here and now!” Cleigh selected an olive and began munching it. “Nonsense!” cried Jane. “It’s all awry 130 anyhow.” And she began to extract the hairpins. Presently she shook her head, and the ruddy mass of hair fell and rippled across and down her shoulders. 130 “Well?” she said, looking whimsically into Cunningham’s eyes. “It wasn’t there, was it?” This tickled Cunningham. “You’re a woman in a million! You read my thought perfectly. I like ready wit in a woman. I had to find out. You see, I had promised those beads to Cleigh, and when I humanly can I keep my promises. Sit down, captain!” For Dennison had risen to his feet. “Sit down! Don’t start anything you can’t finish.” To Jane there was in the tone a quality which made her compare it with the elder Cleigh’s eyes—agate-hard. “You are younger and stronger, and no doubt you could break me. But the moment my hand is withdrawn from this business—the moment I am off the board—I could not vouch for the crew. They are more or less decent chaps, or they were before this damned war stood humanity on its head. We wear the same clothes, use the same phrases; but we’ve been thrust back a thousand years. And Miss Norman is a woman. You understand?” Dennison sat down. “You’d better kill me somewhere along this voyage.” 131 131 “I may have to. Who knows? There’s no real demarcation between comedy and tragedy; it’s the angle of vision. It’s rough medicine, this; but your father has agreed to take it sensibly, because he knows me tolerably well. Still, it will not do him any good to plan bribery. Buy the crew, Cleigh, if you believe you can. You’ll waste your time. I do not pretend to hold them by loyalty. I hold them by fear. Act sensibly, all of you, and this will be a happy family. For after all, it’s a joke, a whale of a joke. And some day you’ll smile over it—even you, Cleigh.” Cleigh pressed the steward’s button. “The jam and the cheese, Togo,” he said to the Jap. “Yess, sair!” A hysterical laugh welled into Jane’s throat, but she did not
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