She had discovered the china plate from which she was eating. She looked
over the breakfast, noting detail after detail. Then she looked at me,
and her face turned slowly toward the beach.

"Humphrey!" she said.

The old unnamable terror mounted into her eyes.

"Is--he?" she quavered.

I nodded my head.

CHAPTER XXXIIII

We waited all day for Wolf Larsen to come ashore. It was an intolerable
period of anxiety. Each moment one or the other of us cast expectant
glances toward the _Ghost_. But he did not come. He did not even appear
on deck.

"Perhaps it is his headache," I said. "I left him lying on the poop. He
may lie there all night. I think I'll go and see."

Maud looked entreaty at me.

"It is all right," I assured her. "I shall take the revolvers. You know
I collected every weapon on board."

"But there are his arms, his hands, his terrible, terrible hands!" she
objected. And then she cried, "Oh, Humphrey, I am afraid of him! Don't
go--please don't go!"

She rested her hand appealingly on mine, and sent my pulse fluttering.
My heart was surely in my eyes for a moment. The dear and lovely woman!
And she was so much the woman, clinging and appealing, sunshine and dew
to my manhood, rooting it deeper and sending through it the sap of a new
strength. I was for putting my arm around her, as when in the midst of
the seal herd; but I considered, and refrained.

"I shall not take any risks," I said. "I'll merely peep over the bow and
see."

She pressed my hand earnestly and let me go. But the space on deck where
I had left him lying was vacant. He had evidently gone below. That
night we stood alternate watches, one of us sleeping at a time; for there
was no telling what Wolf Larsen might do. He was certainly capable of
anything.

The next day we waited, and the next, and still he made no sign.

"These headaches of his, these attacks," Maud said, on the afternoon of
the fourth day; "Perhaps he is ill, very ill. He may be dead."

"Or dying," was her afterthought when she had waited some time for me to
speak.

"Better so," I answered.

"But think, Humphrey, a fellow-creature in his last lonely hour."

"Perhaps," I suggested.

"Yes, even perhaps," she acknowledged. "But we do not know. It would be
terrible if he were. I could never forgive myself. We must do
something."

"Perhaps," I suggested again.

I waited, smiling inwardly at the woman of her which compelled a