They walked back a little and sat down. But for the wild riot in his brain, Enderby would have noted that every vestige of colour had left her face.
"You must be hungry," he thought he was saying to her, and he placed the white objects in her lap.
She turned them slowly over and over in her hands, and then dropped them with a shudder. Some were flecked with red.
"For God's sake," the man cried, "tell me what you know!"
"I saw it all," she answered.
"I swear to you, Mrs Lan——" (the name stuck in his throat) "I never meant it. As God is my witness, I swear it. If we ever escape from here I will give myself up to justice as a murderer."
The woman, with hands spread over her face, shook her head from side to side and sobbed. Then she spoke. "I thought I loved him, once.... Yet it was for me ... and you saved my life over and over again in the boat. All sinners are forgiven we are told.... Why should not you be? ... and it was for me you did it. And I won't let you give yourself up to justice or any one. I'll say he died in the boat." And then the laughter of hysterics.
When, some months later, the JOSEPHINE, whaler, of New London, picked them up on her way to Japan, VIA the Carolines and Pelews, the captain satisfactorily answered the query made by Enderby if he could marry them. He "rayther thought he could. A man who was used ter ketchin' and killin'whales, the powerfullest creature of Almighty Gawd's creation, was ekal to marryin' a pair of unfortunit human beans in sich a pre-carus situation as theirs."