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AN OCEAN TRAGEDY
NOVELS, ETC., BY W. CLARK RUSSELL.
Crown 8vo. cloth extra, 3_s._ 6_d._ each; post 8vo. illustrated boards,
2_s._ each; cloth limp, 2_s._ 6_d._ each.
ROUND THE GALLEY-FIRE.
IN THE MIDDLE WATCH.
ON THE FO’K’SLE HEAD.
A VOYAGE TO THE CAPE.
A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK.
THE MYSTERY OF THE ‘OCEAN STAR.’
THE ROMANCE OF JENNY HARLOWE.
AN OCEAN TRAGEDY.
MY SHIPMATE LOUISE.
ALONE ON A WIDE WIDE SEA.
THE GOOD SHIP ‘MOHOCK.’
THE PHANTOM DEATH.
IS HE THE MAN?
HEART OF OAK.
THE CONVICT SHIP.
THE LAST ENTRY.
THE TALE OF THE TEN.
Crown 8vo. cloth, 3_s._ 6_d._ each.
A TALE OF TWO TUNNELS.
THE DEATH SHIP.
OVERDUE.
WRONG SIDE OUT. (Also an Edition at 1_s._ net.)
THE ‘PRETTY POLLY.’ With 12 Illustrations by G. E. ROBERTSON.
Popular Editions, medium 8vo. 6_d._ each.
THE CONVICT SHIP.
IS HE THE MAN?
LONDON: CHATTO & WINDUS, 111 ST. MARTIN’S LANE, W.C.
AN OCEAN TRAGEDY
BY
W. CLARK RUSSELL
AUTHOR OF ‘THE FROZEN PIRATE’ ‘THE WRECK OF THE GROSVENOR’
‘A BOOK FOR THE HAMMOCK’ ‘A VOYAGE TO THE CAPE,’ ETC.
[colophon]
A NEW IMPRESSION
LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
1911
_To HERMAN MELVILLE, Esq._
_MY DEAR HERMAN MELVILLE_,
_In words of beauty and of kindness you lately wished me health and
content. Health, alas! you cannot give me; but content you have filled
me with. My books have done more than ever I had dared dream, by
winning for me the friendship and approval of the Author of ‘Typee,’
‘Omoo,’ ‘Moby-Dick,’ ‘Redburn,’ and other productions which top the
list of sea literature in the English tongue. I beg you to accept this
dedication as a further public avowal of my hearty admiration of your
genius._
_In all faithfulness yours,
W. CLARK RUSSELL._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. MY COUSIN 1
II. THE ‘BRIDE’ 10
III. LAURA JENNINGS 17
IV. IN THE SOLENT 27
V. LONG TOM 39
VI. FINN TESTS THE CREW’S SIGHT 50
VII. SAIL HO! 58
VIII. WE SPEAK THE ‘WANDERER’ 67
IX. A SQUALL 76
X. I GO ALOFT 84
XI. THE PORTUGUESE BRIG 92
XII. A SECOND WARNING 105
XIII. I INTERPRET THE WARNING 116
XIV. MUFFIN GOES FORWARD 126
XV. I BOARD A WRECK 136
XVI. WE SIGHT A SCHOONER-YACHT 147
XVII. WE RAISE THE SCHOONER 156
XVIII. IS SHE THE ‘SHARK?’ 166
XIX. A MYSTERIOUS VOICE 178
XX. MUFFIN IS PUNISHED 188
XXI. HEAVY WEATHER 198
XXII. THE ‘LIZA ROBBINS’ 206
XXIII. THE COLONEL AND HER LADYSHIP 215
XXIV. THE DUEL 224
XXV. THE COLONEL’S FUNERAL 235
XXVI. WILFRID’S DELUSION 247
XXVII. A DEAD CALM 263
XXVIII. A TERRIBLE NIGHT 274
XXIX. A VOLCANIC ISLAND 286
XXX. WE BOARD THE GALLEON 297
XXXI. THE FIRST NIGHT 308
XXXII. THE GALLEON’S HOLD 321
XXXIII. THE SECOND NIGHT 334
XXXIV. CONCLUSION 348
AN OCEAN TRAGEDY.
CHAPTER I.
MY COUSIN.
‘Sir Wilfrid Monson, sir,’ exclaimed my man.
It was half-past ten o’clock at night, and I was in my lodgings in Bury
Street, St. James, slippers on feet, a pipe of tobacco in my hand,
seltzer and brandy at my elbow, and on my knees the ‘Sun’ newspaper,
the chief evening sheet of the times.
‘Sir Wilfrid Monson, sir.’
My cousin! thought I, starting, and looking round at my man with a
fancy in me for a moment that he had got the wrong name. ‘Show him in.’
Sir Wilfrid entered in a sort of swift headlong way, full of
nervousness and passion, as was to be seen easily enough; and then he
came to a dead stop with a wild look round the room, as if to make sure
that I was alone, and a frowning stare at my servant, who was lingering
a moment on the threshold as though suddenly surprised out of his
habits of prompt sleek attendance by a fit of astonishment.
He stood about six feet high; he had a slight stoop, and was something
awkward in arms and legs; yet you were sensible of the indefinable
quality of breeding in him the moment your eye took in his form and
face, uncommon as both were. He was forty-four years of age at this
time, and looked fifty. His hair was long and plentiful, but of an iron
grey streaked with soft white. He had a protruding under-lip, and a
nose which might have been broken for the irregularity of its outline,
with unusually high-cut nostrils. His eyes were large, short-sighted,
and grey, luminous and earnest, but with a tremulous lid that seemed
to put a quivering into their expression that was a hint in its way of
cunning and mental weakness. He had a broad, intellectual forehead,
brilliantly white teeth, high cheek bones, a large heavy chin, rounding
into a most delicately moulded throat. He was a man, indeed, at whom,
as a stranger, one might catch one’s self staring as at something
sufficiently puzzling to be well worth resolving. Ill-looking he was
_not_, and yet one seemed to seek in vain for qualities of body or mind
to neutralise to the sight what was assuredly a combination of much
that was uncomely, and indeed, in one or two directions, absolutely
grotesque. But then I had the secret.
The long and short of it was, my cousin, Sir Wilfrid Monson, was not
entirely straight-headed. Everything was made clear to the mind, after
a glance at his strange, weak, yet striking profile, with the hint
that there had been madness in his mother’s family. He was the eighth
baronet, and on his father’s side (and that was my side, I am thankful
to say) all had been sound as a bell; but my uncle had fallen in love
with the daughter of a Scotch peer whose family were tainted with
insanity--no matter her real name: the Lady Elizabeth will suffice. He
was frankly warned by the old Earl, who was not too mad to be candid,
but the lovesick creature grinned in his lordship’s face with a wild
shake of the head at the disclosure, as though he saw no more in it
than a disposition to end the engagement. Then the honest old madman
carried him to a great window that overlooked a spacious sweep of lawn,
and pointed with a bitter smile and a despairful heave of the shoulders
to three women walking, two of whom were soberly clad in big bonnets
and veils down their back, whilst the third, who was between them, and
whose arms were locked in the others’, glided forwards as though her
feet travelled on clockwork rollers, whilst she kept her head fixedly
bent, her chin upon her breast, and her gaze rooted upon the ground;
and as the amorous baronet watched--the Earl meanwhile preserving his
miserable smile as he held his gouty forefinger levelled--he saw the
down-looking woman make an effort to break away from her companions,
but without ever lifting her head.
‘That’s Lady Alice,’ said the Earl, ‘speechless and brainless! Guid
preserve us! And the Lady Elizabeth is her seester.’
‘Ay, that may be,’ answers the other; ‘but take two roses growing side
by side: because some venomous worm is eating into the heart of one and
withering up its beauty, is the other that is radiant and flawless to
be left uncherished?’
‘Guid forbid!’ answered the Earl, and then turned away with a weak
_hech! hech!_ that should have proved more terrifying to one’s
matrimonial yearnings than even the desolate picture of the three
figures stalking the emerald-green sward.
These were dim memories, yet they flashed into my head with the
swiftness of thought, along with the workings of the eager conjecture
and lively wonder raised in me by Wilfrid’s visit, and by his peculiar
aspect, too, during the few moments’ interval of pause that followed
his entrance. My servant shut the door; Wilfrid looked to see that it
was closed, then approached me with a sort of lifting of his face as
of a man half choked with a hurry and passion of sentences which he
wants to be quit of all at once in a breath, staggering as he moved,
his right arm outstretched with a rapid vibration of the hand at the
wrist; and, without delivering himself of a syllable, he fell into a
chair near the table, dashing his hat to the floor as he did so, buried
his face in his arms, and so lay sobbing in respirations of hysteric
fierceness.
This extraordinary behaviour amazed and terrified me. I will not deny
that I at first suspected the madness that lurked as a poison in his
blood had suddenly obtained a strong hold, and that he had come to see
me whilst seized with a heavy fit. I put down my pipe and adopted a
steadier posture, so to speak, in my chair, secretly hoping that the
surprise his manner or appearance had excited in my valet would render
the fellow curious enough to hang about outside to listen to what might
pass at the start. I kept my eyes fixed upon my cousin, but without
offering to speak, for, whatever might be the cause of the agitation
that was convulsing his powerful form with deep sobbing breathings, the
emotion was too overwhelming to be broken in upon by speech. Presently
he looked up; his eyes were tearless, but his face was both dusky and
haggard with the anguish that worked in him.
‘In the name of Heaven, Wilfrid,’ I cried, witnessing intelligence
enough in his gaze to instantly relieve me from the dread that had
possessed me, ‘what is wrong with you? what has happened?’
He drew a long tremulous breath and essayed to speak, but was
unintelligible in the broken syllable or two he managed to utter. I
poured what sailors term a ‘two-finger nip’ of brandy into a tumbler,
and added a little seltzer water to the dram. He seized the glass with
a hand that shook like a drunkard’s, and emptied it. But the draught
steadied him, and a moment after he said in a low voice, while he
clasped his hands upon the table with such a grip of each other that
the veins stood out like whipcord: ‘My wife has left me.’
I stared at him stupidly. The disclosure was so unexpected, so wildly
remote from any conclusion my fears had arrived at, that I could only
look at him like a fool.
‘Left you!’ I faltered, ‘what d’ye mean, Wilfrid? Refused to live you?’
‘No!’ he exclaimed with a face darkening yet to the effort it cost
him to subdue his voice, ‘she has eloped--left me--left her baby
for--for--’ he stopped, bringing his fist to the table with a crash
that was like to have demolished everything upon it.
‘It is an abominable business,’ said I soothingly; ‘but it is not to
be bettered by letting feeling overmaster you. Come, take your time;
give yourself a chance. You are here, of course, to tell me the story.
Let me have it quietly. It is but to let yourself be torn to pieces to
suffer your passion to jockey your reason.’
‘She has left me!’ he shrieked, rising bolt upright from his chair, and
lifting his arms with his hands clenched to the ceiling. ‘Devil and
beast! faithless mother! faithless wife! May God----’
I raised my hand, looking him full in the face. ‘Pray sit, Wilfrid.
Lady Monson has left you, you say. With or for whom?’
‘Hope-Kennedy,’ he answered, ‘Colonel Hope-Kennedy,’ bringing out
the words as though they were rooted in his throat. ‘My good friend
Hope-Kennedy, Charles; the man I have entertained, have hunted
with, assisted at a time when help was precious to him. Ay, Colonel
Hope-Kennedy. That is the man she has left me for, the fellow that she
has abandoned her baby for. It is a dream--it is a dream! I loved her
so. I could have kissed her breast, where her heart lay, as a Bible for
truth, sincerity, and all beautiful thought.’
He passed his hand over his forehead and seated himself again, or
rather dropped into his chair, resting his chin upon the palm of his
hand with the nails of his fingers at his teeth, whilst he watched
me with a gaze that was rendered indescribably pathetic by the soft
near-sighted look of his grey eyes under the shadow of his forehead,
that had a wrinkled, twisted, even distorted aspect with the pain his
soul was in. There was but one way of giving him relief, and that was
by plying him with questions to enable him to let loose his thoughts.
He extended his hand for the brandy and mixed himself a bumper. There
was little in spirits to hurt him at such a time as this. Indeed I
believe he could have carried a whole bottle in his head without
exhibiting himself as in the least degree oversparred. This second dose
distinctly rallied him, and now he lay back in his chair with his arms
folded upon his breast.
‘When did your wife leave you, Wilfrid?’
‘A week to-day.’
‘You know, of course, without doubt, that Hope-Kennedy is the man she
has gone off with?’
He nodded savagely, with a smile like a scowl passing over his face.
‘But how do you know for certain?’ I cried, determined to make him talk.
He pulled a number of letters from his side-pocket, overhauled them,
found one, glanced at it, and handed it to me with a posture of the arm
that might have made one think it was some venomous snake he held.
‘This was found in my wife’s bedroom,’ said he, ‘read it to yourself.
Every line of it seems to be written in fire here.’ He struck his
breast with his fist.
What I am telling happened a long time ago, as you will notice
presently. The letter my cousin handed to me I read once and never saw
again, and so, as you may suppose, I am unable to give it as it was
written. But the substance of it was this: It was addressed to Lady
Monson. The writer called her, I recollect, ‘my darling,’ ‘my adorable
Henrietta.’ It was all about the proposed elopement, a complete sketch
of the plan of it, and the one document Sir Wilfrid could have prayed
to get hold of, had he any desire to know what had become of his
wife, and on what kind of rambles she and her paramour had started.
The letter was signed, boldly enough, ‘Frank Hope-Kennedy,’ and was
filled with careful instructions to her how and when to leave her
house. Railroads were few and far between in those days. Sir Wilfrid
Monson’s estate was in Cumberland, and it was a long journey by coach
and chaise to the town that was connected with the metropolis by steam.
But the Colonel had made every arrangement for her ladyship, and it was
apparent from his instructions that she had managed her flight first by
driving to an adjacent village, where she dismissed the carriage with
orders for it to return for her at such and such an hour; then, when
her coachman was out of sight, she entered a postchaise that was in
readiness and galloped along to a town through which the stage coach
passed. By this coach she would travel some twenty or thirty miles,
then post it to the terminus of the line that conveyed her to London.
But all this, though it ran into a tedious bit of description, was but
a part of the gallant Colonel’s programme. Her ladyship would arrive
in London at such and such an hour, and the Colonel would be waiting
at the station to receive her. They would then drive to a hotel out
of Bond Street, and next morning proceed to Southampton, where the
‘Shark’ lay ready for them. It was manifest that Colonel Hope-Kennedy
intended to sail away with Lady Monson in a vessel named the ‘Shark.’
He devoted a page of small writing to a description of this craft,
which, I might take it--though not much in that way was to be gathered
from a landsman’s statement--was a large schooner yacht owned by
Lord Winterton, from whom the Colonel had apparently hired it for an
indefinite period. He assured his adorable Henrietta that he had spared
neither money nor pains to render the vessel as luxurious in _cuisine_,
cabin fittings, and the like as was practicable in a sea-going fabric
in those days. He added that what his darling required for the voyage
must be hastily purchased at Southampton. She must be satisfied with
a very slender wardrobe; time was pressing; the madman to whom the
clergyman who married them had shackled her would be off in wild
pursuit, helter-skelter, flying moonwards mayhap in his delirium on the
instant of discovering that she was gone. Time therefore pressed, and
when once the anchor of the ‘Shark’ was lifted off the ground he had no
intention of letting it fall again until they had measured six thousand
miles of salt water.
I delivered a prolonged whistle on reading this. Six thousand miles
of ocean, methought, sounded intolerably real as a condition of an
elopement. My cousin never removed his eyes from my face while I read.
I gave him the letter, which he folded and returned to his pocket. He
was now looking somewhat collected, though the surging of the passion
and grief in him would show in a momentary sparkle of the eye, in a
spasmodic grin and twist of the lips, in a quick clenching of his
hands as though he would drive his finger-nails into his palms. I
hardly knew what to say, for the letter was as full a revelation of the
vile story as he could have given me in an hour’s delivery, and the
injury and misery of the thing were too recent to admit of soothing
words. Yet I guessed that it would do him good to talk.
‘Have they sailed yet, do you know?’ I inquired.
‘Yes,’ he answered, letting out his breath in a sigh as though some
thought in him had arrested his respiration for a bit.
‘How do you know?’
‘I arrived an hour ago from Southampton,’ he replied, ‘and have got all
the information I require.’
‘There cannot be much to add to what the letter contains,’ said I, ‘It
is the completest imaginable story of the devilish business.’
He looked at me oddly, and then said, ‘Ay, it tells what has happened.
But that did not satisfy me. I have gone beyond that, and know the
place they are making for.’
‘It will be six thousand miles distant, anyhow,’ said I.
‘Quite. The villain reasoned with a pair of compasses in his hand. It
is Cape Town--the other side of the world; when ’tis ice and northern
blasts with us, it is the fragrance of the moon-lily and a warm heaven
of quiet stars with them.’
He struck the table, smothering some wild curse or other behind his set
teeth, next leaped from his chair and fell to pacing the room, now and
again muttering to himself with an occasional flourish of his arm. I
watched him in silence. Presently he returned to the table and mixed
another glass of liquor. He sat lost in thought for a little, then,
with a slow lifting of his eyes, till his gaze lay steadfast on me, he
said: ‘Charlie, I am going to follow them to Cape Town.’
‘In some South African trader?’
‘In my yacht. You know her?’
‘I have never seen her, but I have heard of her as a very fine vessel.’
‘She sails two feet to the “Shark’s” one,’ he exclaimed, with a
queer gleam of satisfaction glistening in the earnest stare he kept
fastened on me. ‘I gave her square yards last year--you will know what
a great hoist of topsail, and a big squaresail under it, and a large
topgallantsail should do for such a model as the “Bride.” The “Shark”
is fore and aft only.’ He fetched his leg a smack that sounded like the
report of a pistol. ‘We’ll have ’em!’ he exclaimed, and his face turned
pale as he spoke the words.
‘Let me understand you,’ said I; ‘you propose to sail in pursuit of the
Colonel and your wife?’
He nodded whilst he clasped his hands upon the table and leaned forward.
‘What proof have you that they have started for Cape Town?’
He instantly answered: ‘The captain of the “Shark” is a man named
Fidler. My captain’s name is Finn. His wife and Mrs. Fidler are
neighbours at Southampton, and good friends. Mrs. Fidler told my
captain’s wife that her husband was superintending the equipment of
Lord Winterton’s yacht for a voyage round the world, and that the first
port of call would be Table Bay. She knew that the “Shark” had been let
by Winterton to a gentleman, but at the time of her speaking to Mrs.
Finn she did not know his name.’
‘You said just now,’ I exclaimed, ‘that you had assisted this fellow,
Hope-Kennedy, when help was precious to him. I suppose you mean that
you lent him money? How can he support the expense of a yacht, for, if
I remember rightly, the “Shark’s” burthen is over two hundred tons?’
‘I lent him money before I was married; within the last three years
he has come into a fortune of between eighty and a hundred thousand
pounds.’
I paused a moment and then said, ‘Have you thoroughly considered this
project of chasing the fugitives?’
His eyes brightened to a sudden rage, but he checked the utterance of
what rose to his lips and said with a violent effort to subdue himself:
‘I start the day after to-morrow.’
‘Alone?’
‘No, my sister-in-law will accompany me;’ then, after a breath or two,
‘_and you_.’
‘I?’
‘Oh,’ he cried, ‘it would be ridiculous in me to expect you to say at
once that you will come; but before I leave this room I shall have your
promise.’ And as he said this he stretched his arms across the table
and took my hand in both his and fondled it, meanwhile eyeing me in the
most passionate, wistful manner that can be imagined.
‘Wilfrid,’ said I softly, touched by his air and a sort of beauty as I
seemed to think that came into his strange face with the pleading of
it, ‘whatever I can do that may be serviceable to you in this time of
bitter trial, I _will_ do. But let me reason with you a little.’
‘Ay, reason,’ he responded, relinquishing my hand and folding his arms,
and leaning back in his chair.
‘I have been a sailor in my time, as you know,’ said I, ‘and have some
acquaintance with the sea, even though my experience goes no further
than a brief spell of East African and West Indian stations; and,
therefore, forgive me for inquiring your expectations. What do you
suppose? The “Shark” will have had three days’ start of you.’
‘Five days,’ he interrupted.
‘Five days, then. Do you expect to overhaul her at sea, or is it your
intention to crowd on to the Cape, await her arrival there, or, if
you find that she has already sailed, to follow her to the next port,
providing you can learn it?’
‘You have named the programme,’ he answered. ‘I shall chase her. If I
miss her I shall wait for her at Table Bay.’
‘She may get there before you,’ I said, ‘and be under way for another
destination whilst you are still miles to the nor’ard.’
‘No,’ he cried hotly, ‘we shall be there first; but we shall not need
to go so far. Her course must be our course, and we shall overhaul her;
don’t doubt that.’
‘But put it,’ said I, ‘first of all, that you _don’t_ overhaul her. You
may pass her close on a dark night with never a guess at her presence.
She may be within twenty miles of you on a clear, bright day, and not
a creature on board suspect that a shift of helm by so much as half a
point would bring what all hands are dying to overhaul within eyeshot
in half an hour.’
He listened with a face clouded and frowning with impatience; but I was
resolved to weaken if I could what seemed to me an insane resolution.
‘Count upon missing her at sea, for I tell you the chances of your
picking her up are all against you. Well, now, you arrive at Table Bay
and find that the “Shark” sailed a day or two before for some port of
which nobody knows anything. What will you do then? How will you steer
your “Bride”? For all you can tell, this man Hope-Kennedy may make for
the Pacific Islands by way of Cape Horn, or he may head north-east for
the Mozambique and the Indian waters, or south-east for the Australias.
It is but to let fly an arrow in the dark to embark on such a quest.’
He lay back looking at me a little without speaking, and then said, in
a more collected manner than his face might promise, ‘I may miss this
man upon the high seas; I _may_ find his yacht has arrived and gone
again when I reach Table Bay; and I _may not_ know, as you say, in what
direction to seek her if there be no one in Cape Town able to tell
me what port she has started for; but’--he drew a deep breath--‘the
pursuit gives me a chance. You will admit that?’
‘Yes, a chance, as you say.’
‘A chance,’ he continued, ‘that need not keep me waiting long for it to
happen. D’ye think I could rest with the knowledge that that scoundrel
and the woman he has rendered faithless to me are close yonder?’ he
exclaimed, pointing as though there had come a vision of the Atlantic
before his mind’s eye, and he saw the yacht afloat upon it. ‘Who’s to
tell me that before the month is out our friend the Colonel will not be
drifting somewhere fathoms deep with a shot through his heart?’
‘If you catch him you will shoot him?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘And Lady Monson?’
He looked down upon his hands without answering.
‘I am a single man,’ said I, ‘and am, therefore, no doubt disqualified
from passing an opinion. But I vow to heaven, Wilfrid, if my wife
chose to leave me for another man, I would not lift a finger either
to regain her or to avenge myself. A divorce would fully appease me.
Who would not feel gay to be rid of a woman whose every heart-throb
is a dishonour? What more unendurable than an association rendered an
incomparable insult, and the basest lie under heaven, by one’s wife’s
secret abhorrence and her desire for another?’
On a sudden he sprang to his feet as though stabbed. ‘Cease, for
Christ’s sake!’ he shouted. ‘The more truthful your words are, the more
they madden me. If I could tear her from me,’ clutching at his breast
in a wild, tragical way--‘if I could cleanse my heart of her as you
would purify a vessel of what has lain foul and poisonous in it; if
disgust would but fall cool on my resentment and leave me loathing her
merely; if--if--if! But it is _if_ that makes the difference betwixt
hell and heaven in this bad world of unexpected things.’ He sat afresh,
passing the back of his hand over his brow, and sighing heavily. ‘There
is no _if_ for me,’ said he. ‘I love her passionately yet, and so hate
her besides that----’ He checked himself with a shake of the head.
‘No, no, perhaps not when it _came_ to it,’ he muttered as though
thinking aloud. ‘We are wasting time,’ he cried, pulling out his watch.
‘Charlie, you will accompany me?’
‘But you say you start the day after to-morrow?’
‘Yes.’
‘From Southampton?’
‘Yes.’
‘And, should you find the “Shark” gone when you arrive at the Cape----’
‘Well?’
‘Ay,’ said I, ‘that’s just it. We should be like Adam and Eve, with all
the world before us where to choose.’
‘Charlie, will you come? I counted upon you from the moment of forming
my resolution. You have been a sailor. You are the one man of them all
that I should turn to in such a time as this. Say you will come. Laura
Jennings, my wife’s--my--my sister-in-law I mean--will accompany us.
Did I tell you this? Yes; I recollect. She is a stout-hearted little
woman, as brave as she is beautiful, and so shocked, so shocked!’ He
clasped his hands upon his brow, lifting his eyes. ‘She would pass
through a furnace to rescue her sister from this infamy. Come!’
‘You give me no time.’
‘Time! You have all to-morrow. You may easily be on board by four
o’clock in the afternoon on the following day. Time! A sailor knows
nothing of time. I must have you by my side, Charlie. We shall meet
them, and I shall need a friend. The support and help of your company,
too----’
‘Will your yacht be ready for sea by the day after to-morrow?’
‘She is ready now.’
‘Your people will have worked expeditiously,’ said I, fencing a little,
for he was leaning towards me and devouring me with his eyes, and I
found it impossible to say yes or no right off.
‘Will you come?’
‘How many form your party?’
‘There is myself, there is Laura, then you, then a maid for my
sister-in-law, and my man, and yours if you choose to bring him.’
‘In short, there will be three of us,’ said I; ‘no doctor?’
‘We cannot be too few. What would be the good of a doctor? Will you
come?’
‘Do you sleep in town to-night?’
‘Yes,’ he replied, naming a hotel near Charing Cross.
‘Well, then, Wilfrid,’ said I, ‘you must give me to-night to think the
thing over. What are your plans for to-morrow?’
‘I leave for Southampton at ten. Laura arrives there at six in the
evening.’
‘Then,’ said I, ‘you shall have my answer by nine o’clock to-morrow
morning. Will that do?’
‘It _must_ do, I suppose,’ said he wearily, moving as if to rise, and
casting a dull, absent sort of look at his watch.
A quarter of an hour later I was alone.