The seamen looked at the captain; and he smirked at the girl and said:
"Take him below; and," to an officer, "see that he stays there."
Anthony was taken below and placed in the bunk he had occupied before. The girl got some warm water from the cook; and she cleaned the gouts of blood from his head and face.
"This is the second time," said Anthony, "that you've stepped between that man and me. And yet he is your friend, and I am your enemy."
She said nothing but went on cleansing the wounds in his head with soft, light touches; her lips were compressed; he could not see her eyes.
"And yet," he said, "why am I your enemy? How have I become so?"
When he was free of the disfiguring blood, she began to bandage his head; and she told the black cook to bring some brandy. She poured some of this into a glass and gave it to Anthony; he drank it readily. Little by little the feeling of helplessness passed. The potent agents in the brandy advanced warmly through his system, and the weakness fell back before them; his wounded head throbbed painfully under the increased activity of his heart; but it also grew steady; things no longer whirled before his eyes, and there were some spots of color warming in his face. He said to her:
"You hold me your enemy, do you not?"
"Your name is Stevens," she answered.
He lay, looking up at her; and then he began to speak. She had once accepted his help; he had been a stranger, yet she had accepted it gratefully. Had she not? Even more than that: she had waited for him that day in Water Street, and she had appealed to him. It had seemed a time of growing trouble, and she had asked his aid. Was it not so? She must have felt, then, that he was one who would be a friend. And yet only a few hours later she had begun to count him as an enemy. Had it been during those hours that she'd found his name was Stevens?