“Did I not begin right? Well, then—The top of the morning to you, darling.”
He was close beside her now, and his dark face was so near her own that she instinctively shrank away.
His eyebrows contracted, and, putting his brown hand over her clenched white ones, he said, “You may take cold sitting there. Come for a walk.”
Sorely against her will she rose, and, by way of showing her displeasure, refused his proffered arm. He threw a meaning glance at the decks that seemed to be abandoning the horizontal and striving for the perpendicular, and the next instant Nina found herself dashed in a forlorn heap at the foot of a large deck compass.
Captain Fordyce sprang to her aid, and, as he picked her up, put her cap on her curls again, with the words, “Poor child, have you hurt yourself?”
Nina gave him a faint, “No.” Drawing her now unresisting arm through his own, he walked down the long decks, clean and wet from a recent scrubbing, past the bridge and the portion of the ship allotted to the second cabin passengers. When they came to the steerage quarters, Nina turned away her head to avoid a puff of hot air that swept up the narrow opening. A pale-faced woman with a baby in her arms struggled on deck. She unwittingly crossed the dividing line between her portion of the ship and that belonging to the richer, more favoured class.
Captain Fordyce’s eyes rested on her, and he nodded slightly to one of the ship’s officers who happened to be passing. It did not escape Nina. She saw the woman sent back, and pitied the weary look on her face, as she quietly retraced her steps.
“Please let me speak to her for a moment,” she said to her companion.
He released her, and hurrying back she put her hand in her pocket. There was no money there. She had left her purse in her room. She drew a little gay silk handkerchief from the breast of her coat, and, pressing it between the woman’s thin fingers, told her to twist it around the baby’s neck.
The woman’s white lips murmured a blessing, and, with tears in her eyes, Nina turned toward the prow of the ship. Had she incurred the Grand Turk’s displeasure? and she anxiously scanned his face as he guided her steps over a huge anchor lying on the deck.