Glyddyr gave the orders to unmoor and make sail, after a great deal of
hesitation, and then countermanded those orders, and went down into his
cabin. There he made the man who acted as steward and valet open for
him a pint of champagne, which he tossed off as if suffering from a
burning thirst.
That seemed to do him good. His hand ceased to shake, and the peculiar
sensation of sinking passed off for the time as he sat by the cabin
window, lit a cigar, and let it out again while he watched the Fort,
with its drawn-down blinds, and thought over the last night's
proceedings.
"It was an accident," he said to himself, "a terrible mistake, and all
in vain. Good heavens! who could have thought that a little drop of
clear white-looking stuff could have done that; and him so used to
taking it."
He shrank away from the window, dashed away his cigar and sat down there
in the cabin, with his face buried in his hands.
"I ought to have summoned help when I saw how strange and cold he
turned. It would have saved him, poor old fellow! I wouldn't for all
the world that it should have happened, it seems impossible, and I can't
even believe it yet."
With a start of childish disbelief, he straightened himself and looked
out of the cabin window, as if he had half-expected to see the blinds
drawn up, and the Fort looking as usual.
But there was no change, and, with a groan of agony, he turned away and
stamped his foot with impatient rage.
"Just like my cursed luck," he cried. "Any one but me would have made a
pot of money over Simoom. I could have made enough to free me from this
wretched bondage, but now it's just as if something always stood between
me and success, and baulked all my plans."
He let his head sink upon his hands, and sat thinking again, but only to
raise himself in an angry fashion and ring the bell.
"You ring, sir?" said the steward at the end of a minute.
"Of course, I rang," said Glyddyr with petulant rage. "You heard me
ring, and knew I rang, or you wouldn't have come. Well, where is it?"
"I beg pardon, sir?"
"I say, where is it?"
"Where is what, sir?"
"The pint of champagne I told you to bring."
"Beg pardon, sir, I did bring it and you drank it."
"What?" roared Glyddyr. "Yes, of course, so I did. I had forgotten.
Bring me another."
"Guv'nor on the house?" said one of the sailors.
"Hold your row. Upset over that affair up at the toyshop," said the
steward in a whisper, and he took in the fresh pint of wine.
"Set it down."
"Yes, sir."
The steward beat a retreat, and Glyddyr tossed off another glass, poured
out the remainder, and sat gazing at it vacantly for a few minutes
before taking it up, his hand once more trembling violently.
"If I weren't such a cursed coward," he said, "I could get on. He must
have had a lot before, and that's what did it. By George, it gives me
the horrors!"
He tossed off the wine.
"No," he muttered as he set down the glass; "it wasn't what I gave him.
It wasn't enough, and to think now that there was all that lying ready
to my hand, without my having the pluck to take what I wanted. I must
have been a fool. I must have been mad."
"Curse these bottles!" he cried, after a pause. "Pint? They don't hold
half--a wretched swindle. I believe there are thousands lying there;
and I might have borrowed what I wanted, and all would have been well;
but I was such a fool."
"No, I wasn't," he cried, as if apostrophising someone. "How could I
get it with that woman coming in and out, and the feeling on me that one
of the girls might open the door at any moment. They'd have thought I
meant to steal the cursed stuff. Then, too, it seemed as if he might
wake up at any moment. Bah! How upset I do feel. That stuff's no
better than water."
He rose angrily, and opened a locker, from which he took out a brandy
decanter, and placed it on the table. "Let's have a nip of you. I seem
to want something to steady my nerves."
He poured out a goodly dram and tossed it off.
"Ah, that's better! One can taste you. Seems to take off this horrible
feeling of sinking.--Poor old fellow! Seemed as if he would wake up.
Never wake up again."
He started up and looked sharply round, trembling violently; and then
wiped his forehead with his hand.
"This will not do!" he muttered. "I mustn't show the white feather.
I've got nothing to fear. Nothing at all. Why should I have? It was
an accident; I didn't mean it. No: wouldn't hurt a hair of the old
man's head--no, not a hair. Yes: it was an accident."
He drew up his head and picked up the cigar he had thrown down, re-lit
it, and after a puff or two, threw it down once more.
"Wretched trash!" he muttered, taking out his case and fiercely biting
the end off another. One of Gellow's best. "Ah," he cried, as he
brought down his fist upon the table heavily. "Only let me once get
clear of that man! And I might have done it so easily," he continued,
as he lit the cigar, "so very easily, and been free of that cursed
incubus for a time."
He let his cigar go out again, and his head sank upon his hands as he
stared in a maundering way at the cabin door.
"But it's always my luck--always my luck; and I'm the most miserable
wretch that ever crawled."
There was no one present to endorse his words, as the maudlin tears rose
to his eyes and dripped slowly down between his feet, nature seeming to
distil the wine and spirits he had been imbibing all the morning ever
since he had left the cot in which he had lain tossing in a fever of
fear all through the night.
But after a time champagne and brandy had their effect, and the abject
shivering man of half-an-hour before seemed to have grown defiant as to
the future.
He was in the act of snapping his fingers with a half-tipsy laugh, when
a boat bumped up against the side, and he heard a trampling on the deck,
and the buzz of voices.
"What's that?" he panted, completely sobered now, and trembling
violently, as he suddenly turned to one of the most abject-looking and
white-faced creatures it is possible to imagine. "What's that?" he
panted, with his voice trembling; and he took up the brandy to help
himself again. "Bah! some boat has struck us. That's all."
"Beg pardon, sir," said a voice; and the steward stood in the doorway.
"Yes; what is it?"
"Boat from the shore, sir, with a policeman in the stern and another
man."
"Policeman? Other man?" faltered Glyddyr in a low, faint voice; "what
do they want?"
"You, sir," said the man; and then, "Oh, here they are."
Glyddyr sat back, staring at the men wildly.
"Well," said the steward to himself; "I have seen the guv'nor a bit on,
but this beats all. I say, you might have waited till you were asked to
come down."
This to a policeman who was stooping down to enter the cabin, while
Glyddyr clutched the table, and held on, for the sickening sensation in
his head threatened a complete collapse.
Volume Two, Chapter XIV.