“Roll yourself a cigaret,” I advised laughingly. “If you’re so eager to find out what Brack is planning, suppose we ask him?”
“Don’t,” he sputtered, horrified. “Don’t do anything like that.”
“Why not?”
“‘Why not?’” he repeated, growing calm. “Oh, just because I kind o’ like your company and I don’t want you to go overboard into the briny.”
I laughed. Pierce, I felt, was given to extravagant expressions.
At dinner that evening I sat down resolved to lead the conversation around to Garvin’s new-born docility, but, face to face with Brack, I admit that I feared to attempt it. I was no match for him. His terrible eyes, I felt, would have read the thoughts in my mind try as I might to hide them, and I smiled and replied as best I could to his sallies, and wondered in vain over what was going on behind that gross, smiling mask.
The weather grew suddenly rougher toward the end of the meal.
“That’s the tail of it,” said Wilson in reply to my question. “Now we’re getting the blow that has been chasing the rough weather down from the north, where it’s been a lot worse than we’ve been having. It’ll kick up hard for a few hours. Ought to die down and clear off by tomorrow morning.”
The smashing storm drove Brack and Wilson to their duties on deck. Riordan went, too, presently, and while Chanler and Dr. Olson, agreeing that the dining salon was the best place on a night like this, ordered another bottle, I found an oilskin and sou’wester and followed.
As I stepped out on deck I wished for a moment to be back in the warm, lighted cabin. The wind had increased to what seemed to me a tornado, and the night was so dark that only in the beam of the Wanderer’s search-light could one see the tossing water.