"I was getting the worst of it when you came in with the stick."
"No, you weren't. He was almost choking for breath. I couldn't help hitting him with the stick—that's all." And then she added: "Why is it you don't want me to think you whipped him? I've told everybody you did!"
Her question and a quick flash in her eyes sent a little thrill through Peter. Was it possible Mona really believed he was getting the best of the fight when she began pommeling Aleck Curry with the stick? He flushed as he thought of his position at that moment, flat on his back with his legs in the air and his arms helpless under Aleck's weight, and Aleck himself just on the point of annihilating him! Surely Mona could not have been blind in those moments. She must have seen his peril, even if Aleck was panting for breath. Peter looked at her, trying to measure the truth of the matter. But Mona's eyes were innocent. If she was lying to him, she was doing it beautifully.
In a vague sort of way the problem weighed itself in Peter's mind, and he saw even more clearly that it was necessary for him to whip Aleck Curry that day. The responsibility had now become a grim and insistent one, for if Mona really thought he had whipped Aleck, he must do it in fact to save his own self-respect; and if she was shielding him from embarrassment and shame, as he partly believed, by spreading a false report of the combat, then it was doubly necessary for him to retrieve himself and prove his prowess by whipping the tug master's bullying son.
From the corners of his eyes he began questing for Aleck, who had disappeared from the strip of sand below them, though he did this in such a way that Mona did not guess his intention. She showed him her pets, and it was then Peter saw something which he had never seen before, though he loved all wild things. At Mona's soft little calls the big-eyed moose birds which Peter called whisky jacks fluttered about her and ate crumbs out of her hands. Down on the white sand of the Middle Finger the gulls gathered close about them, like a flock of chickens, begging in soft, throaty notes for the tidbits which she had brought from the cabin. She sat down in the sand and they climbed over her lap. One huge white fellow pecked at her shining braid.
"That's Bobo," she explained. "He always wants to eat my hair!" A one-legged gull hopped on her lap and began eating greedily the handful of bread-crumbs which she offered him. "And this is Dominique. I call him that to tease Dominique Beauvais, who is so fat and round. I don't know how he lost his leg, but I believe Aleck Curry must have shot it off a year ago. I wish Aleck's father would never bring him here again!"
[CHAPTER IX]
It was almost noon when Peter left Mona and returned to Simon McQuarrie's cabin. His head was in a whirl and his heart stirred uneasily between joy and grief. Not for many minutes at a time had his thoughts been away from his father. Even when Mona's dark eyes were smiling at him and her sweet voice was talking to him, his father's white and hunted face was a vision that never quite faded out of his momentary flashes of happiness. Deep down in his heart was an emptiness which even Mona could not fill, an aching pain which her beauty and her gentleness softened but could not quite drive away.