A large man sprawled in Captain Dabney's easy chair at the farther end of the cabin table. The table was littered with the debris of a meal, which Charley Bo Yip was phlegmatically and deftly clearing away, and Martin stared across the board's disarray at Wild Bob Carew's disdainful face. The erstwhile commander of the schooner Dawn, his comrades' unscrupulous enemy, his own rival, was the same aloof, superior rogue he remembered from the night in Spulvedo's dive.
As Martin looked, Carew engaged himself with filling and lighting his pipe, and seemed to be totally unconscious of the disheveled young man standing before him, with wrists manacled behind his back.
Martin was again surprised, as he had been that night in San Francisco, with the incongruity of Wild Bob's appearance contrasted with his activities. Was this splendid figure of a man the vicious outlaw of wide and evil repute? The renegade thief? The persecutor of women? The pitiless butcher of defenseless men? Were those fine, clean-cut features but a mask that covered an abyss of black evil? Did that broad forehead actually conceal the crafty, degenerate brain that planned and executed the bloody and treacherous piracy upon their ship?
The haggardness of recent hardship was upon Carew's features, and a week's, or more, stubble of yellow beard covered his cheeks, yet the growth in nowise brutalized the handsome face. There was a long scar on Carew's forehead, which glowed a vivid red as he sucked upon his pipe; there was also a wide cross of court-plaster on a clipped spot on top of the head. Martin suddenly realized that both disfigurements were his handiwork; one was a memento of the fight on the Frisco waterfront, the other the result of his blow the night before.
Carew suddenly lifted his eyes and met Martin's stare, and a cold thrill tingled along Martin's spine. For there was a hot ferocity lighting the man's eyes; there was a hot, yet calculated, hatred in the level look.
Ichi's suave voice broke the uneasy silence.
"Mr. Blake, we have brought you up here for a little chat," said Ichi. "And before we commence, I beg please to inform you I am your very dear friend, and I think of you no ill. So—will you not be seated?"
Martin seated himself gingerly upon the edge of a chair. It was an uncomfortable position, and his arms ached keenly from being constrained in the unnatural position the handcuffs demanded, but he dare not slip out a hand and relieve himself.
"Ah, let us trust none of the violence of epithet which marked my discourse with the worthy boatswain Henry will mar our conversation, Mr. Blake," went on Ichi. Martin perceived his conceit still smarted under the boatswain's curses. "You are an American gentleman, the honorable Carew is an English gentleman, I am a Japanese gentleman. So, our discussion need not be intruded upon by those exclamations of great explosiveness with which your wonderful English language is so enriched. We gentlemen have civility."
"Never mind talking manners, doctor!" broke in Carew impatiently. "It would please me if you would permit me to forget your gentility for an hour. Come to the point! State our proposition to this fellow, and let him make his choice."