“Suppose we try a ballot,” he said. “He seems to give a little.”
In a moment the foreman rapped.
“It is time we were taking another ballot, gentlemen,” he said.
The sleepers rose, grumbling, from uneasy dreams.
“I will write ‘guilty’ on twelve ballots,” said the foreman, “and if any one desires to write in ‘not,’ of course he can.”
When the hat came to Eli, he took one of the ballots and held it in his hand a moment; and then he laid it on the table. There was a general murmur. The picture which Mr. Eldridge had drawn loomed up before him. But with a hasty hand he wrote in “not,” dropped in the ballot, and going back to his chair by the window, sat down.
There was a cold wave of silence.
Then Eli suddenly walked up to the foreman and faced him.
“Now,” he said, “we’ll stop. The very next turn breaks ground. If you, or any other man that you set on, tries to talk to me when I don’t want to hear, to worry me to death—look out!”
How the long hours wore on! How easy, sometimes, to resist an open pressure, and how hard, with the resistance gone, to fight, as one that beats the air! How the prospect of a whole hostile town loomed up, in a mirage, before Eli! And then the picture rose before him of a long, stately bark, now building, whose owner had asked him yesterday to be first mate. And if his wife were only well, and he were only free from this night’s trouble, how soon, upon the long, green waves, he could begin to redeem his little home!