Pagina 165 di 416

Bijonah Tanner stared blankly after the retreating Nettie. Then,

knowing that his daughter had been with Nat, dropped down into

the little cabin.

He found Nellie seated in the chair by the little table, and

weeping.

CHAPTER XIV

A DISCOVERY

Taken aback as he had been by the strange doings of Nat's

schooner, his dismay then was a feeble imitation of the panic

that smote him now. It had long been a favorite formula of

Bijonah's that "A schooner's a gal you can understand. She goes

where ye send her, an' ye know she'll come back when ye tell her

to. She's a snug, trustin' kind of critter, an' she's man's best

friend because she hain't got a grain o' sense. But woman!"

Here Bijonah always ended, his hands, his voice, and his sentence

suspended in mid air.

Now he was baffled completely. Here was a girl who was deeply in

love, crying. He tiptoed cautiously to the deck again and stole

forward to the galley as though he had been detected in a

suspicious action.