"Stop it!" It was I who banged the table now, without any of the reserve of decency. "McCord, you're drunk—drunk, I tell you. A cat! Let a cat throw you off your head like this! She's probably hiding out below this minute, on affairs of her own."
"Hiding?" He regarded me for a moment with the queer superiority of the damned. "I guess you don't realize how many times I've been over
this hulk, from decks to keelson, with a mallet and a foot-rule."
"Or fallen overboard," I shifted, with less assurance. "Like this fellow Björnsen. By the way, McCord—" I stopped there on account of the look in his eyes.
He reached out, poured himself a shot, swallowed it, and got up to shuffle about the confined quarters. I watched their restless circuit—my friend and his jumping shadow. He stopped and bent forward to examine a Sunday-supplement chromo tacked on the wall, and the two heads drew together, as though there were something to whisper. Of a sudden I seemed to hear the old gnome croaking, "Now that story sounds to me kind of—"
McCord straightened up and turned to face me.
"What do you know about Björnsen?" he demanded.
"Well—only what they had you saying in the papers," I told him.
"Pshaw!" He snapped his fingers, tossing the affair aside. "I found her log," he announced in quite another voice.
"You did, eh? I judged, from what I read in the paper, that there wasn't a sign."