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In an instant she was in the hall, calling in a panic-stricken voice, her icy hands at her throat; and her grandfather mounted the stair with surprising agility, followed by his daughter Kate. "Uncle Edward," Nettie articulated, waving toward the room from which she had fled. The two women followed the rigid advance of Barzil Dunsack.
No further mention was made of the opium, no hint escaped from the two men of what Barzil Dunsack had said to his son after the evening reading of the Bible. An evidence of the miserable episode was visible for a while in the difficulty of any attempted general conversation; then that died away and everything was seemingly as it had been before.
"It ought to have been," he confided, "but I got mad and talked like a Dutch uncle, and Barzil went off on a holy tack." "About Nettie Vollar?" Jeremy nodded. "Look here, Rhoda," he demanded, "did Gerrit ever say anything to you about her?" "Yes," she told him; "Gerrit was very frank." "Did he like the girl?" "I couldn't make that out.
It had occurred while Barzil was master of the brig Luna, owned by Billy Gray, and he, Jeremy, was first mate. In the exactness with which he recalled every detail of his life in ships he remembered that at the time they were off Bourbon Island, about a hundred and ten miles southwest of the lie de France.
His face darkened: by God, if Barzil hadn't a decent word for the fact that Gerrit was seven months overdue, perhaps lost, this was not a house for him. "I say that we've had nothing from my son since he lay in the Lye-ee-Moon Pass off Hong Kong," he repeated sharply. A spasm of suffering, instantly controlled, passed over Barzil's face.
He was not certain that Barzil would even see him; but, he muttered, the thing had lasted long enough, they were too old for such foolishness; and the other had come into adverse winds, now, when he should be lying quietly in a snug harbor.
To the right was the sagging landing from which Barzil's schooners sailed trading with the West Indies; and back of it, and of his house, stood the small office. His mind had turned to this inconsiderable commerce when Kate Vollar entered and told him that her father would see him. Barzil Dunsack was propped up in bed in a room above that in which Jeremy had been waiting.
Barzil Dunsack reclined with his gaunt bearded head sunk forward on his thin chest swathed in the gay worsted wrap, his wasted hands, the tendons corded with pale violet veins, clenched outside the checkered quilt beneath which his body made scarcely a mark. Outside, in the soft glow of beginning dusk, Jeremy blamed himself bitterly for his anger at the sick man.
The Luna was close hauled, and, while Barzil was giving an order at the wheel, she fetched a bad lee lurch and sent him in a heap across the deck, striking his head against the bumkin bitts. He had got up dazed but not apparently seriously injured; and after his head had been swabbed and bound by the steward he returned to the poop.
Barzil was as good as he any day; only where he had prospered, and moved up into a showy place on the Common, the other had had the head winds.
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