"It's worse than hunger. Captain, do you know what that means? And I
could kill then--or be killed. I wish the crowbar had smashed my skull
ten years ago. And I've got to live now. Without her. Do you understand?
Perhaps many years. But how? What can be done? If I had allowed myself
to look at her once I would have carried her off before that man in my
hands--like this."

I felt myself snatched off the deck, then suddenly dropped--and I
staggered backwards, feeling bewildered and bruised. What a man! All was
still; he was gone. I heard Hermann's voice declaiming in the cabin, and
I went in.

I could not at first make out a single word, but Mrs. Hermann, who,
attracted by the noise, had come in some time before, with an expression
of surprise and mild disapproval, depicted broadly on her face, was
giving now all the signs of profound, helpless agitation. Her husband
shot a string of guttural words at her, and instantly putting out one
hand to the bulkhead as if to save herself from falling, she clutched
the loose bosom of her dress with the other. He harangued the two women
extraordinarily, with much of his shirt hanging out of his waist-belt,
stamping his foot, turning from one to the other, sometimes throwing
both his arms together, straight up above his rumpled hair, and keeping
them in that position while he uttered a passage of loud denunciation;
at others folding them tight across his breast--and then he hissed with
indignation, elevating his shoulders and protruding his head. The girl
was crying.

She had not changed her attitude. From her steady eyes that, following
Falk in his retreat, had remained fixed wistfully on the cabin door, the
tears fell rapid, thick, on her hands, on the work in her lap, warm