“Eric was standing a yard from the rail, his back to it. The kick in his face made him lose his balance, and he staggered backward, and before I could stir, with the boy extended above his head, he had fallen overboard. “Joan screamed; and together we leaped to the rail. I reached for a coil of rope. The two had sunk in a smother of bubbles; and in the second that we waited for Eric to fight his way to the surface again, a sinister shadow shot like fire along the ship’s side, and I saw the flicker of a silver-white belly, and heard Joan scream again. “The water turned crimson; and then Eric came to the surface with empty hands. He dove instantly, furiously; and I got a boat into the water. Eric broke to the surface again, his face convulsed with the anguish that tore him; and two of us grabbed him and dragged him, fighting, into the boat. “‘Let go, let go,’ he screamed, and struck us back. ‘Let me go. I can get him.’ “He was mad; and we caught him, and he broke and dropped, sobbing, in the bottom of the boat. I saw that one of his arms was rasped raw by the shark’s rough skin. “Joan met him like a fury when he stepped upon the deck again, and I thought she would strike him. He stood before her, drooping and crushed; and the girl caught herself. But I heard the word she said. “‘Thrice murderer!’ she told him softly. ‘Thrice murderer! A mother and child--and now my baby! Oh curse you, curse you! May you be always accursed until you die!’ “She held him for a moment, and then turned away from the man; and Eric Scarf drooped sick and weak where he stood, until I dragged him below to tend his wounded arm.” III The old man paused, and stared into the fire; and when I had waited fruitlessly for another word from him, I asked: “Is that all?” He looked up at me quietly. “No,” he said. “No--that is not the whole of it.” Still he did not continue, so I prompted him. “You said the whale was seen four times,” I suggested. He nodded; and so drifted into his story again. “Aye, four times,” he agreed. “The old bull with the cross upon his skull. Four times. I’ve but told the first.” He puffed silently for a little, shifted his great bulk in the chair, rose and crossed to the window to look down toward the harbor, and returned at last to me. “Joan kept to her cabin much, from that day,” he said. “She kept to her cabin; and Eric Scarf did his tasks and held aloof from her. We came smoothly northward, and presently were at our pier, unloading the casks that filled our holds. Eric had slowly recovered something of the old strength and power that moved him; and though he avoided the girl, and though I could see how he suffered and what agony he was enduring, he kept a steady face to the men, and drove them as he always drove.