That night he insisted upon her having dinner in bed. Ah, how good that steaming, hot bath had been.
Afterwards, strained and very, very tired, she fell asleep at once, and went back to the little beach with its vague patterns of sea-weed on yellow sand, and they swam again and dried in the sun, and talked and laughed, and he lay at her feet, brown and clean-cut, with burning eyes,—but when he picked her up this time and carried her to the cave she held him tight and found his lips and lay with him on the warm sand....
It must have been midnight when she woke suddenly and put her hand out to touch his face.
It was not true. She was alone,—and she loved him so!
XXXIV
It was exactly half-past nine the following morning when Jones rapped at the door of the Captain's stateroom. The dancing sailor registered the note of irritation in the shout of "Come" with a comic grievance and went in to find McLeod struggling to remove a recalcitrant beard with a very disagreeable razor. There was, God knows, every reason for a touch of temper mixed with that sort of amazement that a man feels when an old and true friend goes back on him. Shaving at the best of times is a penance, at the worst a catastrophe. The Captain was a clean-shaven man in the middle forties and although, as one of the Esau tribe, he had used a razor since he was eighteen; he had failed to understand the peculiar psychology of steel and to appreciate the fact that the blade of a razor is just as temperamental and just as much affected by the vagaries of liver as the average human being. He made no allowances.
"What is it, Jones?"
"Sorry ter disturb you, sir, but there's a launch comin' up on the port side with Mr. Fraser aboard. Thought you'd like ter know, sir."
"Have you told Mr. Franklin?"
"No, sir. Considered it my duty ter report it ter you, sir."