the world for taming one's wife, and extorting
from her the apologies which seemed to Carline appropriate, all things
considered, for the occasion.

The time had arrived for action. He rose with dignity and buttoned up
his waistcoat; he pulled down his coat and gave his cravat a hitch; he
rubbed a tentative hand on the lump where the pirates had bumped him; he
scrambled over the side onto the cabin-boat deck, and entered upon the
scene of his conquest.

He found himself confronted by Nelia in a white-faced, low-voiced fury
instead of in the mood he had expected. She wasn't sorry; she wasn't
apologetic; she wasn't even amiable or conciliatory.

"Gus Carline! Drunk, as usual. What do you mean by this?"

"S'all right!" he assured her, flapping his hands. "Y're m'wife; I'm
your husban'! S'all right!"

She drew her pistol and fired a bullet past him.

"Go!" she cried.

Before he knew what had happened he had backed out upon the bow deck,
and she bundled him up onto his own craft. She cast off the bow line and
ran to the stern to cast off the line there. As she did so, she
discovered Terabon's skiff around at the far side where Carline could
not see it.

Her husband was still shaking his fist in her direction, but the two
boats were well apart as she rowed away with her sweeps. He stood there,
undecided. He had not expected the sudden and effective resistance.
Before he knew it, she was lost in a whole fleet of little houseboats
which were, to his eyes, both in the sky, underwater, and scattered all
over the tip-tilting surfaces.

The current, under the impulse of her rowing, carried Nelia into an eddy
and she saw the cruiser rocking down a crossing into the mirage of the
distance. She sat on the bow deck while her boat made a long swing in
the eddy. Things did not happen down the river as she planned or
expected. She regarded the previous night's entertainment with less
indifference now; something about the calm of that broad river affected
her. She realized that watching the killing of Palura had given her a
shock so deep that now she was trembling with the weakness of horror.

She had seen Gus Carline stumble into her cabin, and with angry defiance
she had acted with the intention of doing to him what she had done to
Prebol--but she had missed deliberately when she shot. When she recalled
the matter, she saw that for weeks she had been living in a false frame
of mind; that she was desperate, and not contented;