“Long way—I should say! Full day steaming head on, mebby more.” There was evidence here of a slight nautical confusion, though he always paid the closest attention, too, whenever Utterbourne opened his lips. “Better to give up look for ships—gn—that don’t ever come,” Tsuda murmured, his eyes searchingly upon her face.
She looked at him sadly, and he let his gaze fall to the little gleaming weapon at her side. Presently he lifted his eyes to hers, and, with a child-like smile, pointed to the revolver.
“It is very pretty,” he said. “I had a fine one, once—a fellow give me in Benares. But”—he grew a shade petulant—“the Captain wouldn’t let me keep it—say one gun on the island was enough.” And in a moment he added, speaking more simply and smiling in his naïve way: “Will you let me take it in my hand, Wife-of-the-Kami?”
Her lips moved—it was a tiny ghost-smile. “Yes,” she said.
Tsuda took the revolver into his hand, his face quite radiant. Anything new—anything he didn’t possess.... He examined it minutely and lovingly.
“Do you mind if I shoot?” he coaxed.
“There’s a little patch of white against the rocks, far down there near the water,” she told him, a vague touch of interest coming for a moment into her listless voice. “I use it sometimes as a target.”
“Will you show me?” He crept to her side very humbly. She saw that his hand was a little unsteady.
Tsuda emptied the revolver quickly and deftly, then handed it back to her with a faint regretful smile. And he said, softly, his eyes agleam as he spoke, in a cryptic whisper:
“Your husband is a very lucky man, Wife-of-the-Kami....”