“I formed such a shocking opinion of you when I first saw you—I thought you had killed that negro—and when Mr. Van Steen told me how you had toiled and suffered to save the ship—and were in pain—I knew my judgment was mistaken—and that it was my duty——”
“Forget it, ma’am,” and Johnny Kent waved a bandaged fist. “We ain’t pretty to look at, and our manners are violent, but when you talk about duty, I guess you and I believe in the same gospel.”
His gaze was so honestly, respectfully worshipful that Miss Hollister was conscious of an agreeable sensation. She was a woman, and a charming one, but at fifty years she no longer dreamed of masculine homage.
“Were you severely injured, Mr. Kent?”
“Not half as much as those poor old boilers. I’m afraid to guess how many tubes are leaky. I’ll quit sputterin’ and losin’ my temper when we get those Cubans and guns ashore.”
“Their leader does not seem very capable,” ventured Miss Hollister. “I was not at all favorably impressed with him when he spoke to me just now.”
“Did that sea-sick tin soldier annoy you, ma’am?” heatedly ejaculated Johnny Kent as he raised himself on his elbow and fixed a glittering eye on a holster which hung on the wall. “I’ll surge out of here and learn him a lesson that will do him a whole lot of good.”
“No more violence, I beg of you,” implored the spinster, dismayed and yet enjoyably thrilled. “I should not have mentioned it. If there is anything that can be done to make you more comfortable——”
“Pshaw, I’ll be up and doing before we try to make a landing, ma’am. Your droppin’ in to see me has made me chirk up. Blessed if it don’t make this hole of a room seem kind of sweetened and lit up and sanctified.”
Miss Hollister colored and concluded that she had stayed quite long enough. With a gracious word of farewell, she hastened to the upper deck. Nora Forbes had found a new companion, a lean, sandy man in faded khaki whose sad, freckled face had a noticeable pallor and whose head was wound about with a white bandage. He sat with his back propped against a boat in the shade of the awning, and Nora announced to her aunt: