Free John Masters by The Rock

drop, leaving her stomach behind. Later, when she was not carving the ivory fang, she spent her days on the poop, clinging to the gunwale and watching from there. Gradually, as the ship kept rising to the endless waves, a sort of exhilaration began to mingle with the anxious fear in the pit of her belly. Half the oars were unshipped now and lashed under the benches. That gave four men to each of the remaining oars, three always at work and one resting. The white foam rose higher on the waves, and every now and then she felt a sense of miracle as a mountain slope of blue-black water marched by, lifting them to its summit, and for a moment the wind blew salt into her face and the horizon was the end of the world and all between a continent of waves, water, tossing spume, with no living thing on it but themselves and the gray and white seabirds. Tamar found herself unwillingly grateful to Pendril for showing her these marvels of creation, but Daniel became sick and pale, could barely eat, and lay all day in the cabin, shivering with fear. On the twentieth day he muttered to her, "I can bear this no longer. Go to Pendril and beg him to turn back, for assuredly we shall all die if he does not. Offer him anything. Gold. Half our land in Carthage. Your body."
    "My body?" she cried.
    "For all our sakes," he said. "Why not? Go."
    She went stiffly to the poop and found Pendril there with Tregan at the steering oar. "Turn back," she said abruptly, "or you will kill my husband."
    "I cannot," he said gravely.
    "Why?" she said. "What will you do if we come at last to the Hesperides?"
    "Bring back a golden apple," he said suddenly. "It is the price demanded by the goddess for the land I want; for the corner of the Rock where I stopped and you ran into me." She remembered and for a time did not speak, for she had remembered too the yearning in his face and understood now what drove him. But her husband had sent her, and she must obey.
    She said, "Turn back, and you shall have your price. Gold. Land in Carthage. My body. All."
    He shook his head unsmilingly.
    Tregan said, "Take it, for all of us, Pendril. Turn back. There are no Hesperides except in a man's dreams."
    He said, "The ship rides well. We go on."
    She stared at the square red man. She had offered herself to him twice, and twice he had refused her. Anger and shame tensed her like two powerful arms bending a bow. She lashed out at him with all her strength. His hand went toward the knife at his belt as her blow landed, then he turned his back on her.
    She went slowly to her cabin and lay down. When Daniel asked her how she had fared, she only shook her head. She lay on her back, staring at the deck beams low over her head. If Daniel was willing to sacrifice her for his own safety, what would he not do? Where was the nobility she had once seen in him, the strength to protect her, the warmth to cherish? He crouched here trembling while the rough Carteian above faced the waves and the unknown unafraid, driving to his dream.
    She took the knife and fang and began to carve carefully, for she had almost released the shape from the bone now.
    The wind blew stronger, and rain slanted down from low clouds. On the twenty-fifth day the wind dropped a little, and the white water tossed less violently on top of the waves, though the waves themselves grew larger. On the twenty-sixth day the clouds built up again, and soon after noon the light began to fail. Here and there a thin ray stabbed down onto the mountainous waste of the ocean, the water slate blue and the clouds the same color. To the northwest deeper gray rain curtains hung from scudding cloud to heaving sea. She went to the cabin and found Tregan there whispering with Daniel. They put their fingers to their lips. When Tregan had gone, Daniel whispered, "I have won the other Carteians over. We are going to overthrow Pendril."
    "Will you kill him?" she asked.
    "He deserves it. Go on deck and stand in the stem. When Tregan puts his head