LITMIR.BIZ

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This was the camp-scene Ralph had desirously pictured to himself. It was good. His late agitation began to seem a little foolish to him.

      "One would think I was falling in love with the girl," he thought. "That's absurd!"

      He repeated "absurd!" to himself several times over for safety's sake. His head gradually slipped off the supporting palm, and pillowed itself on the thick of his arm.

      Before he was altogether lost to consciousness, Joe Mixer, two figures removed from him, came to a stop in the middle of a snore, stirred in his blankets, and sat up abruptly, snuffling and shaking his head to rid himself of the incubus of sleep. His little eyes passed with a cautious glance from one to another of the recumbent forms.

      Ralph was instantly on the alert again. "Hello!" he said. "What's the matter?"

      Joe started and scowled. Joe had but an imperfect command over his features; his frustrated design was clearly evident. Muttering an unmistakable oath, he lay down again.

      Ralph's desire to sleep was effectually disposed of. He lay still with his eyes closed. Very soon Joe, who apparently could go to sleep and wake up at will, recommenced snoring with inimitable naturalness. Ralph looked over his shoulder. The light was still burning within the deckhouse. A spring of compassion started in his breast.

      "Poor girl!" he thought. "She's afraid to turn in!"

      He was keenly distressed by the mental picture of Nahnya sitting alone, fighting sleep, and awaiting the approach of danger. He got up without having a very clear idea of what he meant to do—except that she must be reassured. He crossed the plank to the boat's deck. He knew he could not open either of the two closed doors without causing a screech sufficient to awaken the entire party, but he found that the door on the river side was still open, for he could see the rays of light streaming out on the dusty surface of the water. There was a narrow deck all the way around outside the house. He made for the open doorway, but stopped before showing himself. Ralph had conceived a respect for the resources of this inexplicable girl. One could never be sure in advance of what she might do.

      "Hello!" he said softly. "It's the doctor."

      There was no answer.

      With a fast-beating heart he looked in. She was sleeping on the deck in the middle of an open space between the piles of freight forward and the boiler aft. To a beam over her head she had fastened the engineer's lantern, and Ralph, instantly comprehending, had to approve both her courage and her good sense. The light was her safeguard.

      She had spread a piece of canvas on the deck, and lay wrapped in a gray blanket, her head pillowed on her outflung arm. Her face, slightly turned up, was revealed under the light, calm and partly smiling in sleep. The hard, watchful look that had so often nonplussed him during the day had disappeared. Once again he was compelled to rearrange all his impressions of her.

      "She's only a kid!" he thought tenderly. He had not presumed to take the protective attitude toward her before.

      Her long, curved lashes swept her dusky cheeks; her lips were a little parted as if in expectation; the hand that was flung out toward him lay palm upward, the fingers bent, as if mutely asking for a comrade hand. Abandoned to sleep as she lay, there was something at once appealing and holy in her aspect: something that made his whole being yearn over her, and that caused him to draw back outside the door.

      He could not bear to look at her. A feeling he could not have named made him return to the forward deck. He turned up his face to the night sky, and let his heart quiet down. The essence of the poetry of womanhood had been shown to him, and the starry night thrilled with the wonder of it. In a flash there was revealed to him a new understanding of all the love-poems he had ever read, and perhaps secretly despised.

      "She sleeps like a lily on the water," he murmured to himself without the least shame.

      By and by, prose reasserting itself, he began to reflect upon what he should do next. "If I go back to the fire I'll surely fall asleep," he thought. "But if I lie down here nobody can disturb her without waking me first."

      Procuring his blankets from beside the fire, he made his bed on the deck in such a position that any one seeking the open door must step over his body. There he waited for sleep, dwelling with rapt tenderness on the sight he had seen, graving it lovingly on his subconsciousness for a shrine that he might revisit as long as consciousness endured. He drifted away to the accompaniment of the distant drumming of a partridge in the woods.

      Suddenly he found himself wide awake without being able to tell what had aroused him. The campfire was now black out, and nothing but a blacker shadow was visible toward the shore. He waited a little breathlessly for confirmation of the alarm he had received. Finally the plank to the shore creaked under a heavy weight, and Ralph became aware of a looming figure. He sat up.

      The figure stopped at the edge of the deck. "Who's there?" came in Joe Mixer's thick voice, quick with alarm.

      "Cowdray," said Ralph coolly.

      "What the hell are you doing here?"

      Ralph sprang up, kicking his legs free of the entangling blanket. "What the hell are you after?" he retorted.

      "I don't have to account to you," snarled Joe.

      There was a silence. They stood with clenched fists, straining their eyes to take each other's measure in the dark.

      Evidently Joe thought better of his truculence, for when he spoke again it was in conciliatory tones. "Gad! You give me a start to see you rise up like that! I thought I had 'em! You shouldn't scare a man to death before you knock him down, Doc!"

      Joe's greasy obsequiousness was more offensive to Ralph than his anger. He remained silent.

      "When the fire went out I woke up cold," Joe went on plausibly. "I come aboard to get me a sweater out of my bag."

      Ralph was not deceived. The thought of Joe's evil, swimming little eyes profaning the picture of the sleeping girl inside, by so much as looking at her, filled him with a cold, unreasonable rage, and he was ready to go to any lengths to prevent it. At the same time he reflected that it would serve her better to avoid a fight, if he could, and he put his wits to work.

      "Take one of my blankets," he said. "I have more than I need!"

      Joe demurred. They argued the matter with sarcastic politeness on both sides. Each was aware that the other saw through his game.

      Ralph soon tired of it. "Very well, if you want to go in there, you go by the front door, see?" he said shortly.

      Joe knew as well as Ralph that the screech of the door would awaken her before he got in. "What's the matter with you?" snarled Joe.

      "What's the use of beating around the bush?" retorted Ralph. "I tell you straight I won't allow that girl to be bothered."

      "You won't let her be bothered!" sneered Joe. "Holy mackerel, listen to what's talking! Did she put you out here as a guard?"

      "She did not," said Ralph.

      "I know darn well she didn't," said Joe. "And she wouldn't thank you for it neither. She's got a date with me to-night."

      "You lie!" said Ralph. Rage made him cold.

      Joe advanced until their bodies almost touched, Ralph held himself in readiness. He meant to make Joe strike first. But the blow was not delivered.

      "Damn you!" Joe whispered thickly. "I'll make you swallow that some day. I never forget a thing. I make men pay."

      "Why postpone it?" said Ralph clearly.

      Joe's voice weakened. "Well, I don't want to make a racket," he grumbled.

      "Sure, you don't want to make a racket!" cried Ralph with quick scorn. "A racket would spoil your game! You like darkness and quiet, don't you?" Suddenly the comic aspect of the situation presented itself to him, and he laughed. "There's nothing doing to-night, Joe," he said. "I'm on the job. You might as well go back and have your sleep out."

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