“Yo no hablo Americano. Yo no understand. No, I say nothin’; yes, I say thank you.” And he looked the skipper squarely in the face.
“You can take him forward,” said Enoch Moss.
As they filed out again into the cold and wet, Moll watched them, and after they had gone the skipper called her.
“Do you know Gonzales or Davis?” said he.
“Never saw either of them before they came aboard this ship,” she answered in a steady voice.
The captain looked long and searchingly at the woman before him. She met his gaze fairly for the space of a minute; then her lip trembled slightly.
“That will do. You may go,” said he, and his voice had a peculiar sadness that few people had ever heard.
O’Toole’s step sounded on the deck overhead, and, as the stewardess went forward into the main cabin, the mate’s voice sounded down the companion-way. “It’s hauled to the north’ard, sir. Shall I let her come as high as sou’-sou’west, sir?”
Enoch Moss sat silent at the table. He was thinking of a Spanish crest he had seen tattooed on the white arm of the stewardess. It belonged to her “family,” she had told him, and was tattooed there when she was a child of sixteen.
“Yes, let her head up to the southwest, and call me when we get in close enough to lower a boat,” he replied.