Priscilla saw, that night, that Joel was troubled. She and Mark were together on the cushioned seat in the after cabin, and Joel sat at his desk, over the log. Mark was telling Priss an expurgated version of some one of his adventures; and Joel, looking once or twice that way, saw the quick-caught breath in her throat, saw her tremulous interest.... And his eyes clouded, so that when Priscilla chanced to look toward him, she saw, and cried: "Joel! What's the matter? You look so...." He looked from one of them to the other for a space; and then his eyes rested on Mark's, and he said slowly: "It's in my mind that I'd have done best to set you ashore at Tubuai, Mark." Mark laughed; but Priss cried hotly: "Joel! What a perfectly horrible thing to say!" Her voice had grown deeper and more resonant of late, Joel thought. It was no longer the voice of a girl, but of a woman.... Mark touched her arm. "Don't care about him," he told her. "That's only brotherly love...." "He oughtn't to say it." Joel said quietly: "This is a matter you do not understand, Priscilla. You would do well to keep silent. It is my affair." A month before, this would have swept Priss into a fury of anger; but this night, though her eyes burned with slow resentment, she bit her lips and was still. A month ago, she would have forgotten over night. Now she would remember.... Mark got up, laughed. "He's bad company, Priss," he told her. "Come on deck with me." She rose, readily enough; and they went out through the main cabin, and up the companionway. Joel watched them go. They left open the door into the cabin, and he heard Varde and Finch, at the table there, talking in husky whispers.... It was so, he knew, over the whole ship. Everywhere, the men were whispering.... There hung over the _Nathan Ross_ a cloud as definite as a man's hand; and every man scowled--save Mark Shore. Mark smiled with malicious delight at the gathering storm he had provoked.... Joel, left in the after cabin, felt terribly lonely. He wanted Priss with him, laughing, at his side. His longing for her was like a hot coal in his throat, burning there. And she had taken sides with Mark, against him.... His shoulders shook with the sudden surge of his desire to grip Mark's lean throat.... Ashore, he would have done so. But as things were, the ship was his first charge; and a break with Mark would precipitate the thing that menaced the ship.... He could not fight Mark without risking the _Nathan Ross_; and he could not risk the _Nathan Ross_. Not even.... His head dropped for an instant in his arms, and then he got up quickly, and shook himself, and set his lips.... No man aboard must see the trouble in his heart....