"And have you?"
"Good-night!" she said, holding out both hands.
He caught them, and the touch communicated fire. At the next moment he had lifted her hands to his lips.
She drew them down, and his hands with them, pressed them to her breast and then broke away, and was gone in an instant.
Stowell gasped. "She loves me! She loves me! She loves me!"
Nothing else mattered! Let the world rip!
II
Stowell did not go below that night. For two hours he tramped the deck, laughing to himself like a lunatic.
"She loves me! She loves me! She loves me!"
When the watch had to be changed at two o'clock he sent the man to his berth and took his place. And when the dawn broke and the lamps of the fishing fleet blinked out, and the boats showed grey, like ghosts, on the colourless waste around, and the monotonous chanting of the crews far and near told him the nets were being hauled in, he shouted down the fo'c'sle for the men. And when they came on deck he helped them to haul in their own net and to empty their catch (it was the Governor's order) into the first "Nickey" that came along.