imprisoned her in an arm. "You haven't asked what I've got for you in my
sea chest," he said. Gerrit was very fond of all four of the rosy-cheeked
vigorous girls, and a sense of injury touched him at Laurel's reserved
manner. She studied him with a wondering uneasy concern. This he realized
was the result of bring home Taou Yuen; and an aggravated impatience, a
growing rebellion, seized him. He wouldn't stay with his wife at Java
Head a day longer than necessary; and if anyone, in his family or
outside, showed the slightest disdain he could retaliate with his
knowledge of local pettiness, the backbiting enmities and secret lapses.

God knew he didn't want trouble, all he asked was a reasonable liberty,
the semblance, anyhow, of a courtesy toward his wife. Whatever might be
said would be of no moment to her--except in the attitude of his
father--and Taou Yuen's indifference furnished a splendid example for
himself. He wondered why the devil he was continually putting his fingers
in affairs that couldn't concern him. No one thanked him for his trouble,
they considered him something of a fool--a good sailor but peculiar. The
damned unexpected twists of his sense of the absurd, too, got him into
constant difficulty.

His father was standing outside the principal entrance; and, as he joined
him on the steps, he saw two men from the _Nautilus_ carrying his ship's
desk by the beckets let in the ends. The wind was blowing gently up
Pleasant Street; the men, at his gesture, lifted their burden up the
steps, between the direction of the wind and Jeremy Ammidon. The latter
rose instantly into one of his dark rages:

"What do you mean, you damned packetrats--coming up a companionway to the
windward of me! I'll have no whalers' habits here." He repeated
discontentedly that everything on sea and land had fallen into a decline.