The Girl on the Boat - Penn State University

“You’re a marvel!”
Eustace lay back in bed and gave himself up to meditation.
He had admired Jane Hubbard before, but the
intimacy of the sick-room and the stories which she
had told him to relieve the tedium of his invalid state
had set the seal on his devotion. It has always been
like this since Othello wooed Desdemona. For three
days Jane Hubbard had been weaving her spell about
Eustace Hignett, and now she monopolised his entire
horizon. She had spoken, like Othello, of antres vast
and deserts idle, rough quarries, rocks and hills whose
heads touched heaven, and of the cannibals that each
other eat, the Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
do grow beneath their shoulders. This to hear would
Eustace Hignett seriously incline, and swore, in faith,
’twas strange, ’twas passing strange, ’twas pitiful, ’twas
wondrous pitiful. He loved her for the dangers she had
passed, and she loved him that he did pity them. In
fact, one would have said that it was all over except
buying the licence, had it not been for the fact that his
very admiration served to keep Eustace from pouring
<strong>The</strong> <strong>Girl</strong> on the Boat
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out his heart. It seemed incredible to him that the queen
of her sex, a girl who had chatted in terms of equality
with African head-hunters and who swatted alligators
as though they were flies, could ever lower herself to
care for a man who looked like the “after-taking” advertisement
of a patent food.
But even those whom Nature has destined to be mates
may misunderstand each other, and Jane, who was as
modest as she was brave, had come recently to place a
different interpretation on his silence. In the last few
days of the voyage she had quite made up her mind
that Eustace Hignett loved her and would shortly intimate
as much in the usual manner; but, since coming
to Windles, she had begun to have doubts. She was
not blind to the fact that Billie Bennett was distinctly
prettier than herself and far more the type to which
the ordinary man is attracted. And, much as she loathed
the weakness and despised herself for yielding to it,
she had become distinctly jealous of her. True, Billie
was officially engaged to Bream Mortimer, but she had
had experience of the brittleness of Miss Bennett’s en-