"What happened?"
He laughed uneasily. "I left them," he said, and again seemed to wish to let the matter rest. But Faith would not.
"Is there any reason, why you should not tell me all about it?" she asked.
"No."
"Then tell me, please...."
He threw up his free hand in a gesture of surrender. "All right," he said....
They were following the narrow path down the stream's side toward the sea. Faith was ahead, Brander on her heels. After a moment, he went on....
"A man named Marks was the skipper of the Thomas Morgan. I shipped aboard her as a seaman. I'd had one cruise before.... Not with him. I shipped with him.... And I found out, within two days, that I'd made a mistake.
"Not that they were hard on me. I knew my job, after a fashion; and ... they let me alone. But the men had a tough time of it. It was a tough ship, through and through. Marks; and his mate.... Mate's name was Trant, and I'd not like to meet that man on a dark night. There was murder in him.... The sheer love of it.... He was the sort of man that will catch a shark just for the fun of spiking the creature's jaws and turning him loose again.... I was in Taku once.... Saw a little China boy catch a dragon fly and tie a twig to its tail and let it go. The twig overbalanced the dragon fly—It went straight up into the air, fast as it could wing.... May be going yet.... That was the sort of trick Trant would have liked.
"Not that he ever actually killed a man on this cruise. Better if he had, for the men. But he didn't.