"I've seen her before," said Warren. He steadily poured out whisky and put it to the girl's lips as the captain eased up her head. "Hold it… I'll see if I can force her teeth apart. Damn it! she's jerking like a mule… She was the girl in the wireless-room this afternoon, the one who was there when I got my cable. You think her skull's fractured?"
"She might—" Peggy observed, in a small voice—"she might have fallen—"
"Haaaah!" growled the captain, jerking his neck. "She fall like Mr. Warren fall in de next cabin, you bet." His fingers were still exploring; his face looked heavy and puzzled. "Ho! Ay dunn, but ay don't t'ink she got de skull fractured; don't feel like it. See, it pain her when ay feel, eh? And dat iss not de way dey act if dey are bad 'urt… " He drew a wheezing breath. "Try de whisky again. So."
"I'll swear I heard her saying my name," Warren whispered," "Got those wet towels, Hank? Put 'em on. Come on — er — ma'am" he said, with a kind of wild, coaxing note, "take some of this liquor… Up you go!… Come on!"
His face wore a rather weird encouraging smile as he clicked the glass against her locked teeth. A shudder went over the white face. The Queen Victoria pitched down in \ a long foam of water, diving with such a deeper cyclone plunge that it flung them all against the forward bulkhead, and they could feel the thick shaking as the propellers beat out of water. But they could hear something else also. It had been done softly, with little draught and no slam whatever, but the door to D deck had again been opened and closed.
They were silent amid the rattling of the cabin. Warren, who had been cursing in a whisper when the contents of the glass splashed wide, turned round sharply. His face, under the wild goblin hair, wore a look of triumphant malevolence. Clinging to furniture, they waited…
Somebody was trying the latch-hook of the cabin next door.
There was an elaborate pantomime of communication. Morgan's lips elaborately writhed to frame, "Let him get inside," as he jerked his thumb at the next cabin. Valvick and Warren nodded; they were all making fierce gestures, and nodding to one another, and trying to reach the passage-door without sprawling full-length. Warren glared at Peggy, and his lips formed, "You stay here," as he pointed at the girl in the berth and then savagely stabbed his finger at the floor. Giving him an answering glare, she folded over her under-lip mutinously and shook her head until the hair obscured her eyes. He repeated his order, first pleadingly and then with a graphic pantomime of somebody being strangled. Rearing out of the trough, the ship was climbing again on a steep upward slant…
The light in the next room was switched on…
Here on the floor, the whisky-bottle was rolling and bumping wildly. Captain Valvick made a dart for it, as a man chases his hat in a gale. The pantomime still went on, grotesque against the dim light in the berth, where that pale-faced figure was twisting…