"I will, sir," answered Medbury.
"Hawkins never did look after the little things," the captain went on, with gentle grumbling. "Good man, but didn't seem to have any eyes sometimes. Still, I was sorry to have him go ashore sick. He can't afford to lay idle long. Same with John Davis. I thought he'd jump at the chance to take Hawkins's place. I didn't think it so strange in Bob Markham's backing out: he'd promised his wife to stay ashore. But Davis—I don't understand about him. I never knew folks to act so. Davis seemed pleased when I asked him, and hurried right off to get his things; but before I'd hardly turned my head, back he galloped and said he'd changed his mind. It made me a little provoked; and when I asked him why, he just winked. Well!" He walked away, still grumbling.
Medbury had not lifted his eyes from his work as the captain had talked, but now he glanced up, to find Hetty's eyes watching him keenly. Something in the intensity of her look stirred his foreboding. He was not wholly unacquainted with the intuitive divination with which women often flash upon the secrets men would withhold from them, and now he braced himself for the question that he knew was coming.
"Do you know why they would not come?" she asked. Her voice was tense.
He tried to show surprise at the question, but knew that he failed.
"I suppose they didn't want to," he answered.
"Don't you know?" she demanded.
He hesitated, and she sprang to her feet.
"You needn't tell me," she cried with suppressed passion. "I know. I know you got them to. They'd do it for you. You seem to have obliging friends. Oh!" She turned away, but came back immediately. "And now I suppose everybody in Blackwater is laughing over the story. And laughing at me! I didn't want you to come; but if I'd known this, do you think I would have set foot on this vessel while you were aboard? I'd have died first." She walked to the rail, but came restlessly back. "Well, it's over now. Do you think I could go back home and have people know that your—your trick had succeeded? There have been times when I have thought that I could care for you in the way you wish, but I couldn't be sure. If my face is like April, as you say, I think my mind is, too. I cannot be sure. Sometimes I think I do not care for anything; I think I have no heart. And then, when I see you watching me, and I know what you are thinking, I almost hate you, and want to go away from everything I've ever known. But now, after this, it is ended. Oh, you make me ashamed!"
He had heard her in a tumult of contending emotions—shame and sorrow for hurting her, pity, remorse. Heart-sick, he rose to his feet.