Upon the morning that saw the wreck of _The Realm_ in Balaklava
Bay, Thompson Jowell traveled up to London, big with the determination
that what he had planned should not be carried out. It would be
difficult to arrest the hand of his hired Fate, but with tact and
promptitude it could be managed. He eased his mind by saying that
it could, as the London Express carried him to Paddington at the
Providence-defying speed of thirty miles an hour.
Even as he composed his cautiously-worded cablegram a wire from the
Admiralty was lying on his office-desk. But he felt happier than he had
done for months, and correspondingly virtuous as he chartered a hackney
cab and drove to the City--and got out at the paved entrance to the
narrow alley of squalid houses in the shade of the Banking House of
Lubbock and Son.
It was a moist, foggy November forenoon, and the yellow gas-jets made
islands of light in the prevailing murkiness.... Broadsheets papered
the gutters, advertising the Latest Intelligence from the Crimea. Fate
had arranged that Jowell’s newspaper should not be delivered at his
country seat that morning, and that--absorbed in the composition of his
message--he should have omitted to buy one at the railway station. It
occurred to him that he would buy one now.
He thrust his big hand in his trousers-pocket and wagged his umbrella
at a scudding newsboy. The boy darted on, and Jowell condemned him for
a young fool. Then a coatless, shivering misery, with wild eyes staring
through a tangle of matted hair--padded up on blue and naked feet and
thrust a paper under the nose of the Contractor, saying:
“Buy it, sir! It’s the last I have!”
“Give it here!” snorted Jowell, grabbing it and fumbling for a penny.
As he dropped the copper in the dirty hand, he knew that he and the
sea-green Standish had met again. The ex-clerk laughed huskily as he
recognized his old tyrant, and said, in a voice that shook and wobbled
with some strange emotion:
“Keep your damned money! I’ll make you a present of the paper! I’ve
prayed for a chance like this ever since my wife died!”
With a shrill, crazy laugh he shoved the penny back into the stout
hairy hand with the big showy rings upon it, and was swallowed up in
the moving crowd and blotted out. And Jowell damned him for an impudent
hound, and pitched the coin angrily after him. And a guttersnipe
pounced on it, turned a Catherine-wheel with a flourish of dirty heels,
and vanished. And Jowell, standing under the gas-lamp at the head of
the alley, tucked his umbrella under his arm, and opened the newspaper.
These headlines caught his eye:
“GREAT GALE IN BALAKLAVA BAY.