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“Say when,” said Horble.

“When,” said Gregory.

Horble tipped the bottle into his own glass. A second mate’s grog! One could see what the fellow drank.

“Here’s luck,” said Gregory.

“Drink hearty,” said Horble.

“Joe Horble,” said Gregory, leaning both elbows on the table, “there’s something you ought to know: I love Madge, and Madge loves me!”

Horble gasped.

“She’s mine!” said Gregory.

Horble helped himself to some more gin, and then slowly wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“You’re forgetting she’s my wife,” he said.

“I’ll give you a thousand pounds for her, cash and bills,” said Gregory.

“You can’t sell white women,” said Horble. “She ain’t labor.”

“A thousand pounds!” repeated Gregory.

“I won’t sell my wife to no man,” said Horble.

The pair looked at each other. Horble’s hand felt for the gin again. His speech had grown a little thick. He was angry and flustered, and a dull resentment was mantling his heavy face.

“I’ll go the schooner,” cried Gregory. “The Northern Light as she lies there this minute, not a dollar owing on her bottom, with two hundred pounds of specie in her safe. Lock, stock, and barrel, she’s yours!”

Horble shook his head.

“Madge ain’t for sale,” he said.

“Please yourself,” said Gregory. “You’ll end by losing her for nothing.”

“Captain Cole,” said Horble, “Madge has told me how near it was a go between you and her, and how, if you hadn’t cleared out so sudden the way you did, she would have married you in spite of old Blanchard. But when you went away like that you left the field clear, and you mustn’t bear me no malice for having stepped in and taken your leavings. What’s done’s done, and it’s a sorry game to come back too late and insult a man who never did you no harm.”

“Oh!” said Gregory.

“If you choose,” continued Horble in his tone of wounded reasonableness, “you can make a power of mischief between me and Madge. I don’t think it comes very well from you to do it; I don’t think anything that calls himself a man would do it; least of all a genelman like yourself, whom we all respeck and look up to. Captain Cole, if you’ve lost Madge, you know you can only blame yourself.”

“I don’t call her lost,” said Gregory.

“Captain Cole,” said Horble, calmly but with a quiver of his lip, “we’ll take another drink and then we’ll say good-by.”

“I’m not going till I see Madge,” said Gregory.

Horble began to tremble.

“It’s for Madge to decide,” added Gregory.

“Decide what?” demanded Horble in a husky stutter.

“Between you and me, old fellow,” said Gregory.

“And you’ve the gall to say that on my ship, at my table, about my wife!” exclaimed Horble, punctuating the sentence with the possessive.

“Yes,” said Gregory.

Horble sat awhile silent. He was obviously turning the matter over in his head. He said at last he would go on deck and take another look to windward.

“There’s a power of dirt to windward!” he said.

Gregory, left to himself, edged closer against the bulkhead. He felt that something was about to happen, and he was in the sort of humor to never mind what. It did not even worry him to think he was unarmed.

The companion way darkened with Horble’s body, and the big naked feet again floundered for the steps. As they deliberately descended, Gregory changed his place, taking the corner by the lazarette door, where, at any rate, he could only be attacked in front. Horble’s face plainly showed discomfiture at this move, and his right hand went hurriedly behind his back. Gregory was conscious of a belaying pin being whipped out of sight, and in an instant he was roused and tense, his nostrils vibrating with a sense of danger. The two men stared at each other, and then Horble backed into the stateroom, remarking with furtive insincerity, “There’s a power of dirt to windward!” This said, the door went shut behind him. Gregory sprang to his feet and burst it open with his powerful shoulders, crushing Horble against the bunk, who, pistol in hand, fired at him point blank. The bullet went wide, and there was a sound of shattering glass. Gregory’s hands clenched themselves on Horble’s, and the revolver twisted this way and that under the double grasp. Horble was panting like a steam engine; his lower jaw hung open, and he cried as he fought, the tears streaking his red face; there was an agonized light in his eyes, for his forefinger was breaking in the trigger guard. A hair’s breadth more and he could have driven a bullet through his opponent’s body; a twist the other way–and he moaned and ground his teeth and frenziedly strove to regain what he had lost. Suddenly he let go, snatched his left hand clear, and throttled Gregory against the wall. Gregory, suffocating, his eyes starting from their sockets, his mouth dribbling blood and froth, struggled with supreme desperation for the pistol. Getting it in the very nick of time, and eluding Horble’s right hand, he fired twice through the armpit down.