I was mortified, as we approached the place where our vessel lay, to observe a veiled female figure on the deck.  Eveena’s quick eye had noted our return some minutes before, and inferred from the early abandonment of the chase some serious accident.  Happily our party were so disposed that I had time to assume the usual position before she caught sight of me.  I could not, however, deceive her by a desperate effort to walk steadily and unaided.  She stood by quietly and calmly while the surgeon of the hunters dressed my hurts, observing exactly how the bandages and lotions were applied.  Only when we were left alone did she in any degree give way to an agitation by which she feared to increase my evident pain and feverishness.  It was impossible to satisfy her that black bruises and broad gashes meant no danger, and would be healed by a few days’ rest.  But when she saw that I could talk and smile as usual, she was unsparing in her attempts to coax from me a pledge that I would never again peril life or limb to gratify my curiosity regarding the very few pursuits in which, for the highest remuneration, Martialists can be induced to incur the probability of injury and the chance of that death they so abjectly dread.  Scarcely less reluctant to repeat the scolding she felt so acutely than to employ the methods of rebuke she deemed less severe, I had no little difficulty in evading her entreaties.  Only a very decided request to drop the subject at once and for ever, enforced on her conscience by reminding her that it would be enforced no otherwise, at last obtained me peace without the sacrifice of liberty.

CHAPTER XVI — TROUBLED WATERS.

We were now in Martial N. latitude 57 deg., in a comparatively open part of the narrow sea which encloses the northern land-belt, and to the south-eastward lay the only channel by which this sea communicates with the main ocean of the southern hemisphere.  Along this we took our course.  Bather against Ergimo’s advice, I insisted on remaining on the surface, as the sea was tolerably calm.  Eveena, with her usual self-suppression, professed to prefer the free air, the light of the long day, and such amusement as the sight of an occasional sea-monster or shoal of fishes afforded, to the fainter light and comparative monotony of submarine travelling.  Ergimo, who had in his time commanded the hunters of the Arctic Sea, was almost as completely exempt as myself from sea-sickness; but I was surprised to find that the crew disliked, and, had they ventured, would have grumbled at, the change, being so little accustomed to any long superficial voyage as to suffer like landsmen from rough weather.  The difference between sailing on and below the surface is so great, both in comfort and in the kind of skill and knowledge required, that the seamen of passenger and of mercantile vessels are classes much more distinct than those of the mercantile and national marine of