He drew himself up with shoulders back and stood there, a splendid figure of a man. His face was flushed and working, showing plainly the jealous passions and the intolerable longing for the girl's approval which had whipped him into this melodramatic outburst. Ruth faced him with silent, contemptuous scorn. Martin's gorge rose to fever pitch. With difficulty he restrained himself from slipping the cuffs and springing at the insolent egotist's throat.
"It is not ambergris I want!" went on Carew. "It is you, Ruth. I want you of your own free will. Look at me, Ruth! Am I hideous, or a weakling? By Heaven! Women in plenty have come to me ere now, and without my pleading! I am the mate for you. This pup, this runaway clerk, has no right to you. I could kill him for his presumption! Come to me. Ruth, you shall be anything, everything, you wish! I'll make you a fine lady—a queen—I know islands——"
"An island where you will install me as queen of your harem, I suppose," interrupted Ruth acidly. "Have you informed the other ladies you mentioned of your intentions?"
"You are the only one. There will never be another, I swear to you!" avowed Carew. "Those other women—they did not matter. But you—you will be my wife! A true marriage. I can give you a great name, a clean name, not the name of Carew."
"And I suppose we are to live up to your great name with the treasure I am to deliver into your hands?" scoffed Ruth.
"No, no! I do not want you for that!" asserted Carew. "It is you, you alone! The ambergris goes to my employers, to Ichi, here, and his partners. I must get it for them. It is the bargain I made. My own share will not be great, Ruth; I would gladly give a hundred times as much for your favor. But I am rich, girl. I have plenty salted away. I'll make my peace with my family, and we shall go home, to England. You'll be my wife, my legal wife!"
"I would rather be dead than your wife!" declared Ruth with vehemence. "I hate you!"
"And I say I will take you, hating me, rather than lose you!" returned Carew. His manner of impassioned pleading changed abruptly to threatening. "I'll beg no more of you, my haughty minx! But I will suggest that you reflect upon the reality of your condition. In any event, what will become of yourself? Hey? And what will become of this darling crew of yours, we hold prisoners below? And what will become of this scrub, here in the chair—this apple of your eye?"
"By Jove! You had better jolly well think about it! Would you rather have your grandfather, and the crew, and this lover of yours, set upon some safe shore—or, have the other thing happen to them? It rests with you!"
Martin's rage mounted to boiling-point during Wild Bob's remarkable wooing. The man's raw insults made him furious; the stormy browbeating of the woman he loved set him a-tingle with the strongest desire he had ever known—a desire to fling himself upon this sneering wretch and vindicate his manhood by battle. His hands crawled in their restraint, in their lust to batter upon that supercilious face. But he dare not. He knew that an outbreak on his part would mean the death of their chance to regain the ship.