"Why, is his face hurt?" asked the astounded old Nelson. The truth
dawned suddenly upon his innocent mind. "Dear me!" he cried,

enlightened. "Get some brandy, quick, Freya. . . . You are subject
to it, lieutenant? Fiendish, eh? I know, I know! Used to go

crazy all of a sudden myself in the time. . . . And the little
bottle of laudanum from the medicine-chest, too, Freya. Look

sharp. . . . Don't you see he's got a toothache?"
And, indeed, what other explanation could have presented itself to

the guileless old Nelson, beholding this cheek nursed with both
hands, these wild glances, these stampings, this distracted swaying

of the body? It would have demanded a preternatural acuteness to
hit upon the true cause. Freya had not moved. She watched

Heemskirk's savagely inquiring, black stare directed stealthily
upon herself. "Aha, you would like to be let off!" she said to

herself. She looked at him unflinchingly, thinking it out. The
temptation of making an end of it all without further trouble was

irresistible. She gave an almost imperceptible nod of assent, and
glided away.

"Hurry up that brandy!" old Nelson shouted, as she disappeared in
the passage.

Heemskirk relieved his deeper feelings by a sudden string of curses
in Dutch and English which he sent after her. He raved to his

heart's content, flinging to and fro the verandah and kicking
chairs out of his way; while Nelson (or Nielsen), whose sympathy

was profoundly stirred by these evidences of agonising pain,
hovered round his dear (and dreaded) lieutenant, fussing like an

old hen.
"Dear me, dear me! Is it so bad? I know well what it is. I used

to frighten my poor wife sometimes. Do you get it often like this,
lieutenant?"

Heemskirk shouldered him viciously out of his way, with a short,
insane laugh. But his staggering host took it in good part; a man

beside himself with excruciating toothache is not responsible.
"Go into my room, lieutenant," he suggested urgently. "Throw

yourself on my bed. We will get something to ease you in a
minute."

He seized the poor sufferer by the arm and forced him gently
onwards to the very bed, on which Heemskirk, in a renewed access of

rage, flung himself down with such force that he rebounded from the
mattress to the height of quite a foot.

"Dear me!" exclaimed the scared Nelson, and incontinently ran off
to hurry up the brandy and the laudanum, very angry that so little

alacrity was shown in relieving the tortures of his precious guest.
In the end he got these things himself.

Half an hour later he stood in the inner passage of the house,
surprised by faint, spasmodic sounds of a mysterious nature,

between laughter and sobs. He frowned; then went straight towards
his daughter's room and knocked at the door.

Freya, her glorious fair hair framing her white face and rippling
down a dark-blue dressing-gown, opened it partly.

The light in the room was dim. Antonia, crouching in a corner,
rocked herself backwards and forwards, uttering feeble moans. Old

Nelson had not much experience in various kinds of feminine
laughter, but he was certain there had been laughter there.

"Very unfeeling, very unfeeling!" he said, with weighty
displeasure. "What is there so amusing in a man being in pain? I

should have thought a woman - a young girl - "
"He was so funny," murmured Freya, whose eyes glistened strangely

in the semi-obscurity of the passage. "And then, you know, I don't
like him," she added, in an unsteady voice.

"Funny!" repeated old Nelson, amazed at this evidence of
callousness in one so young. "You don't like him! Do you mean to

say that, because you don't like him, you - Why, it's simply cruel!
Don't you know it's about the worst sort of pain there is? Dogs

have been known to go mad with it."
"He certainly seemed to have gone mad," Freya said with an effort,

as if she were struggling with some hidden feeling.
But her father was launched.

"And you know how he is. He notices everything. He is a fellow to
take offence for the least little thing - regular Dutchman - and I

want to keep friendly with him. It's like this, my girl: if that
rajah of ours were to do something silly - and you know he is a

sulky, rebelliousbeggar - and the authorities took into their
heads that my influence over him wasn't good, you would find

yourself without a roof over your head - "
She cried: "What nonsense, father!" in a not very assured tone,

and discovered that he was angry, angry enough to achieve irony;
yes, old Nelson (or Nielsen), irony! Just a gleam of it.

"Oh, of course, if you have means of your own - a mansion, a
plantation that I know nothing of - " But he was not capable of

sustained irony. "I tell you they would bundle me out of here," he
whispered forcibly; "without compensation, of course. I know these

Dutch. And the lieutenant's just the fellow to start the trouble
going. He has the ear of influential officials. I wouldn't offend

him for anything - for anything - on no considerationwhatever. . .
. What did you say?"

It was only an inarticulate exclamation. If she ever had a half-
formed intention of telling him everything she had given it up now.

It was impossible, both out of regard for his dignity and for the
peace of his poor mind.

"I don't care for him myself very much," old Nelson's subdued
undertone confessed in a sigh. "He's easier now," he went on,

after a silence. "I've given him up my bed for the night. I shall
sleep on my verandah, in the hammock. No; I can't say I like him

either, but from that to laugh at a man because he's driven crazy
with pain is a long way. You've surprised me, Freya. That side of

his face is quite flushed."
Her shoulders shook convulsively under his hands, which he laid on

her paternally. His straggly, wiry moustache brushed her forehead
in a good-night kiss. She closed the door, and went away from it

to the middle of the room before she allowed herself a tired-out
sort of laugh, without buoyancy.

"Flushed! A little flushed!" she repeated to herself. "I hope so,
indeed! A little - "

Her eyelashes were wet. Antonia, in her corner, moaned and
giggled, and it was impossible to tell where the moans ended and

the giggles began.
The mistress and the maid had been somewhat hysterical, for Freya,

on fleeing into her room, had found Antonia there, and had told her
everything.

"I have avenged you, my girl," she exclaimed.
And then they had laughingly cried and cryingly laughed with

admonitions - "Ssh, not so loud! Be quiet!" on one part, and
interludes of "I am so frightened. . . . He's an evil man," on the

other.
Antonia was very much afraid of Heemskirk. She was afraid of him

because of his personal appearance: because of his eyes and his
eyebrows, and his mouth and his nose and his limbs. Nothing could

be more rational. And she thought him an evil man, because, to her
eyes, he looked evil. No ground for an opinion could be sounder.

In the dimness of the room, with only a nightlight burning at the
head of Freya's bed, the camerista crept out of her corner to

crouch at the feet of her mistress, supplicating in whispers:
"There's the brig. Captain Allen. Let us run away at once - oh,

let us run away! I am so frightened. Let us! Let us!"