"Thank you," he said. "We are quits now."




CHAPTER VI

SOME EXPLANATIONS


Fierce emotions are necessarily transient, but for the hour they
exhaust the psychic capacity. The sailor had gone through such mental
stress before it was yet noon that he was benumbed, wholly incapable of
further sensation. Seneca tells how the island of Theresæa arose in a
moment from the sea, thereby astounding ancient mariners, as well it
might. Had this manifestation been repeated within a cable's length
from the reef, Jenks was in mood to accept it as befitting the new
order of things.

Being in good condition, he soon recovered his physical powers. He was
outwardly little the worse for the encounter with the devil-fish. The
skin around his mouth was sore. His waist and legs were bruised. One
sweep of the axe had cut clean through the bulging leather of his left
boot without touching the flesh. In a word, he was practically
uninjured.

He had the doglike habit of shaking himself at the close of a fray. He
did so now when he stood up. Iris showed clearer signs of the ordeal.
Her face was drawn and haggard, the pupils of her eyes dilated. She was
gazing into depths, illimitable, unexplored. Compassion awoke at sight