"There's going to be a frightful racket around here today," he said presently."Maybe you'd like to get away from it for a while.How'd you like to go for a row?""I'd love it!" she said.
"George will be glad to take you, I'm sure.""George? And you?" He thought he detected a note of disappointment in her voice; he had not thought to disappoint her, but when he found her disappointed he got a certain thrill out of it.
"I am going over to Morris's this morning," he said."To Morris's?Alone?""Why, yes."
"But--but isn't it dangerous?"
Cleggett smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
"Promise me that you will not go over there alone," she demanded."I am sorry.I cannot.""But it is rash--it is mad!" "There is no real danger." "Then I am going with you.""I think that would hardly be advisable.""I'm going with you," she repeated, rising with determination."But you're not," said Cleggett."I couldn't think of allowing it." "Then there IS danger," she said.
He tried to evade the point."I shouldn't have mentioned it," he murmured.
She ran into the stateroom and was back in an instant with her hat, which she pinned on as she spoke.
"I'm ready to start," she said.
"But you're not going."
"After what you've done for me I insist upon my right to share whatever danger there may be." She spoke heatedly.
In her heat and impulsiveness and generous bravery Cleggett thought her adorable, although he began to get really angry with her, too.At the same time he was aware that her gratitude to him was such that she was on fire to give him some positive and early proof of it.It had not so much as occurred to her to enjoy immunity on account of her sex; it had not entered her mind, apparently, that her sex was an obstacle in the way of participating in whatever dangerous enterprise he had planned.She was, in fact, behaving like a chivalric but obstinate boy; she had not been a militant suffragette for nothing.And yet, somehow, this attitude only served to enhance her essential femininity.Nevertheless, Cleggett was inflexible.
"You would scarcely forbid me to go to Morris's today, or anywhere else I may choose," she said hotly, with a spot of red on either cheek bone, and a dangerous dilatation of her eyes.
"That is exactly what I intend to do," said Cleggett, with an intensity equal to her own, "FORBID you.""You are curiously presumptuous," she said.
It was a real quarrel before they were done with it, will opposed to naked will.And oddly enough Cleggett found his admiration grow as his determination to gain his point increased.For she fought fair, disdaining the facile weapon of tears, and when she yielded she did it suddenly and merrily.
"You've the temper of a sultan, Mr.Cleggett," she said with a laugh, which was her signal of capitulation.And then she added maliciously: "You've a devil of a temper--for a little man!""Little!" Cleggett felt the blood rush into his face again and was vexed at himself."I'm taller than you are!" he cried, and the next instant could have bitten his tongue off for the childish vanity of the speech.
"You're not!" she cried, her whole face alive with laughter."Measureand see!"
And pulling off her hat she caught up a table knife and made him stand with his back to hers."You're cheating," said Cleggett, laughing now in spite of himself, as she laid the knife across their heads.But his voice broke and trembled on the next words, for he was suddenly thrilled with her delicious nearness."You're standing on your tiptoes, and your hair's piled on top of your head.""Maybe you are an inch taller," she admitted, with mock reluctance.And then she said, with a ripple of mirth: "You are taller than I am--I give up; I won't go to Morris's."Cleggett, to tell the truth, was a bit relieved at the measurement.He was of the middle height; she was slightly taller than the average woman; he had really thought she might prove taller than he.He could scarcely have told why he considered the point important.
But after the quarrel she looked at Cleggett with a new and more approving gaze.Neither of them quite realized it, but she had challenged his ability to dominate her, and she had been worsted; he had unconsciously met and satisfied in her that subtle inherent craving for domination which all women possess and so few will admit the possession of.
Cleggett started across the sands toward Morris's with an automatic pistol slung in a shoulder holster under his left arm and a sword cane in his hand.He paused a moment by the scene of the explosion of the night before, but daylight told him nothing that lantern light had failed to reveal.He had no very definite plan, although he thought it possible that he might gain some information.The more he reflected on the attitude of Morris's, the more it irritated him, and he yearned to make this irritation known.
Perhaps there was more than a little of the spirit of bravado in the call he proposed to pay.He planned, the next day, to sail the Jasper B.out into the bay and up and down the coast for a few miles, to give himself and his men a bit of practice in navigation before setting out for the China Seas.And he could not bear to think that the hostile denizens of Morris'sshould think that he had moved the Jasper B.from her position through any fear of them.He reasoned that the most pointed way of showing his opinion of them would be to walk casually into Morris's barroom and order a drink or two.If Cleggett had a fault as a commander it lay in these occasional foolhardy impulses which he found it difficult to control.Julius Caesar had the same sort of pride, which, in Caesar's case, amounted to positive vanity.In fact, the character of Caesar and the character of Cleggett had many points in common, although Cleggett possessed a nicer sense of honor than Caesar.
