(The third mate would give her the book.) Said Lalette, watching a tall unpainted barn without a window that walked slowly past along the shore; “Yet your captain seemed very harsh with him for so light a fault.”
“Oh, that is only the rule of the sea. On a ship one learns early that in this world there is no such thing as following one’s own desire; it is all a pyramid of orders.”
“You are grim.”
“No, I only see things as they are.” Now he began to make remarks which she must have answered, for he smiled and continued (but now her mind had leaped far away, and she was wondering whether she would see Rodvard again ever, or recover her Blue Star? Bound out to sea and away; it was his fault, who had given her unfaithfulness and desertion in exchange for the offered kindness and the abandonment of her mother. And now she wondered why she had embarked on the counter-witchery without even questioning whether she should; she felt a tear behind her eye, and hoped he had come to know what resources of fidelity and good will he had lost in her. No, not again, I’ll never let another have the making of my joy.)
A whistle was blown; men moved along the deck of the ship, and Tegval came toward them with his cap insouciantly on one side to be presented. He had the same look of inner peace as the Amorosians of the conventicle, but mingled with it an air of dash and recklessness.
14
THE EASTERN SEA; THE CAPTAIN’S STORY
A frond of white had spread across the sky as they talked. Lalette went to her room in the round covered-house that rose from the deck, and applied herself to the needle. Making the new dress right was a problem, since she had done little but broidery before, and she became so taken with fitting and clipping as not to note the tick of time; then felt drowsy, and lay down to be roused by a knock at the door.
It was Tegval, third mate. “May I lead you to supper?” The ship had no motion when they reached air; here they were in the middle of a brown-blue tide, with flat shores stretching to green-blue on either flank. Tegval helped her graciously down the stair, and was this time prompt enough so that all of them were waiting when Captain Mülvedo came in. This officer was now at ease, cracking his face into a smile for Lalette and trying to converse with her about people a demoiselle of condition might be expected to know. Some of them she did know, but was forced to avoid the issue lest he learn the falsity of her name.
Tegval offered her his arm after the meal, and showed her around the deck as far forward as the tri-mast, his discourse being of the parts of the ship and the beauty of the sea. He would answer little when she asked him about Brog, the Captain and other personalities, and as evening was now beginning to grow shadowy, with a hint of chill, she announced an early return to her cabin. He leaned close as he handed her in the door and said in a low voice that he would knock at the fourth glass of night with a book, then tipped a finger to his lips to prevent questions (and she realized that even on a ship trading to Mancherei, it was not too well to be an Amorosian).
With no desire for sleep, she stretched out on the bed and tried to solve her riddles—how it was that her mind should turn to the seldom-felt nearness of Rodvard. There had been about him the faintest trace of some odor like that of old leather, masculine and comforting. She was a little irritated at herself for feeling the lack of it, and her mind drifted off through other angers till she lay there in the dark, simmering with wordless fury over many things; the ship began to move. The change in circumstance made her conscient of what she was doing; she began to weep for her own troubles, the tears trickling into the hard pillow where her face was buried, thinking that after all Rodvard had perhaps been right to slip away from a witch with so vile a temper.