Only one thing she could remember. He had commanded her to go to bed and bar her door. She obeyed but she could not sleep at first. It seemed that hours had passed when a sound outside her door brought her to her feet.
She moved to the door and softly opened it. Across the threshold lay
Filipo, wide awake.
"Go to bed," he said. Again she obeyed and this time she slept.
The next morning everything seemed outwardly as usual, the skiff had been restored to its place astern. The Pirate was intoxicated; the cook sober. But there was the threat of trouble in the air, Pauline felt it in the attitude of all the men, even of Owen and Hicks.
The Pirate showed a strange new tendency to make friends with Filipo.
"Can you steer, cook?" he asked after the latter had announced that dinner was ready.
"Yes," said Filipo.
"All right, take the wheel and keep her as she's going till we round that point ahead there."
Filipo took the wheel and the others descended to find the cabin table set. There was a prodigious amount of fried steak and boiled potatoes as the main part of the meal. To their dismay they found the steak was as tough as leather. A wail of sorrow arose when the potatoes proved to be so hard that Pauline doubted if they had been boiled more than three minutes.
The "Pirate," whose table manners savored of the forecastle, tried a biscuit and found it as hard as stone and almost as heavy. In his anger he hurled it at the side of the cabin and was horrified to see it go through the boat's side. He did not know that the biscuit happened to strike a hole that had been temporarily stopped up with putty and paint. He turned speechless to the others and saw Hicks lift a biscuit on high about to dash it onto the cabin floor.