Page:Richard Marsh--The joss, a reversion.djvu/296

284 of the stick. In—in England a wife’s the man’s superior.”

“It’s a lie. See how you stammer. You cannot lie like my father with an even tongue. A wife is her husband’s slave. At his bidding she fetches and she carries. He beats her as he beats his dog. When she grows old he takes another. And she dies.”

“My—my dear Susie, I assure you that that description doesn’t apply to England. There, unless she’s a wife, a woman isn’t happy.”

“Then in England women are more unhappy than in the country from which I come. I will not go there. I will not go to any place where there are wives.”

She strode past me as I stared at her, thunderstruck. I continued thunderstruck when she had gone.

She had a deal to learn.

That night I slept badly. In the morning I was roused by someone hammering at the door.

“Who’s there?”

“It’s me, sir; Holley. The cutter’s gone.”

“What!”

“The cutter’s gone. And the watch is hocussed.”

I was standing at the door in my nightshirt.

“What the devil do you mean? Where’s Mr. Luke?”

“He had the morning watch. He’s gone too. It’s his chaps as is hocussed. Leastways, they’re lying on the deck like logs. And Mr. Batters, he’s gone. And his things. His cabin’s stripped clean. And his daughter, she’s gone.”

“Holley!”

I was thrusting myself into a pair of trousers. All of a sudden the ship stopped dead, with an unpleasant shock.

“What’s that? She can’t have struck!”

I rushed up. Rudd met me.