I heard boots clumping on the poop deck. There wasn't time for me to escape forward. So I darted aft and flattened myself against the cabin wall, in exactly the same position, and in very nearly the same spot, as that occupied by the fellow I had scared away. I was not a second too soon. Sails and Chips came down the port ladder, and paused on the main deck, almost within arm's reach of me, waiting for the mate to join them.
If they had glanced in my direction they must have seen me. But they were looking forward, and were also occupied with talk.
Said Chips, "But what's the game? He's working up trouble, that's plain. But what's he after this time?"
Said Sails, "He's after that fellow in the Greaser's watch, or I'm a damn bad guesser. But, his game—well, ask me something easy. Did you ever know anybody to fathom his game?"
This I heard with one ear. At the same time my other ear was getting filled with different kind of talk. Aye, my post was between two conversations, and I found myself eavesdropping in two directions.
This wall I hugged was the forward wall of the sail-locker, which, in the Golden Bough, was a large room in the cabin space, and as I stood, my starboard ear was but a few inches distant from the sail-locker door. This door was in two parts, and the upper half was barely ajar. Through this narrow slit I heard—I couldn't help hearing—the murmur of low-voiced talk. Two people were in the sail-locker, talking. Oh, aye, I had discovered Newman. I recognized his voice. I recognized the other voice—the lady's voice.
"Oh, Mary—little love—it doesn't seem to matter any more. When I am with you, it is just a hideous dream from which I have awakened." It was Newman speaking, and in a voice so tender, so vibrant with feeling, it was hard to believe the words came out of the mouth of the foc'sle's iron man. "But now I wish to live again. Ah, little love, I have been dead too long, dead to everything except pain and hate. But now that I know, now that we both know—oh, Mary, surely we have earned the right to live and love. God will not hold it against us, if I take you from that mad beast. God—I am beginning to believe in God again, Mary, when I am with you."
"I, too, wish to live—and in clean air," came in the lady's voice. "Oh, Roy—five years—and the piling up of horrors—oh, I could not have stood it very much longer, Roy. But now—we can forget."
"That lad for'ard is all ready to slip his cable," came from the other direction, from Chips. "The steward says he's all set to go."
"He's been all set for a fortnight," was the other man's comment, "but he hangs on. Takes a lot to kill a squarehead. Most likely he'll be hanging on when we make port."