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"Skipper enny better?" asked Lund, at the end of the meal. Carlsen ignored him, but the girl answered: "I am afraid not." It was not often she spoke to Lund at all, and Rainey wondered if she had experienced any change of feeling toward the giant as well as himself. Carlsen got up, announcing his intention of going forward.
Except for observations and the details of navigation, Carlsen left the schooner to Rainey. They were well off the coast, out of the fogs, apparently alone upon the lonely ocean that ran sparkling to the far horizon. It was warm, there was little to do, the sailors, as well as the hunters, spent most of their time lounging on the deck.
Lund nodded significantly at Rainey as if to suggest that the doctor was going to foregather with the hunters, and that this might be an opportunity to talk with Sandy. "Goin' to turn in," he said. "Eyes hurt me. It's the ice in the wind." "Is there ice?" Peggy Simms asked Rainey as Lund disappeared. Carlsen had already vanished. "None in sight," he answered.
And presently Carlsen would come from below or forward and stand to talk with her until she was tired of the deck. They did not seem much like lovers, Rainey fancied. They lacked the little intimacies that he, though he made himself somewhat of an automaton at the wheel, could not have failed to see.
If he marries you, I believe it is only for your share, for what you will get from your father. It can not be right to do a wrong thing. No good could come from it. But something may happen this morning I can not tell you what. I do not know, except that Lund is to face Carlsen. It may change matters." "Lund," she said scornfully. "What can he do? And he accused my father of deserting him.
What have you got to say about it?" His tone was truculent, and Carlsen did not appear disposed to check him. He appeared not quite certain of the temper of the hunters. Deming, like Rainey, evidently chafed under the preliminaries. "You figger we're all equal aboard," said Lund slowly, "leavin' out Mr. Rainey, Tamada an' Sandy.
No open reference was made to the desertion of Lund on the floe. But Rainey knew that it rankled in Lund's mind. The five, Peggy Simms, her father, Carlsen, Lund and Rainey, ostensibly messed together, but Rainey's duties generally kept him on deck until Carlsen had sufficiently completed his own meal to relieve him. By that time the girl and the captain had left the table.
But it was funny, his assuming control. "Yachted a bit?" asked Carlsen. "Yes." "Can you navigate?" Rainey thought he caught a hint of emphasis to this question. "I can learn," he said. "Got a general idea of it." "Ah!" The doctor appeared to dismiss the subject with some relief. "Well," he went on, "are you open to reason and food?
Rainey, on the hint, turned toward the ladder quietly enough, but Lund had nipped him by the biceps before Rainey had taken a step. "You'll stay right here," said Lund, "while I tell you an' this Doc Carlsen what kind of a man Simms is, with his poke full of gold and me with the price of my last meal spent two hours ago. I won't spin out the yarn. "I rescued an Aleut off a bit of a berg one time.
"You mean " he began. "Under his hide, when there ain't nothin' to hinder him, a man's plain animal," said Lund. "What do these water-front bullies know about a good gal or care? They only know one sort. Ever think what happened to a woman in privateer days when they got one aboard, alone, on the high seas? Why, if they pushed Carlsen, he'd turn her over to 'em without winkin'."
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