It did not matter that the crew was of high average. They would not be playing such a game unless they were a reckless lot. At any moment they might take it into their heads to swarm over Cunningham and obliterate him. Then what? If the episode of the morning had not convinced Jane, what would? The man Flint had dropped his mask; the others were content to wear theirs yet awhile. Torture for her sake, the fear of what might actually be in store for her, and she expected him to talk and act like a chap out of a novel!
Ordinarily so full of common sense, what had happened to her that her vision should become so 218 obscured as not to recognize the danger of the man? Had he been ugly, Jane would probably have ignored him. But that face of his, as handsome as a Greek god’s, and that tongue with its roots in oil! And there was his deformity—that had drawn her pity. Playing with her, and she deliberately walked into the trap because he was amusing! Why shouldn’t he be, knowing that he held their lives in the hollow of his hand? What imp of Satan wouldn’t have been amiable?
Because the rogues did not run up the skull and crossbones; because they did not swagger up and down the deck, knives and pistols in their sashes, she couldn’t be made to believe them criminals!
Amusing! She could not see that if he spoke roughly it was only an expression of the smothered pain of his mental crucifixion. He could not tell her he loved her for fear she might misinterpret her own sentiments. Besides, her present mood was not inductive to any declaration on his part; a confession might serve only to widen the breach. Who could say that it wasn’t Cunningham’s game to take Jane along with him in the end? There was nothing to prevent that. His father holding aloof, the loyal members of the crew in a most certain negligible minority, what was there to prevent Cunningham from carrying off Jane?
Blood surged into Dennison’s throat; a murderous 219 fury boiled up in him; but he remembered in time what these volcanic outbursts had cost him in the past. So he did not rush to the chart house. Cunningham would lash him with ridicule or be forced to shoot him. But his rage carried him as far as the wireless room. He could hear the smack of the spark, but that was all. He tried the door—locked. He tried the shutters—latched. Cunningham’s man was either calling or answering somebody. Ten minutes inside that room and there would be another tale to tell.
In the end Dennison spent his fury by travelling round the deck until the sea and sky became like pearly smoke. Then he dropped into a chair and fell asleep.
Cunningham had also watched through the night. The silent steersman heard him frequently rustling papers on the chart table or clumping to the bridge or lolling on the port sills—a restlessness that had about it something of the captive tiger.
Retrospection—he could not break the crowding spell of it, twist mentally as he would; and the counter-thought was dimly suicidal. The sea there; a few strides would carry him to the end of the bridge, and then—oblivion. And the girl would not permit him to enact this thought. He laughed. God had mocked him at his birth, and 220 the devil had played with him ever since. He had often faced death hotly and hopefully, but to consider suicide coldly!
A woman who had crossed his path reluctantly, without will of her own; the sort he had always ignored because they had been born for the peace of chimney corners! She—the thought of her—could bring the past crowding upon him and create in his mind a suicidal bent!
Pearls! A great distaste of life fell upon him; the adventure grew flat. The zest that had been his ten days gone, where was it?