The gold woman could stand the uncertainty no longer.
"Paul, tell me frankly—have I done or said anything to hurt you? What is it? What I said down there in the stranger's room—is it that?"
The words were no sooner away from her lips than anger at herself swept her. Where was her pride?
"No, no. Of course you have not said anything. Of course not. All's well, little woman." His answer came quickly, but not without an embarrassment that she failed to understand. He bent his head over his work again. "Don't forget you are to call me at the first sign of a breeze; anyway not later than 11:30."
They had planned at dinner that she was to keep the watch for the first part of the night.
"No; I shan't forget," she answered bravely and groped down the companionway from his sight. Nor could she dream what pain it cost the lonely man at the chart table to let her go from him.
CHAPTER XXVII
"Up with ye, yez foretop bullies! Up an' give her a cheer! Hip!—--Hear her! A bloody Englishman playin' av 'Th' Star Spangled Banner!' That's for us, ye bullies! Hip, hip!—--Damn ye, cheer! Now! Hip!—Again!—She's struck! No! She's by the reef!—By God she's clear! She's in the open sea! Clear! Hip!"
This monologue, shouted as if through the teeth of a gale, suddenly broke upon the gold woman's troubled consciousness where she stood writing at William Elston's desk. It was the derelict raving. The dramatic spirit of his speech thrilled her. It conveyed to her mind a picture of a ship fighting to sea against all odds and she could see the stranger in the next room somewhere in the foreground of a ragged shore urging others—men under him—to cheer her on.