"I hope not," he answered, grimly. "Yet, if I had first served my time as seaman apprentice before being appointed to Annapolis, I might be up on that bridge now, instead of standing supinely by while one seaman apprentice does the navigating and another the bossing."
"There is that man again. I'm afraid of him, Billie. All the others, except Forsythe, have been civil to me; but he looks at me—so—so hatefully."
Billings, minus his clean white jacket, had come up the hatch and gone forward. He came back soon, showing a sullen, scowling face, as though his cheerful disposition had entirely left him.
As he reached the galley hatch, he cast upon the girl a look of such intense hatred and malevolence that Denman, white with anger, sprang to the hatch, and halted him.
"If ever again," he said, explosively, "I catch you glaring at this lady in that manner, parole or no parole, I'll throw you overboard."
Billings' face straightened; he saluted, and, without a word, went down the hatch, while Denman returned to the girl.
"He is an enlisted man," he said, bitterly, "not a passed seaman apprentice; so I downed him easily with a few words."
And then came the thought, which he did not express to Florrie, that his fancied limitations, which prevented him from being on the bridge, also prevented him from enlightening the morbid Billings as to the real source of the "terrible punch" he had received; for, while he could justify his silence to Florrie, he could only, with regard to Billings, feel a masculine dread of ridicule at dressing in feminine clothing.
CHAPTER XXII
At supper that evening they were served with prunes, bread without butter, and weak tea, with neither milk nor sugar.