“Better so,” I answered.
“But think, Humphrey, a fellow-creature in his last lonely hour.”
“Perhaps,” I suggested.
“Yes, even perhaps,” she acknowledged. “But we do not know. It would be terrible if he were. I could never forgive myself. We must do something.”
“Perhaps,” I suggested again.
I waited, smiling inwardly at the woman of her which compelled a solicitude for Wolf Larsen, of all creatures. Where was her solicitude for me, I thought,—for me whom she had been afraid to have merely peep aboard?
She was too subtle not to follow the trend of my silence. And she was as direct as she was subtle.
“You must go aboard, Humphrey, and find out,” she said. “And if you want to laugh at me, you have my consent and forgiveness.”
I arose obediently and went down the beach.
“Do be careful,” she called after me.