I grew cold and wondered what was wrong. I dimly saw Captain Blaise come
running to me. "Guy! Guy!" he called. I remember also myself saying,
"Nothing wrong with me, sir--and no harm if there is. It's sunrise on
the Slave Coast and the _Dancing Bess_ she's homeward bound!"


V

The blue-belted Trades! Day and day, week and week, the little curly,
white-headed seas, the unspecked blue sky, and the ceaseless caress of
the pursuing wind. No yard nor sail, never a bowline, sheet, or halyard
to be handled, and the _Bess_ bounding ever ahead. Beauty, peace, and a
leaping log--could the sea bring greater joy?

Captain Blaise had located the bullet--the second shot it must have
been--which had lodged under my right shoulder and cut it out. We were
nearing home, and the fever was now gone from me, but I was not yet able
to take my part on deck. "Perhaps to-morrow," she had said. And
to-morrow was come, and I lay there thinking, and at times trying to
write.

She had left me alone for a while. Her father had called her to hear
another of the Captain's stories. Through the cabin skylight I could see
her, or at least the curve of her chin, and her tanned throat and one
shoulder pressing inward under the skylight shutters. Her face was
turned toward Captain Blaise, whose head and shoulders, he pacing and
turning on the quarter, came regularly within range. But she was not
forgetting me; every few minutes she thrust her head beneath the raised
skylight hatches and looked down to see that I wanted for nothing, and
always she smiled.