LITMIR.BIZ

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Chang, both ignorant of this woman's latent powers of hardy usefulness and physical capacity—the heritage of a pioneer stock that had torn a world out of a wilderness.

      "I thank you," said Lavelle simply and he faced her. "Just as soon as I get this blood pressure out of my head I will—things will be all right." She saw his jaw muscles flex with the pain which tore at him, and his thoughts were of the kindness and the bigness of heart that would let this woman touch him. She felt his eyes sweep over her from her slippered bare feet to the crown of her head, but there was something impersonal in his glance which cooled the resentment which flushed to her cheeks. It was not like the glance of the bearded man down between the thwarts.

      It was this man speaking loudly and in a strange foreign accent, which she had unmarked before, that turned Lavelle away from her.

      "We cannot be lying here idly like this," he was saying to Lavelle. He stood up as he spoke and threw a leg over the after thwart.

      "Who are you?" asked Lavelle quietly.

      "If you had been about the ship you would know, Mr. Lavelle," he sneered. "For your information I am Orloff Rowgowskii. I am a seaman—an officer—and I will take charge here. These ladies are intrusted in my charge."

      Not a muscle of Lavelle's face moved. He spoke over his shoulder to Chang. He asked Chang something in Chinese only to have the giant blaze over his head angrily at the man who called himself Rowgowskii:

      "Whachamalla you? What for! You clay-zee?"

      The coolie drew the steering oar inboard, for it was now nearly a dead calm. A shake of Lavelle's head silenced his angry chatter instantly.

      "My serang—Chang there tells me this is his boat; that he has been in command since we abandoned the ship."

      "Yes," interrupted Elsie, pausing in wringing the water from her streaming black hair. "We wouldn't have been here now if it hadn't been for that Canton coolie." She broke off quickly in Chinese and spoke to Chang.

      "He is a very good sailor—a very good sailor," said Rowgowskii. "He will be of use—and I will use you, too, Lavelle—properly, if you behave. If not——" He shrugged his shoulders. "I have the means to enforce obedience." He glanced from Lavelle toward Emily and Elsie. "We shall have order here, ladies, and——You may trust me." From them he turned to Chang. "Tell those men to get that sea anchor aboard and set that sail."

      "My flen, you more better sit down. Huh! You may get kill," said Chang.

      "Mutiny already!" exclaimed Rowgowskii, straightening and with his hand going toward his hip.

      "My God! aren't we miserable enough!" shrieked the Shanghai woman.

      Terror locked Emily's lips.

      "Don't," said Lavelle quietly, but in a tone fraught with menace.

      "Get up out of that and go to your work!" snarled Rowgowskii, and he whipped out a revolver.

      In that instant Lavelle rose like a rattler from a coil. There was a crunching of bone against bone as his fist landed full in Rowgowskii's face and sent him spinning overboard. The weapon spun in the air and fell at Emily's feet.

      Lavelle staggered from the force of his blow. His eyes closed and he put his hands to his brow. He would have fallen if it had not been for Chang, who caught him and stretched him along the seat opposite Emily. There he swooned.

      Emily shrank forward and away from him in terror. This was the Lavelle of the Yakutat who filled her dreams; this the brute who had shadowed her childhood and filled her nights with fearful shapes.

      "What a fiend, what a fiend," she whispered to the Shanghai woman.

      "He's a white man—you don't know—you don't understand," Elsie answered and raised a barrier between them with the words.

      Both women, looking over the side, saw Rowgowskii swimming desperately toward the sea anchor. His cries for aid went unheeded by either Chang or the three coolies who were cowering in the bows. Chang picked up the revolver from the bottom of the boat. The act was portentous.

      "For God's love!" cried Elsie, beginning an appeal which trailed off into an outburst in the Chinese tongue.

      Chang shook his head obdurately. He nodded toward Lavelle.

      "They're going to let him drown," she told Emily hysterically. "Weren't enough drowned last night? This Chinaman will not do anything unless Captain Whitridge tells him."

      "Him bad man. More better die," said Chang to Emily.

      Again there was a cry from Rowgowskii and the boat moved with a quick jerk as he caught hold of the anchor drogue.

      These cries brought to Emily Granville a memory so poignant and vivid that action was born of the shock. She moved swiftly from the Shanghai woman's side and shook Lavelle by the shoulder.

      "Tell these Chinamen—tell them not to let this man drown!" she cried at him.

      Lavelle sat up with a moan. His head dropped forward.

      "Don't you hear? Haven't you murdered enough already? Are you altogether a fiend? Hear him crying now!"

      Lavelle straightened. She shrank from the glance he leveled upon her. It was defiant, fearless, burning with challenge.

      "I never——" His lips, forming in a tense straight line, cut the speech off sharply at the breath of another word. The old look of pain came into his eyes—the pain she had seen there when he stood at the desk in the steamship agency—and he turned away.

      Rowgowskii had crawled along the drogue and was hanging now to the bow. Lavelle hurled an angry order in Chinese at the coolies forward and they sprang to their feet. They dragged Rowgowskii aboard and dropped him in an exhausted, shivering heap.

      Chang moved aft to where Lavelle sank wearily on the seat built against the air-tank casing and handed him the revolver. He began an apology.

      "More better him dead," he said, and Lavelle silenced him with one word that made the giant cower beside him like a dog under a lash.

      Emily, seeing this, wondered, for she recalled, with a shudder, the fierceness of this big yellow man in the night.

CHAPTER VII

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      As the dawn had come quickly, so order sprang out of chaos under Lavelle's quiet voice of command. There was no shouting; no bluster—a certain proof always that it has been given to a man to speak with authority. A word—more often it was but a nod or a wave of the hand—and as if by magic these yellow men translated it into some needed action.

      One of the first things Lavelle caused to be done was the moving of the boat's two water breakers aft. He gave each one a drink, apportioning to the coolies what he gave to the others and even rousing the Russian for his share. When it came to his turn to drink he paused and, with one scarred arm resting across his knee, looked out across the sea mystically. He turned quickly toward the women, after several minutes.

      "I wish to say a word to you, Miss Granville," he said in the quiet low tone which seemed to be invariably his manner of speaking. His glance rested on her but for a moment, and then passed to Elsie. "And to you, too, Mrs. Moore: I want you both to know that I am very sorry that this terrible thing has happened to you. Yet women can be brave. I have met brave men, but never any braver than you two women at this moment. Because you are brave I have chosen to speak to you as I am doing. I want you to feel—to know that I appreciate your trying position. I will endeavor to make things as easy as I can for you—so you may not be ashamed—as I should wish my mother and my sister to go unashamed. We may be together only a short time—maybe a very long while. Long or short, every one of us is going to be called upon to show the utmost patience and forbearance—fortitude. God willing, we will pull through and I will give my life

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