“Pain?” he repeated.
For one more touch of her tender hands! To carry the thought of that through the long, hot night! Perhaps it was his ever-bubbling sense of malice that decided him—to let her minister to him, with the Cleighs on the bridge to watch and boil with indignation. He nodded, and she followed him to the hatch, where he sat down.
Dennison saw his father’s hands strain on the bridge rail, the presage of a gathering storm. He intervened by a rough seizure of Cleigh’s arm.
“Listen to me, Father! Not a word of reproach out of you when she comes up—God bless her! Anything in pain! It’s her way, and I’ll not have her reproached. God alone knows what the beggar saved her from last night! If you utter a word I’ll cash that twenty thousand—it’s mine now—and you’ll never see either of us after Manila!”
Cleigh gently disengaged his arm. 272
“Sonny, you’ve got a man’s voice under your shirt these days. All right. Run down and give the new crew the once-over, and see if they have a wireless man among them.”
Sunset—a scarlet horizon and an old-rose sea. For a little while longer the trio on the bridge could discern a diminishing black speck off to the southeast. The Wanderer was boring along a point north of east, Manila way. The speck soon lost its blackness and became violet, and then magically the streaked horizon rose up behind the speck and obliterated it.
“The poor benighted thing!” said Jane. “God didn’t mean that he should be this kind of a man.”
“Does any of us know what God wants of us?” asked Cleigh, bitterly.