I saw the prisoner. The upright shadow of an iron bar cut his
face in two, separating the high, soiled cheeks, each with an eye.
"You mustn't leave him get at her!"
I tell you it was not the same man that had come swimming and sniveling
out to the schooner less than forty hours before. Here was a fierce one,
a zealot, a flame, the very thin blade of a fine sword.
"Listen, Dole, if you leave that devil get at her--"
His eyes burned through me. He failed completely to accept the fact that
he was done. His mind, ignoring the present, ran months ahead. With a
flair of understanding, thinking of those three travesties of husbands
and the wife who was no wife, I perceived what he meant.
I left him. He was a wild man, but the quality of his wildness showed
itself in the fact that he squandered none of it in shaking the bars,
shouting, or flinging about. His voice to the last, trailing me around
the next corner, held to the same key, almost subdued.
"By God! if that--gets at her, I'll--I'll--"
"You'll what?" I mused. You see, even now I couldn't get rid of him as
the drifter, the gutter Hamlet, the congenital howler against fate.
"You'll what?" I repeated under my breath, and I had to laugh.
I got the vessel under way as soon as I came aboard. The Dutchman's
shipment of copra was arranged for--a week, two, three weeks (as the
wind allowed)--and I was to return from the lower islands, where my
present cargo was assigned, and take it on.
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