She shook her head and gazed at me pitifully. She was not frightened, but appalled, rather, at the human animality of it.
“You will understand,” I took advantage of the opportunity to say, “whatever part I take in what is going on and what is to come, that I am compelled to take it—if you and I are ever to get out of this scrape with our lives.”
“It is not nice—for me,” I added.
“I understand,” she said, in a weak, far-away voice, and her eyes showed me that she did understand.
The sounds from below soon died away. Then Wolf Larsen came alone on deck. There was a slight flush under his bronze, but otherwise he bore no signs of the battle.
“Send those two men aft, Mr. Van Weyden,” he said.
I obeyed, and a minute or two later they stood before him. “Hoist in your boat,” he said to them. “Your hunter’s decided to stay aboard awhile and doesn’t want it pounding alongside.”
“Hoist in your boat, I said,” he repeated, this time in sharper tones as they hesitated to do his bidding.
“Who knows? you may have to sail with me for a time,” he said, quite softly, with a silken threat that belied the softness, as they moved slowly to comply, “and we might as well start with a friendly understanding. Lively now! Death Larsen makes you jump better than that, and you know it!”
Their movements perceptibly quickened under his coaching, and as the boat swung inboard I was sent forward to let go the jibs. Wolf Larsen, at the wheel, directed the Ghost after the Macedonia’s second weather boat.