“You and I will have it out as man to man, O’Shea.”
“Captain O’Shea, if ye please, while I command this expedition,” softly spoke the other. “As man to man? You have been a man only since I took charge of your education. Are ye sure you are ready to qualify?”
The shipmaster’s smile was frosty, and his glance was exceedingly alert. Van Steen raised his voice to an unsteady pitch as he cried:
“That is a cheap insult. It shows what you are under the skin. Now, I don’t propose to bring her—to bring any one’s name into this—but you are to keep away, understand? It has to stop.”
“Did any one request ye to tell me to keep away, as ye put it in your tactful way?” blandly suggested O’Shea.
“No; this is my affair. There has been enough of this blarneying nonsense of yours, and watching for a chance when my back is turned. If you were a gentleman, there would be no necessity of telling you this.”
The veneer had been quite thoroughly removed from the conventional surfaces of Gerald Ten Eyck Van Steen. He was the primitive man ready to fight for his woman. O’Shea was divided between respect for him and a desire to swing a fist against his jaw.
“We have no gentlemen in my trade, of course,” he retorted. “Now and then we pick up one of them adrift and do our best for him, and he turns to and blackguards us for our pains. Have ye more to say?”
“Considerably more. It is an awfully awkward matter to discuss, but it is my right, and—and——”
O’Shea interrupted vehemently: