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The sense of imminence increased, of a genius loci unguessed and troublous, vaguely threatening in the perfumed dark. John Woolfolk had said nothing to Halvard of the woman he had seen swimming in the bay. He was conscious of no particular reason for remaining silent about her; but the thing had become invested with a glamour that, he felt, would be destroyed by commonplace discussion.
They had been landbound since dawn; and all day John Woolfolk's instinct had revolted against the fields and wooded points, turning toward the open sea. Halvard disappeared into the cabin; and, soon after, a faint, hot air, the smell of scorched metal, announced the lighting of the vapor stove, the preparations for supper. Not a breath stirred the surface of the bay.
"Why," she exclaimed, "it couldn't be neater if you were two nice old ladies!" "I warn you," Woolfolk replied, "Halvard will not regard that particularly as a compliment. He will assure you that the order of a proper yacht is beyond the most ambitious dream of a mere housekeeper." She laughed as Halvard placed a chair for her.
"I was delayed," he said finally, amazed at the inadequacy of his words to express the pressure of the past hours. Had they been two or four? He had been totally unconscious of the passage of actual time. In the dark house behind the orange grove he had lived through tormented ages, descended into depths beyond the measured standard of Greenwich. Halvard said: "Yes, sir."
Halvard's temper was communicated to him; he moved abruptly to where the tender was fastened. "Put me ashore," he directed. He would make it clear that his man was not to be interrupted in the execution of his orders, and that his property could not be arbitrarily destroyed. When the tender ran upon the beach and had been secured, Halvard started to follow him, but Woolfolk waved him back.
It was difficult to remain detached, give no assistance, while Halvard encountered Iscah Nicholas. Yet with Millie in a semi-collapse, and the bare possibility of Nicholas' knifing them both, he felt that this was his only course. Halvard was an unusually powerful, active man, and the other must have suffered from the stress of his long conflict in the hall. The thing terminated speedily.
The pass, the other had discovered, too, had filled. It was charted at four feet, the Gar drew a full three, and Woolfolk knew that there must be no error, no uncertainty, in running out. Halvard was so long in stowing away the jigger shears that Woolfolk turned to make sure that the sailor had not been swept from the deck. The "scratch," he was certain, was deeper than the other admitted.
He rose with an uncouth abruptness, a meager commonplace, and hurried over the path to the beach, toward the refuge, the release, of the Gar. John Woolfolk woke at dawn. A thin, bluish light filled the cabin; above, Halvard was washing the deck. The latter was vigorously swabbing the cockpit when Woolfolk appeared, but he paused. "Perhaps," the sailor said, "you will stay here for a day or two.
Halvard was propelling them vigorously but erratically forward. At times he remuttered his declarations about the encounter with Nicholas. The stray words reached Woolfolk: "Stopped him the cursed dark a scratch." He brought the tender awkwardly alongside the ketch, with a grinding shock, and held the boats together while John Woolfolk shifted Millie to the deck.
The next morning her father came up to pay her a visit and to see how the flocks were thriving. She understood that it would be dangerous to say anything to him about Halvard, for she knew his temper and feared the result, if he should ever discover her secret. Therefore, she shunned an opportunity to talk with him, and only busied herself the more with the cattle and the cooking.
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