But I would not leave her there alone.  I went with her to her sister’s door, and together we returned to the maids’ cabin.  Mrs. Turner had rung as we requested, and her bell had registered “One.”

“He rang for help!” she cried, and broke down utterly.  She dropped into a chair in the chart-room and cried softly, helplessly, while I stood by, unable to think of anything to do or say.  I think now that it was the best thing she could have done, though at the time I was alarmed.  I ventured, finally, to put my hand on her shoulder.

“Please!” I said.

Charlie Jones came to the door of the chartroom, and retreated with instinctive good taste.  She stopped crying after a time, and I knew the exact instant when she realized my touch.  I felt her stiffen; without looking up, she drew away from my hand; and I stepped back, hurt and angry—­the hurt for her, the anger that I could not remember that I was her hired servant.

When she got up, she did not look at me, nor I at her—­at least not consciously.  But when, in those days, was I not looking at her, seeing her, even when my eyes were averted, feeling her presence before any ordinary sense told me she was near?  The sound of her voice in the early mornings, when I was washing down the deck, had been enough to set my blood pounding in my ears.  The last thing I saw at night, when I took myself to the storeroom to sleep, was her door across the main cabin; and in the morning, stumbling out with my pillow and blanket, I gave it a foolish little sign of greeting.

What she would not see the men had seen, and, in their need, they had made me their leader.  To her I was Leslie, the common sailor.  I registered a vow, that morning, that I would be the common sailor until the end of the voyage.

“Mr. Turner is awake, I believe,” I said stiffly.

“Very well.”

She turned back into the main cabin; but she paused at the storeroom door.

“It is curious that you heard nothing,” she said slowly.  “You slept with this door open, didn’t you?”

“I was locked in.”

She stooped quickly and looked at the lock.

“You broke it open?”

“Partly, at the last.  I heard—­” I stopped.  I did not want to tell her what I had heard.  But she knew.

“You heard—­Karen, when she screamed?”

“Yes.  I was aroused before that,—­I do not know how,—­and found I was locked in.  I thought it might be a joke—­forecastle hands are fond of joking, and they resented my being brought here to sleep.  I took out some of the screws with my knife, and—­then I broke the door.”

“You saw no one?”

“It was dark; I saw and heard no one.”

“But, surely—­the man at the wheel—­”

“Hush,” I warned her; “he is there.  He heard something, but the helmsman cannot leave the wheel.”

She was stooping to the lock again.