"That wasn't anything," disclaimed Blake. "I slept on deck every night. Just a picnic. I knew you were safe—no more danger of that damnable fever—and with Jimmy to entertain you."
"While you had to hide from me all day! James said that it was frightful in the forecastle."
"Much he knows about such places! It wasn't anything to a glass-factory or steelworks. If it had been the stokehole, instead—I did try stoking, one day, just to pass the time. Stood it two hours. Those Lascars are born under the equator. I don't see how any white man can stoke in the tropics."
"You did that?—to pass the time! While we were aft, under double awnings, up where we could catch every breath of air! Had I known that you did not land at Port Mozambique, I should have—should have—"
"Course you would have!" he replied. "But now you see how well it was you didn't know."
"Perhaps—Yet I'm not so sure—I—I—"
She clasped her hands over her eyes, as all her grief and anguish came back upon her in full flood.
"Oh, Tom! what shall we do? My dear, my poor dear! That doctor, with his cold, hard science! I have learned the meaning of that fearful verse of the Bible: 'Unto the third and fourth generation.' You may succeed; you may win your great fight for self-mastery. But your children—the curse would hang over them. One and all, they too might suffer. Though you should hold to your self-mastery, there would still be a chance,—epilepsy, insanity, your own form of the curse! And should you again fall back into the pit—"
She stopped, overcome.
He drew back a little way, and stood regarding her with a look of utter despair.