“I am thinking.”
“I am not blind. I might suppose I saw mischief in your face, if I thought you capable of mischief.”
A pair of slow but shrewd Dutch eyes, and a pair of big but attentive Dutch ears overtopped the spokes of the wheel. I made her glance at Wirtz by myself looking at him. She understood the meaning in my face, and returned to her chair. I crossed the deck, and passing my arm round a lee backstay, gazed at the horizon ahead, thinking with all my might.
I remained on deck about half an hour, and then went below. I took a book out of the shelf in my berth, and seated myself at the cabin table, as far removed as possible from the skylight, but not out of sight of one who should peer through the glass; the size of the cabin did not admit of such concealment. After the lapse of a few minutes I was joined by Miss Aurora, who pulled off her cap and placed herself beside me.
There could be nothing suspicious in our sitting close together. Many a time had we sat very close together indeed, at that cabin table, under the skylight, when I was teaching her to speak the English language, and wondering whether, under other circumstances, I should discover myself to be rather in love with this fine young Spanish woman; and many a time had the men looked down and observed us, and grinned, I have no doubt, and uttered such remarks, one to another, as the very low level of their forecastle intelligence would suggest.
“What has caused you to stare at me, Señor Fielding?”
“I have wished to satisfy myself that you are to be trusted.”
“Ave Maria! Trusted! Do not wrap up your meaning. I dislike people who wrap up their meaning.”
“Could you kill a man?”
“For my honor and for my liberty, yes,” she replied after a short silence, rearing herself in her swelling way, and flashing one of her wicked looks at me.