept them around the horizon, and spoke to Darrin.
“There’s wind coming, Dan,” he said. “Get the stuff on her; we’ll be moving on.”