"Yes, sir," said the steward faintly, his cheeks turning green. He fled in haste.
Black Mendez grinned delightedly. "Dey'll be no good for fight, Cap'n."
The skipper merely laughed in his throat, and strode to the companion way. He had changed overnight. No longer was he under the shadow of the land, under the hand of port and civil and military authorities! No longer was he among the meshes of mankind's net! Here he was the master. Here he was authority ultimate and supreme. Here, on the high seas, his word, and his alone, was law. He only dictated; all others obeyed! He was the skipper. He was absolute.
Something of all this showed in his eyes as he went below. At the foot of the ladder he met the Missus, rock-like and indomitable. She looked into his eyes and shrank slightly.
"At four bells," said Captain Pontifex curtly. "In the cabin—with him."
She nodded and looked after him as he swung away aft. She was afraid of him, but she was proud of him—was she not his woman? She, of whom all others aboard the Pelican were in dread, stood in fear of the skipper.
Captain Pontifex passed into the saloon at the stern, where the helpless Miles Hathaway sat in his chair beside the screwed-down cot that served him as a bunk. Despite the hardness and the harshness and the terror of the Missus' life, she was after all a woman; the cabin ports were curtained with flowered chintz, the big gun-rack and the little bookcase were also curtained; in the corner near the stern ports was a heavy tea-jar lashed to the deck, in which blossomed a huge scarlet geranium plant. This geranium was the pride and joy of the Missus, and the envy and admiration of all visiting whaling skippers.
The skipper pulled up a chair in front of Miles Hathaway, stuffed tobacco into his pipe, struck a match and, through the ensuing cloud of smoke, fastened his keen dark eyes upon the staring gaze of the paralytic.
"Well," he observed, "I've got 'em, haven't I? Bit of a surprise, eh?"
It seemed as though some fearful inner convulsion swept over the helpless man. His mouth opened slightly; his eyelids jerked. But he could not speak.