He waited a moment before he said: “Since we got into the ice?”
“Yes.”
“I suppose I do.” But he said it so stonily she stopped half-way up the companionway and looked back at him. “I’ve been thinking I should never have known you if I hadn’t come on this journey.”
“Oh, found me out, have you?”
Hearing Cheviot’s short laugh, Gillies jerked his head angrily over his shoulder. Hildegarde hesitated at the top of the companionway. “It looks like a dreadful breach of discipline,” she said, “but it isn’t. You told me I might come again.”
“In here, then,” said Gillies gruffly, and took them to his room. He was shaking like one in an ague, but he seemed not so ill pleased to see some one from the world below. He gave the girl a chair. “It’s all right,” he said. “Only it’s no good for others to see you up here.” He fell into the remaining seat with a heavy thud, and his bullet head hung forward. “Well?” he demanded, with a forced laugh, turning bloodshot eyes on Cheviot. Hildegarde saw plainer now what an unnatural color Gillies was. Did the shivering and the purple and scarlet stains mean a sickening for fever, or only a horrible anxiety and an all-night watch in the cold?
“I’m afraid you didn’t get much sleep,” she began.
“Not for two nights now,” he said, and then looking at Cheviot: “This’ll be all over the coast, from Nome to ’Frisco.” As he spoke the hard face twitched.
“What will?” Cheviot answered. “That the floods have made a new bar in Norton Sound this spring?”
The captain uttered an inarticulate sound, something between a grunt and a groan. “First trip, too! Ship full of damned newspaper people. Land rats, starving for a story.” He choked, and stood up stamping his cold feet, and while he did so, through the port he forced the sleep-defrauded eyes to reconnoiter the sharp, white outline of the distant icebergs.