Wirtz, who was at the wheel, hearing this, called out in Dutch. Yan Bol gazed at him slowly, then leisurely brought his face to bear upon mine and eyed me fixedly.
“Mr. Fielding,” he said, slowly, “I likes to shake you by der hand und it vhas a good ting to be a happy barty. But if you doan navigate us you vhas of no use, und we puts you into dot boat mit der two Spaniards und sends you away, hoping dot it shall be well mit us all.”
I remained in my berth during the greater part of that afternoon. I was nearly mad and afraid to trust myself on deck. The insult, let alone the significance, of Bol’s threat to send me adrift with the two Spaniards, was crushing, because it found me entirely helpless. Bligh, of the Bounty, had been so served; others who deserved far better usage at the hands of their crew than Bligh, of the Bounty, had been put into boats in mid-ocean and dispatched to their doom. In the next hour I might find myself adrift with the two Spaniards, the brig a white gleam on the horizon, the lady Aurora alone with the crew, the money as utterly lost to me as if it had gone to the bottom.
So I remained in my berth and thought, and all the afternoon I sat thinking till the evening darkened upon the port-hole, till the fire had gone out of my blood, and the machinery of the brain worked calmly.
Thrice, or perhaps four times, did Miss Aurora beat upon my cabin door and call my name. I heard her ask the lad Jimmy if I was ill, if I was mad, what had happened, why did the Señor Fielding hide himself? The half-witted boy knew not how to answer her. She knocked upon my door again. I told her that I was hard at work, and promised to join her presently.
When the dusk fell, I opened the door of my berth and entered the cabin. I stepped at once to the tell-tale compass, and saw that the brig’s course was still east by south. The lamp was alight and the meal of the evening was upon the table. The breeze was light, the heel of the brig trifling. I guessed she was under the same canvas I had left her clothed in at noon. I saw the stars shining through the skylight glass, and heard a steady trudge of feet overhead, as of two men, perhaps three, walking the quarter-deck. I looked round for the lady Aurora, and, while I did so, her white dress, with its fanciful decoration of bunting, filled the companion way, and she came down. Her eyes were bright, her looks without excitement or alarm, her cheeks faintly colored by the breath of the evening air she was fresh from. It was clear—I saw it in her—she knew nothing of what had passed.
“At last, señor,” said she, approaching as though to give me her hand.
She stopped, looked at me earnestly, and slightly wagged her head in a strange foreign way.
“You are ill?” she said.
“No; I am hungry. Let us sup.”