His scornful eyes saw the pain well into her face. Evidently he had gone the limit: he couldn’t have hurt her worse with a blow of his hand. Touched a little in spite of himself, he began to feel the first prick of remorse. Perhaps it had done no good to speak so cruelly. Certainly the whiskies could not be regained. Probably the fool thought she was acting for his own good. He turned, slammed the door, and strode back to the dining saloon.
It was by far the most bitter moment in Bess’s life. She had done right, but her payment was a curse from the man she had hoped to serve. All her castles had fallen: her dreams had broken like the bubbles they were. This was the answer to the calling in her heart and the longing in her soul,—the spoken wish that she might pass from his sight forever.
For the last few days, since they had entered this strange, snowy, twilight region, she had had dreams such as she had never dared admit into her heart before. Anything could happen up here. No wonder was too great. It was the kind of place where men found themselves, where all things were in proper balance, and false standards fell away. Some way, she had been on the lookout for a miracle. But the things which had been proven false, which could not live in this bitter world of realities, were her own dreams! They had been the only things that had died. She had been a fool to hope that here, at the wintry edge of the world, she might find the happiness she had missed in her native city. The world was with her yet, crushing her hopes as its rocky crust crushes the fallen nestling before it learns to fly!
But at his post McNab had already forgotten the episode of the liquor cases. Indeed, he had forgotten many other matters of much greater moment. At the present his mind was wholly occupied by two stern realities,—one of them being that the storm still raged in unabated fury, and the other that a drunken captain was driving his craft at a breakneck speed over practically uncharted waters.
The danger lay not only in the fact that Knutsen had disregarded McNab’s good advice to seek shelter in one of the island harbors. Even now he was disregarding the way of comparative safety, was not pausing to take soundings, but was racing along before the wind instead of heading into it with the power of the auxiliary engines. With wind and wave hurling her forward, there would be no chance to turn back or avoid any island reef that might suddenly loom in their path. Knutsen was trusting to his sea gods over waters he had never sailed before, torn by storms and lighted only by a feeble searchlight.
Once more McNab lifted his head through the hatch into the pilot house; and for long seconds he studied intently the flushed face over the wheel. They hadn’t really helped matters, so far as Knutsen was concerned, by throwing the cases overboard. Seemingly his watch would be over before the fumes of the liquor he had already consumed died in his brain. At present he was in its full flush: wholly reckless, obstinate, uncertain of temper. Was there any possible good in appealing to him further?
“What now?” Knutsen asked gruffly.
“You’ve forgotten all the seamanship you ever knew,” McNab returned angrily. “There’s no hurry about reaching Tzar Island. And you’re risking every body’s life on board, sailing the way you are.”
“Are you captain of dis boat?” Knutsen demanded angrily.
“No, but——”