Dorothy tried to smile. “Very well, then,” she particularized, “just give me a telegraph-office.”
“With pleasure. We have a complete outfit. I’m sorry to say, though, that the wires are not strung yet.”
“Then give me a boat and a—compass, isn’t it, that we need?”
“Those are about the only things we cannot furnish, Miss Fairfax. When sailors are forced to leave their ships, they invariably take the boats and the compasses with them. But why do you wish to leave us? It will be our constant study to make you happy. You shall have the best of everything, and your lightest wish shall be law.”
“My only wish is to get back to dry land. If my wish is law, help me to do so.”
“I cannot! And I would not if I could. I have waited long for a woman as fair and sweet as you to drift in to me, and now that you have come, I will not give you up lightly. The wrecks and their contents are ours by right of salvage. You, too, are salvage—and the fairest salvage I have ever known.”
This was forcing the game with a vengeance. Dorothy’s lip quivered, and she cast a frightened glance at Mother Joyce. But that lady was eating her supper stolidly, and made no sign. Evidently, for the moment at least, she intended to let Dorothy play her own hand.
Forbes continued: “No, you are here for life, Miss Fairfax. I regret it for your sake, but I rejoice in it for my own. You are here for life, and you must make up your mind to it, choose a husband, and settle down.”
“I shall never marry.”
“You must consider a moment. There are twenty-two of us men here and only two women. Under such circumstances, how can we afford to permit any woman to remain single. We used to do it years ago, when the disproportion was not quite so great, and what was the result? Decimation of our numbers, no less! The men quarreled and fought and murdered each other, exactly as wild beasts do, all for the sake of one woman. Well do I remember the last time this happened! In a week five men had been killed, and bad blood stirred up that did not subside for years. We could not chance a repetition of this sort of thing, and we made a law that every woman who arrived here must marry within twenty-four hours. She could choose any one she liked, but choose she must.”