For the second time since she had known him, Lorna gained a look right into the very soul of the fellow. She had seen him display cowardice in the face of danger. She scorned him for that, yet realized that he was a landsman and—unlike Ralph and herself—was unused to the more boisterous phases of the sea. Here was something different. He did not sneer. It was a positively wolfish snarl that he displayed in reply to her question. The blood rushed into his face, making the whole of it almost as dark as though his bruises were a complete mask. "So you haven’t heard the glad news?" he lisped through his missing teeth. "What do you mean, Mr. Degger?" she demanded. "Get in here. I wish to speak with you. Oh! is your arm broken?" "My finger. When I hit him," said Degger, with a harsh laugh. "I guess he carries the mark. Haven’t you seen him?-" "Seen whom?" "Endicott." "I don’t understand," murmured Lorna. "I have not spoken with Ralph for two days. You—were you fighting with him?" "I tried to defend myself," snarled Degger. "He caught me unaware. I had no idea he was such a brute." "Oh!" "He’ll come to you and brag about it, all right, when time has erased the few marks I put on him. I fought back the best I could. But he gave me no real chance—none at all." "What did Ralph attack you for?" the girl asked, her practical sense coming to the fore. It was not easy for her to believe that Ralph Endicott had been so unfair as Degger declared. "Oh, we had words," was the latter’s hesitating reply. "Over what?" He looked at her from under lowered lids. The color receded from his face. The corners of his lips curled in a wolfish smile. He was not a pretty sight. "It was nothing you would care to hear about, Miss Nicholet," was his apparently evasive reply. She knew he desired her to urge his confidence. It would have been wiser had she refused to be thus baited. But curiosity is a most irritating complaint, and Lorna was not immune. "I want to know what you quarreled about, Mr. Degger," she said. "I know you and Ralph had words when you left us aboard the _Fenique_ down there at Lower Trillion. You were angry, or you would not have gone away from the light without bidding any of us good-bye. I think you two men are very foolish. Fighting and quarreling. Like dogs! It is most disgraceful. "And if I thought," she added, "that you and Ralph quarreled about me——" He flashed her another lowering glance. His smile now was most malicious. "No, Miss Nicholet," he said quite truthfully, "your name was not mentioned between us." Then: "Our difficulty arose over quite a different person." "Yes?" "I was a fool!" he exclaimed with apparent anger. "I tried to do somebody a favor. I thought I might be able to show Endicott wherein he was wrong. Never will I try again to point out his duty to a man!" Lorna listened with growing amazement. This certainly was a new side to Degger’s character!