“If I was that big fellow, I’d just hop over the side and have it over with,” came from Sails.  “If the Old Man is after him, he’s bound to get him, and making a quick finish himself would save a lot o’ bother all around.”

“What’s it about, anyway?” says Chips.

“How do I know?” answered Sails.  “I don’t go poking my nose into Yankee Swope’s business, you can bet your bottom dollar I don’t.  I take my orders, and let it go at that.  Same as you.  Same as the others.  There’s Fitz up there now, chinning with him, and I bet Fitz don’t know much more of his game than you and me.  He takes his orders just like we do.”

“That’s right.  We ain’t hired to think.  Not in this ship,” agreed Chips.

“Do you think, Roy, that Beulah—­that she jumped—­herself?” The lady’s voice was trembling.

“I don’t know, dear.  I think maybe she did.  But Beasley thought—­oh, well, what does it matter now?”

“Beasley thought he did it.  I knew—­I felt it was him, oh, long, long ago.  It would be like him, Roy.  He has never dropped a hint that would incriminate himself, but I have known his guilt of the other thing—­for which you suffered—­ever since our marriage.  When he dropped the mask, revealed himself in his true character—­oh, I knew he must be guilty.  And I was helpless.”

“My God, five years!” muttered Newman.  “How could you stand it?”

“It was not so hard, except at first,” said the lady.  “Too much horror numbs, you know.  And one thing made it endurable—­he has spared me the intimacy of marriage.  It is true, dearest; I am as much a maid as I was five years ago.  He is that kind of a man, Roy.  It is not women he lusts for, it is—­oh, it is blood.  There is something horrible in his mind, a diseased spot, an unnatural quirk, that drives him to abominable cruelties.  It is some tigerish instinct he possesses; it makes him kill and destroy, it makes him inflict pain.  Oh, Roy, it is his pleasure—­to inflict pain.”

“Lynch doesn’t like it,” said Sails, in reply to some question I had missed hearing.

“Little good not liking it will do him,” was Chips’ opinion.  “He’ll do what the Old Man wants him to do, just like the rest of us.”

“Has he ever used you—­as victim?” said Newman, a new, hard note in his voice.

“No, no, not in that way,” answered the lady.  “It is to the crew he does that.  He has never hurt me physically.”

“But mentally, eh?” remarked Newman, “He enjoys refinements of cruelty, also?  Mental torture, when he finds a mind intelligent enough to appreciate subtleties?  That is it?”

“Yes, that is it,” said the lady.  “It was horrible at first.  But afterwards, when I had found my work, I did not mind him very much.  He let me go on playing doctor to the crew because he thought it hurt me to see and handle those poor creatures.  Oh, it did hurt!  But the work, the being useful—­it has saved me, Roy, it has kept me sane.”