I
Manila was reached without special incident.
As the _Skipping Goone_ approached the harbour, a sailing skiff was
sighted making straight out for the incoming schooner: a small pleasure
craft with graceful lines, which had won races in its day. When the
skiff came closer it was observed that some one aboard her was waving a
handkerchief in very earnest welcome: a woman, nodding and smiling. With
an abundant thrill, the impresario discovered her to be Flora Utterbourne!
After the first shock of joyous surprise, Mr. Curry had a curious feeling
that it was somehow quite right and natural to find her here in Manila,
and to have her come out in a skiff to meet him.
He wanted to climb right aboard the delightful skiff! He seriously—or
rather a little hysterically—consulted, even, with Captain Bearman as
to the practicability of such a manœuvre, but received such a look of
withering scorn as to force him necessarily into a mood of resignation.
It seemed impossible to wait until the schooner came to anchor. Yet by
hook or crook the thing had to be managed.
The little craft skimmed and tacked about, like a playful puppy barking
at the heels of a charger, and often passed so close as to permit of the
single passenger’s engaging in fragmentary talk with those aboard the
larger vessel.
Curry went racing all over the _Skipping Goone_ in a wholly undignified
fashion, seeking constantly shifting new points of vantage from which
interchanges would be most convenient. He puffed and perspired. He
was enormously excited, and made no attempt to conceal the interesting
emotion. And Flora was excited too, though even under this stress her
speech, as it came to him across the dazzling water, possessed that
flexible and gliding, that complex and ever smooth-flowing quality, which
he knew so well, with its quaint sprinkling, too, of italicised and
quoted words.