Captain Pincher took a jorum every hour or two and retired to his berth and novels, leaving the navigation of the Morning Star to the under-officers. Ducat, the third officer, a Breton, joined us at meals. He was a decent, clever fellow in his late twenties, ambitious and clear-headed, but youthfully impressed by McHenry's self-proclaimed wickedness.
One night after dinner he and McHenry were bantering each other after a few drinks of rum. McHenry said, “Say, how's your kanaka woman?”
Ducat's fingers tightened on his glass. Then, speaking English and very precisely, he asked, “Do you mean my wife?”
“I mean your old woman. What's this wife business?”
“She is my wife, and we have two children.”
McHenry grinned. “I know all that. Didn't I know her before you? She was mine first.”
Ducat got up. We all got up. The air became tense, and in the silence there seemed no motion of ship or wave. I said to myself, “This is murder.”
Ducat, very pale, an inscrutable look on his face, his black eyes narrowed, said quietly, “Monsieur, do you mean that?”
“Why, sure I do? Why shouldn't I mean it? It's true.”
None of us moved, but it was as if each of us stepped back, leaving the two men facing each other. In this circle no one would interfere. It was not our affair. Our detachment isolated the two—McHenry quite drunk, in full command of his senses but with no controlling intelligence; Ducat not at all drunk, studying the situation, considering in his rage and humiliation what would best revenge him on this man.