“Do you think I would eat it?” she asked.
“It is the chief’s command. You are to be kept well fed and pretty as the prize of some great man.”
“You may take your food away again!”
“And have the chief slit my throat for not carrying out his orders?” the man asked. “Do you take me for a fool?”
He stepped into the little cabin and closed the door behind him. And then she saw that he carried a bottle of wine and half a cold fowl. She gasped as she looked at the wine, for there was a label upon the bottle, and it bore the stamp of her father’s hacienda.
It returned to her with a rush—memory of her father being struck down, of her home in flames, of her weeping mother crouched over her father’s body. She gave a little cry and reeled back against the wall.
“Leave me!” she commanded. “Out!”
The man leered and stepped toward her. She darted away from him, horror in her eyes. He put the bottle and fowl down upon the bunk.
“I leave the food and drink, pretty wench,” he said. “You may use it or throw it through the porthole into the sea—it is all the same to me.”
“Out!” she cried again.