d
his voice. I recognized the other voice--the lady's voice.

"Oh, Mary--little love--it doesn't seem to matter any more. When I am
with you, it is just a hideous dream from which I have awakened." It
was Newman speaking, and in a voice so tender, so vibrant with feeling,
it was hard to believe the words came out of the mouth of the foc'sle's
iron man. "But now I wish to live again. Ah, little love, I have been
dead too long, dead to everything except pain and hate. But now that I
know, now that we both know--oh, Mary, surely we have earned the right
to live and love. God will not hold it against us, if I take you from
that mad beast. God--I am beginning to believe in God again, Mary,
when I am with you."

"I, too, wish to live--and in clean air," came in the lady's voice.
"Oh, Roy--five years--and the piling up of horrors--oh, I could not
have stood it very much longer, Roy. But now--we can forget."

"That lad for'ard is all ready to slip his cable," came from the other
direction, from Chips. "The steward says he's all set to go."

"He's been all set for a fortnight," was the other man's comment, "but
he hangs on. Takes a lot to kill a squarehead. Most likely he'll be
hanging on when we make port."

"Not if I know Fitz and--him," said Chips. "You don't think they'd
leave evidence of that sort for a port doctor to squint at. Remember
that Portagee, last voyage, and how he finished?"

"Aye, it was hard on the lady, that job was. But he--he's a devil,
sure. No use standing out against him."

"Five years! My God, how have you been able to stand it, Mary?" said
Newman. "Five years--and most of them spent at sea in this blood ship!"

"It has been my penance, Roy. It has seemed to me that in sailing with
him, in lessening even a little bit the misery he causes those poor
men, I have been atoning, in a little measure, for my lack of faith in
you. Oh, it was my fault in the beginning, dearest. If only I had had
faith in the beginning, if only I had trusted my heart instead of my
eyes and ears. I might have known that time that Beulah was lying."

"Hush. How could you know? It was my stubborn, stupid pride. If I
had not rushed away and left the field to him. And I never knew, or
even guessed, until Beasley told me."

"If I was that big fellow, I'd just hop over the side and have it over
with," came from Sails. "If the Old Man is after him, he's bound to
get him, and making a quick finish him