"You are master," answered the serang, and he turned to summon the mutineers.
Rowgowskii and the coolies under Chang's driving began a rapid transportation of all of the boat's provisions and equipment to a point halfway up the hillside indicated by Lavelle. The master knew that this was no time for punishment. He must have every ounce of strength he could command.
Straightening up from a contemplation of the hole in the boat, his brain busy with plans of repair, he looked toward the sea.
"I'm not beaten unless you drown me in the next three hours," he flung in a mutter at the growling deep.
Turning away, he found Emily Granville beside him. She was looking up at him through a mist of tears. Her own misery of body and soul had been swept away in the instant she had heard the boulder go crunching through the boat's thin skin. She could think only of what this cruel stab of fate must mean to the man captaining the handful of life which he had been chosen to save. Her capacity to think of another and not of herself in this common crisis was a sign of growth which would have pleased her if it had been possible to pause in self-analysis.
And this man, meeting her pitying eyes, smiled at her quizzically! If he had confronted her with a hopeless curse she would not have been surprised. Now she could but gasp in amazement. The comforting words which she had planned to speak would not lend themselves to utterance. In this second she realized that thus would he meet death—undaunted; smiling.
"Fate is treating you—very unkindly, Miss Granville," said he. He spoke in his usual low tone.
"Us," she corrected him, resenting, as she had come to do all that day, his insistence upon classifying her apart.
"Us, then," he answered with a nod.
"Does this mean——Is this the end?" she asked calmly, and she drew his eyes to the hole in the boat. His answer was a question.