"Do your guardians know where you are?"--raillery in his voice.
"No. I came to ask some questions."
"Curiosity. Sit down. What is it you wish to know?"
"All this--and what will be the end?"
"Well, doubtless there will be an end, but I'm not seer enough to foretell
it."
"Then you have some doubts?"
"Only those that beset all of us."
"But somehow--well, you don't seem to belong to this sort of game."
"Why not?"
Unexpectedly he had set a wall between. She had no answer, and her
embarrassment was visible on her cheeks.
"Here and there across the world rough men call me Slue-Foot. Perhaps my
deformity has reacted upon my soul and twisted that. Perhaps if my
countenance had been homely and rugged I would have walked the beaten
paths of respectability. But the two together!"
"I'm sorry!"
"A woman such as you are would be. You are a true daughter of the great
mother--Pity. But I have never asked pity of any. I have asked only that a
man shall keep his word to me as I will keep mine to him."
"But you are risking your liberty, perhaps your life!"
"I've been risking that for more than twenty years. The habit has become
normal. All my life I've wanted a real adventure."
She gazed at him in utter astonishment.
"An adventure? Why, you yourself told me that you had risked your life a
hundred times!"
"That?"--with a smile and a shrug. "That was business, the day's work. I
mean an adventure in which I am accountable to no man."
"Only to God?"
"Well, of course, if you want it that way. For myself, I'm something of a
pagan. I have dreamed of this day. When you were a little girl didn't you
dream of a wonderful doll that could walk and make almost human noises?
Well, I'm realizing my doll. I am going pearl hunting in the South
Seas--the thing I dreamed of when I was a boy."
"But why commit piracy? Why didn't you hire a steamer?"
"Oh, I must have my joke, too. But I hadn't counted on you. In every
campaign there is the hollow road of Ohain. Napoleon lost Waterloo because
of it. Your presence here has forced me to use a hand without velvet.
These men expected a little fun--cards and drink; and some of them are
grumbling with discontent. But don't worry. In five days we'll be off on
our own."