Chapter Thirty Six.

Chapter Thirty Six.On the Great Deep.A flaming sun and a flaming sky; an oily sea, rippled up ever and anon by the skimming rush of a flight of flying-fish; a shark fin or two here and there gliding above the surface. In the far distance a low foreshore with broad palms just distinguishable; and out here, alone on the wide waters, a man in a canoe—fishing.To be strictly accurate, however, he is not fishing now, though he came out with that intent. He has a line over the side, but seems to be heading out to sea, as though purposing to cross the ocean itself. The line is of native make, likewise the hooks; the canoe ditto, and the paddles. The man is clothed almost entirely with lightly-woven native attire, but otherwise there is nothing of the negro, or even negroid, about the sunburnt face and the thick, dark beard. He is a white man technically, though long exposure to tropical heat in all its changes has rendered him as swarthy as an Arab. The expression of his face is one of profound melancholy, as that of a man condemned to lifelong and hopeless exile. And such, in fact, he is, not through the justice or malevolence of his fellow-man, but through sheer force of circumstances. That distant palm-plumed foreshore is his home, and at the same time his prison. He cannot get away from it.Now he sends the canoe over the water with each long sweep of his powerful arm—hard and brown and sinewy—regardless of heat or toil, as though the boundless freedom of the liquid plain inspired him with a new life; to those who had made the canoe and its gear the said liquid plain was merely a place where you could catch fish—but they were not imaginative people. Glancing back shoreward an eager then a startled look comes into the man’s face. Between the shore and him, in the far, far distance, are several black specks. You or I could not have seen them; but he can, and, with the sight, he puts the canoe straight out to sea with renewed resolve, intending to remain there until dark; for he knows those tiny distant specks to be other canoes—and that spells foes.The last time we saw this man was on the occasion of his meeting with another man—a savage—in the lonely silence of the forest after the battle and rout. Then had followed weeks, during which he and the savage had led the lives of hunted beasts, and their narrow escapes from other and hostile bands were many and wonderful. Added to such the perils of the wilderness—of weeks threading the sluggish channels of some great, mysterious river, the gloom and awesome silence of it only broken by the weird blowing of gigantic hippopotami or the splash of ugly crocodiles, the thick foliage reaching over the black, smooth waterway rendering their path as though threading some never-ending cavern—and all in a very cranky canoe, which the native had managed to steal at the risk of both their lives from an unwary village. At last they had gained the coast. For days before they had done so the river seemed to branch off into innumerable deltas, forming islands. Here animal life was plentiful, but of human inhabitants, however barbarous, was no sign. It seemed an utterly wild, unexplored, untrodden region, clean outside any of the known world.It was a strange companionship that between these two, if only that neither understood a word of the other’s speech—and by no possibility did either seem able to impart it. Sometimes while they were resting Wagram would endeavour to instruct his companion by making drawings on the ground with a bit of stick, but hardly any of them were understood. A tree or an animal or a man was recognised, but all attempt to establish any sequence of ideas by dint of such pictorial instruction proved hopeless. But he himself soon became proficient in the sign language, and the two would talk quite rapidly therein; only the subject-matter must fall within the sphere of the latter’s experience, or he was hopelessly fogged. He was absolutely lacking in imagination.Often Wagram had found himself wondering as to the other’s motive in sticking to him thus closely. It could hardly be all gratitude; and every attempt to convey that his own restoration to civilisation would result in considerable reward to the other seemed to fail, for on reaching the coast the native had squatted down, as though quite content to spend the rest of his life there. Or, from his barbarous and heathen point of view, the man might have come to regard him as a great magician, and one whose magic was immeasurably greater than that of the only other white man he had ever seen. As to this, he would often beguile the time by singing, a great deal of such being echoes of the choir-loft at Hilversea, and the dusky barbarian would listen, entranced, open-mouthed. It was possible that a belief in his supernatural powers had something to do with this fidelity.Even as the companionship so had the experience been a strange one. The frequency and variety of peril had inspired in the man thus reft from the peaceful ease of a stately English home, if not a contempt for it, at any rate an indifference to danger. In the matter of food he had long since learned that a native could live in luxury for a month where he would have starved in three days. The whole experience had hardened him into magnificent physical form; but as weeks grew into months, and months multiplied, a great depression grew and deepened upon him. He would already have been given up for dead, when the loss of theBalekabecame known, especially on the report of her survivors. Poor Gerard would be in a terrible state of grief, and Haldane and Yvonne—it would be a blow to them, and to others perhaps. And at the thought of Hilversea his depression would take the form of a great bitterness, which it would tax all his robust faith to overcome.Something of this depression is upon him now as he sends his little craft skimming over the oily sea, a mere speck at this great distance out. Once before, he and his companion had been visited from outside, but had been able to hide in the thickest recesses of their island home in time—a glance at the ferocious-looking savages who constituted the intruders having convinced them that they might as well fall again into the hands of those from whom they had originally fled as into the power of such as these.Soon hardly the fringe of palms upon the coast he has left is visible above the mirage-like horizon; the shore itself no longer is. Yet to him this matters nothing. He is at home on this blue, mysterious sea. Even the triangular shark fins gliding here and there make no appeal to his imagination. They are just so many incidents, and that is all, for he is thoroughly accustomed to that sort of thing by this time.And now the sun is drooping, and the cloudless sky takes on that molten, sickly murk so frequently attendant on the sunset in tropical seas. Night will be here directly, with a sudden rush; but that concerns him in no wise, for he has a supply of water, well covered with wet matting, within his canoe, also food of a kind—and he has learnt to do with very little food of late. There is no need to exert himself with further paddling.With a dewy rush the night falls, and alone beneath the misty stars, alone on the great deep, its silence only broken by the splash and hollow “sough” of some sea-monster, his thoughts wing themselves back to the home which, in all likelihood, he will never see again, and with the idea comes another as though in a flash. This living death prolonged for years—why not end it now? Not in yielding up life—oh no—but only in risking it. Gravely risking it, true; but still, is not some risk, even grave risk justifiable under the circumstances? Why not keep on his way, paddle straight out to sea, on the off chance of falling in with a passing ship? How far he would have to paddle he had no idea. He had been thrown upon the coast in an unconscious state, but it could not have been very distant if his captors had pulled him off the hulk in their canoes—and the hulk had been in the path of shipping. But was it the same part of the coast as that from which he had now put forth, or was it, perhaps, some hundreds of miles farther off, and, in the trend of the coast-line, standing out much farther into the ocean? Anyhow, he made up his mind to chance it. His canoe was a mere cockleshell, out here in the ocean waste; but, then, the seas were placid, and, beyond a ripple, only too smooth.What of his companion, apparently deserted? Even though a savage, would not that companion feel his loss? No. The utter lack of imagination of the savage would not allow room for sentimental qualms; while, as for the loss of the canoe, that could be remedied in half a day. So, his resolution fixed, he started forth—truly in the very sublimity of desperation—for, should he fail, death was the alternative, grim death from hunger and thirst amid the awful solitude of the boundless sea.Hour followed upon hour, and still in the darkness this man urges his craft forward in search of his one chance of life, well knowing that against that one chance there are a hundred—nay, a thousand. Still, he takes it.He feels neither hunger nor thirst. The heavy moisture of the night dews are effective against the latter; while, as for the first, the hard training he has been through has got him into the way of doing with very little. As hour after hour goes by he begins to strain his eyes over the pathless deep for a distant light, his ears for the throb of an approaching propeller. Then drowsiness overtakes him and he falls asleep, and the canoe drifts at the mercy of the currents—drifts farther and farther away from land.Now he dreams, and his dreaming is strange. He is at Hilversea once more, at dear old Hilversea, amid the waving of summer woods and rustle of ripening corn, and all the glad sights and sounds of the fairest of English landscapes, and all is as it has been. Yes; all as it has been. This fearful experience is as a thing of the past—a nightmare out of which he has awakened; and yet—and yet—there is still a want—a strange, uneasy, restless want of something, or somebody, which is not altogether sad, or, if sad, is leavened by a confused sweetness. The dream fades into more confusion, then blank. Then the dreamer awakes, and—Great Heaven!Half of the great lurid orb of day has lifted itself above the horizon, gleaming along the smooth folds of the waste of waters, and on these he is no longer alone. About a quarter of a mile distant lies a ship.A ship? A wreck. Two jagged stumps of masts rise from the submerged hull, over whose main bulwarks the water is lazily washing, leaving the poop and the forecastle but a few feet above the surface. He has seen it before—not once, but twice. Great Heaven! it is the Red Derelict—the Red Derelict again.He stares, then rubs his eyes, then stares again. Is he still dreaming? No; there the thing lies, this ghost of a vessel, just as it had lain when it had afforded him timely refuge from imminent peril. A mysterious inner prompting moves him once more to board the hulk—acting upon which not long does it take him to shoot his canoe alongside, and, making her fast with the stout woven grass rope which does duty for a painter, he climbs on to the dry, glistening deck of the poop.His glance takes in the long length of the ship. Swift, keen as that of the wild creatures of earth and air is that glance now, and it falls upon an object lying under water on the submerged main deck—the skeleton of a pistol. In a moment it is in his hand. A further glance shows it to be the same rusted weapon he had held in his hand before. The nameplate, bearing the letters E.W., is still lying near at hand. The letters seem to stand out at him.Thoughts many and various come crowding into his mind as he stares at the thing. All his experiences of blood and horror, since last he stood upon this deserted deck arise. The savage demoniac of his own race and colour, in whose power he had been, who was he? More than ever some strange instinct convinces him that the man is the murderer of his brother. This hulk seems to have drifted about these seas within a very circumscribed compass for years. What if it had been the scene of a bloody fight, a mutiny perhaps, wherein Everard had been slain, and the white savage, with others, had escaped to the mainland? And with the thought comes another. What if the body of his brother is lying below—shut up, with the bodies of others, here in its floating tomb, beneath his feet? Strange, indeed, if his quest should end here.Three times he has sighted this sad derelict, twice stood on board her. Has this been ordered with a purpose? Yet—why not? And with the thought he flings off his upper garment of woven grass. He is going to explore the interior of the ship—so far as he is able.On the former occasion of his standing here he would have shrank from such an attempt, not only on account of the possible horrors that he might find, but because doubting his power to carry out so hazardous a venture. Now it is different. Good swimmer as he was before, now he is as thoroughly at home in the water as the barbarous inhabitants of yonder coast—that is to say, as thoroughly at home as in his natural element. He gazes down into the gaping pit of the companion-way, then, drawing a long breath, dives down into the blackness within.At first he can see little enough as he gropes his way around, then by the sickly green light through the glass ports, and also that coming down the companion-way, he is able to make out the interior of the cuddy. A few small fish, imprisoned, dart hither and thither, but of human bodies there is no sign. Then, unable to hold his breath any longer, he shoots up once more into outer air.Shading his eyes, so that the glare may not impede his vision for his next descent, he sits for a few minutes taking in the air, then, feeling rested, dives down once more into the heart of the waterlogged ship.Now he can see better, can distinguish some sodden litter lying about, but still no human bodies. Then, just as he is about to give up all further exploration, his hand encounters something hard.It is lying in one of the bunks—a small box or case of some sort. Grasping it firmly he makes for the companion-way again and rises to the surface, and on arriving there the fit of gasping, and a desire to vomit, shows that he has been under water long enough. His find is a flat, oblong, tin case of about eight inches by four, and it is hermetically sealed.He examines it with vivid curiosity—the outside, that is—for he quickly decides that this is no time for investigating its contents. But it is time for a little frugal refreshment; wherefore, hauling in his canoe by the painter, he proceeds to hand up the requisites for a sparing meal. While he does so a great shark rises from beneath the hulk—it might have been the identical one that had so nearly gripped him before—but it inspires in him no particular horror now; in fact, scarcely any attention. A mere shark is a mere nothing to the dwellers on those coasts.Having taken off the edge of his appetite he leans back against the ragged stump of the mainmast, and for the first time for long, experiences a craving for tobacco. Perhaps the yearning is brought about by feeling the deck of a ship under him, for he has long since learnt to do without it. Looking idly at the tin case the thought comes over him that it may contain some clue with regard to his brother or to his brother’s fate, and acting upon the idea he stows it away carefully, together with the skeleton of the pistol, within the skin pouch which is slung round his neck by way of a pocket. Then a drowsiness comes over him, and he falls asleep.The sun flames hot above him, but this causes him no inconvenience now. He slumbers on, and a light breeze rises, rippling the oily surface of the sea—blowing off shore. It winnows in a grateful coolness about him, lulling into deeper slumber, and—the derelict drifts on.The red rim of the sun touches the sea, seeming to meet the molten water as with a hiss, for the slight breeze has died down with evening, and the last light floods redly over the ghastly hulk with its single human occupant—this man with the attire and colour of a savage and the straight refined features of a European. The sudden, twilightless tropical night falls, falls blackly, and the sleeper sleeps on.Crash! Whirr! Splash! The hulk starts, shivers from stem to stern, and a great wave comes roaring over her, sweeping the poop by several feet. Half stunned by the concussion the sleeper starts up, to be knocked half senseless by violent contact with the stump of the mainmast; yet even then instinct moves him to grip hold of something firm and hang on for all he knows, and well for him that it is so, or he would have been whirled into the sea in a moment by the volume of water sweeping over him. An immense blaze of lights flashes before his dazed gaze, together with a very babel of voices and a wild roaring and a rush of white foam—then another wave rolls over him. Half stunned, half choked, he strives to lift up his voice, but it refuses its office. At last he succeeds in effecting a hoarse attempt at a shout.But the receding lights away there in the black gloom are receding farther and farther, the receding babel of voices too, and amid these and the roar of steam how shall his hoarse-throated, feeble shout find its way across the intervening waste? It cannot. Instinctively he springs for his canoe, with a wild idea of overtaking his one chance of rescue by sheer strength of arm. But of it there is no sign—except the frayed end of the painter rope by which it had been made fast. Swamped, crushed by the weight of water which had swirled over the hulk, it has gone to the bottom, and with it his slender stock of provisions. And the tiers of lights are now far distant, and he is left here, as one before him was left—alone on this ghastly hulk—left to die, with his one chance of rescue gliding away in demoniacal mockery upon the black midnight sea.

A flaming sun and a flaming sky; an oily sea, rippled up ever and anon by the skimming rush of a flight of flying-fish; a shark fin or two here and there gliding above the surface. In the far distance a low foreshore with broad palms just distinguishable; and out here, alone on the wide waters, a man in a canoe—fishing.

To be strictly accurate, however, he is not fishing now, though he came out with that intent. He has a line over the side, but seems to be heading out to sea, as though purposing to cross the ocean itself. The line is of native make, likewise the hooks; the canoe ditto, and the paddles. The man is clothed almost entirely with lightly-woven native attire, but otherwise there is nothing of the negro, or even negroid, about the sunburnt face and the thick, dark beard. He is a white man technically, though long exposure to tropical heat in all its changes has rendered him as swarthy as an Arab. The expression of his face is one of profound melancholy, as that of a man condemned to lifelong and hopeless exile. And such, in fact, he is, not through the justice or malevolence of his fellow-man, but through sheer force of circumstances. That distant palm-plumed foreshore is his home, and at the same time his prison. He cannot get away from it.

Now he sends the canoe over the water with each long sweep of his powerful arm—hard and brown and sinewy—regardless of heat or toil, as though the boundless freedom of the liquid plain inspired him with a new life; to those who had made the canoe and its gear the said liquid plain was merely a place where you could catch fish—but they were not imaginative people. Glancing back shoreward an eager then a startled look comes into the man’s face. Between the shore and him, in the far, far distance, are several black specks. You or I could not have seen them; but he can, and, with the sight, he puts the canoe straight out to sea with renewed resolve, intending to remain there until dark; for he knows those tiny distant specks to be other canoes—and that spells foes.

The last time we saw this man was on the occasion of his meeting with another man—a savage—in the lonely silence of the forest after the battle and rout. Then had followed weeks, during which he and the savage had led the lives of hunted beasts, and their narrow escapes from other and hostile bands were many and wonderful. Added to such the perils of the wilderness—of weeks threading the sluggish channels of some great, mysterious river, the gloom and awesome silence of it only broken by the weird blowing of gigantic hippopotami or the splash of ugly crocodiles, the thick foliage reaching over the black, smooth waterway rendering their path as though threading some never-ending cavern—and all in a very cranky canoe, which the native had managed to steal at the risk of both their lives from an unwary village. At last they had gained the coast. For days before they had done so the river seemed to branch off into innumerable deltas, forming islands. Here animal life was plentiful, but of human inhabitants, however barbarous, was no sign. It seemed an utterly wild, unexplored, untrodden region, clean outside any of the known world.

It was a strange companionship that between these two, if only that neither understood a word of the other’s speech—and by no possibility did either seem able to impart it. Sometimes while they were resting Wagram would endeavour to instruct his companion by making drawings on the ground with a bit of stick, but hardly any of them were understood. A tree or an animal or a man was recognised, but all attempt to establish any sequence of ideas by dint of such pictorial instruction proved hopeless. But he himself soon became proficient in the sign language, and the two would talk quite rapidly therein; only the subject-matter must fall within the sphere of the latter’s experience, or he was hopelessly fogged. He was absolutely lacking in imagination.

Often Wagram had found himself wondering as to the other’s motive in sticking to him thus closely. It could hardly be all gratitude; and every attempt to convey that his own restoration to civilisation would result in considerable reward to the other seemed to fail, for on reaching the coast the native had squatted down, as though quite content to spend the rest of his life there. Or, from his barbarous and heathen point of view, the man might have come to regard him as a great magician, and one whose magic was immeasurably greater than that of the only other white man he had ever seen. As to this, he would often beguile the time by singing, a great deal of such being echoes of the choir-loft at Hilversea, and the dusky barbarian would listen, entranced, open-mouthed. It was possible that a belief in his supernatural powers had something to do with this fidelity.

Even as the companionship so had the experience been a strange one. The frequency and variety of peril had inspired in the man thus reft from the peaceful ease of a stately English home, if not a contempt for it, at any rate an indifference to danger. In the matter of food he had long since learned that a native could live in luxury for a month where he would have starved in three days. The whole experience had hardened him into magnificent physical form; but as weeks grew into months, and months multiplied, a great depression grew and deepened upon him. He would already have been given up for dead, when the loss of theBalekabecame known, especially on the report of her survivors. Poor Gerard would be in a terrible state of grief, and Haldane and Yvonne—it would be a blow to them, and to others perhaps. And at the thought of Hilversea his depression would take the form of a great bitterness, which it would tax all his robust faith to overcome.

Something of this depression is upon him now as he sends his little craft skimming over the oily sea, a mere speck at this great distance out. Once before, he and his companion had been visited from outside, but had been able to hide in the thickest recesses of their island home in time—a glance at the ferocious-looking savages who constituted the intruders having convinced them that they might as well fall again into the hands of those from whom they had originally fled as into the power of such as these.

Soon hardly the fringe of palms upon the coast he has left is visible above the mirage-like horizon; the shore itself no longer is. Yet to him this matters nothing. He is at home on this blue, mysterious sea. Even the triangular shark fins gliding here and there make no appeal to his imagination. They are just so many incidents, and that is all, for he is thoroughly accustomed to that sort of thing by this time.

And now the sun is drooping, and the cloudless sky takes on that molten, sickly murk so frequently attendant on the sunset in tropical seas. Night will be here directly, with a sudden rush; but that concerns him in no wise, for he has a supply of water, well covered with wet matting, within his canoe, also food of a kind—and he has learnt to do with very little food of late. There is no need to exert himself with further paddling.

With a dewy rush the night falls, and alone beneath the misty stars, alone on the great deep, its silence only broken by the splash and hollow “sough” of some sea-monster, his thoughts wing themselves back to the home which, in all likelihood, he will never see again, and with the idea comes another as though in a flash. This living death prolonged for years—why not end it now? Not in yielding up life—oh no—but only in risking it. Gravely risking it, true; but still, is not some risk, even grave risk justifiable under the circumstances? Why not keep on his way, paddle straight out to sea, on the off chance of falling in with a passing ship? How far he would have to paddle he had no idea. He had been thrown upon the coast in an unconscious state, but it could not have been very distant if his captors had pulled him off the hulk in their canoes—and the hulk had been in the path of shipping. But was it the same part of the coast as that from which he had now put forth, or was it, perhaps, some hundreds of miles farther off, and, in the trend of the coast-line, standing out much farther into the ocean? Anyhow, he made up his mind to chance it. His canoe was a mere cockleshell, out here in the ocean waste; but, then, the seas were placid, and, beyond a ripple, only too smooth.

What of his companion, apparently deserted? Even though a savage, would not that companion feel his loss? No. The utter lack of imagination of the savage would not allow room for sentimental qualms; while, as for the loss of the canoe, that could be remedied in half a day. So, his resolution fixed, he started forth—truly in the very sublimity of desperation—for, should he fail, death was the alternative, grim death from hunger and thirst amid the awful solitude of the boundless sea.

Hour followed upon hour, and still in the darkness this man urges his craft forward in search of his one chance of life, well knowing that against that one chance there are a hundred—nay, a thousand. Still, he takes it.

He feels neither hunger nor thirst. The heavy moisture of the night dews are effective against the latter; while, as for the first, the hard training he has been through has got him into the way of doing with very little. As hour after hour goes by he begins to strain his eyes over the pathless deep for a distant light, his ears for the throb of an approaching propeller. Then drowsiness overtakes him and he falls asleep, and the canoe drifts at the mercy of the currents—drifts farther and farther away from land.

Now he dreams, and his dreaming is strange. He is at Hilversea once more, at dear old Hilversea, amid the waving of summer woods and rustle of ripening corn, and all the glad sights and sounds of the fairest of English landscapes, and all is as it has been. Yes; all as it has been. This fearful experience is as a thing of the past—a nightmare out of which he has awakened; and yet—and yet—there is still a want—a strange, uneasy, restless want of something, or somebody, which is not altogether sad, or, if sad, is leavened by a confused sweetness. The dream fades into more confusion, then blank. Then the dreamer awakes, and—Great Heaven!

Half of the great lurid orb of day has lifted itself above the horizon, gleaming along the smooth folds of the waste of waters, and on these he is no longer alone. About a quarter of a mile distant lies a ship.

A ship? A wreck. Two jagged stumps of masts rise from the submerged hull, over whose main bulwarks the water is lazily washing, leaving the poop and the forecastle but a few feet above the surface. He has seen it before—not once, but twice. Great Heaven! it is the Red Derelict—the Red Derelict again.

He stares, then rubs his eyes, then stares again. Is he still dreaming? No; there the thing lies, this ghost of a vessel, just as it had lain when it had afforded him timely refuge from imminent peril. A mysterious inner prompting moves him once more to board the hulk—acting upon which not long does it take him to shoot his canoe alongside, and, making her fast with the stout woven grass rope which does duty for a painter, he climbs on to the dry, glistening deck of the poop.

His glance takes in the long length of the ship. Swift, keen as that of the wild creatures of earth and air is that glance now, and it falls upon an object lying under water on the submerged main deck—the skeleton of a pistol. In a moment it is in his hand. A further glance shows it to be the same rusted weapon he had held in his hand before. The nameplate, bearing the letters E.W., is still lying near at hand. The letters seem to stand out at him.

Thoughts many and various come crowding into his mind as he stares at the thing. All his experiences of blood and horror, since last he stood upon this deserted deck arise. The savage demoniac of his own race and colour, in whose power he had been, who was he? More than ever some strange instinct convinces him that the man is the murderer of his brother. This hulk seems to have drifted about these seas within a very circumscribed compass for years. What if it had been the scene of a bloody fight, a mutiny perhaps, wherein Everard had been slain, and the white savage, with others, had escaped to the mainland? And with the thought comes another. What if the body of his brother is lying below—shut up, with the bodies of others, here in its floating tomb, beneath his feet? Strange, indeed, if his quest should end here.

Three times he has sighted this sad derelict, twice stood on board her. Has this been ordered with a purpose? Yet—why not? And with the thought he flings off his upper garment of woven grass. He is going to explore the interior of the ship—so far as he is able.

On the former occasion of his standing here he would have shrank from such an attempt, not only on account of the possible horrors that he might find, but because doubting his power to carry out so hazardous a venture. Now it is different. Good swimmer as he was before, now he is as thoroughly at home in the water as the barbarous inhabitants of yonder coast—that is to say, as thoroughly at home as in his natural element. He gazes down into the gaping pit of the companion-way, then, drawing a long breath, dives down into the blackness within.

At first he can see little enough as he gropes his way around, then by the sickly green light through the glass ports, and also that coming down the companion-way, he is able to make out the interior of the cuddy. A few small fish, imprisoned, dart hither and thither, but of human bodies there is no sign. Then, unable to hold his breath any longer, he shoots up once more into outer air.

Shading his eyes, so that the glare may not impede his vision for his next descent, he sits for a few minutes taking in the air, then, feeling rested, dives down once more into the heart of the waterlogged ship.

Now he can see better, can distinguish some sodden litter lying about, but still no human bodies. Then, just as he is about to give up all further exploration, his hand encounters something hard.

It is lying in one of the bunks—a small box or case of some sort. Grasping it firmly he makes for the companion-way again and rises to the surface, and on arriving there the fit of gasping, and a desire to vomit, shows that he has been under water long enough. His find is a flat, oblong, tin case of about eight inches by four, and it is hermetically sealed.

He examines it with vivid curiosity—the outside, that is—for he quickly decides that this is no time for investigating its contents. But it is time for a little frugal refreshment; wherefore, hauling in his canoe by the painter, he proceeds to hand up the requisites for a sparing meal. While he does so a great shark rises from beneath the hulk—it might have been the identical one that had so nearly gripped him before—but it inspires in him no particular horror now; in fact, scarcely any attention. A mere shark is a mere nothing to the dwellers on those coasts.

Having taken off the edge of his appetite he leans back against the ragged stump of the mainmast, and for the first time for long, experiences a craving for tobacco. Perhaps the yearning is brought about by feeling the deck of a ship under him, for he has long since learnt to do without it. Looking idly at the tin case the thought comes over him that it may contain some clue with regard to his brother or to his brother’s fate, and acting upon the idea he stows it away carefully, together with the skeleton of the pistol, within the skin pouch which is slung round his neck by way of a pocket. Then a drowsiness comes over him, and he falls asleep.

The sun flames hot above him, but this causes him no inconvenience now. He slumbers on, and a light breeze rises, rippling the oily surface of the sea—blowing off shore. It winnows in a grateful coolness about him, lulling into deeper slumber, and—the derelict drifts on.

The red rim of the sun touches the sea, seeming to meet the molten water as with a hiss, for the slight breeze has died down with evening, and the last light floods redly over the ghastly hulk with its single human occupant—this man with the attire and colour of a savage and the straight refined features of a European. The sudden, twilightless tropical night falls, falls blackly, and the sleeper sleeps on.

Crash! Whirr! Splash! The hulk starts, shivers from stem to stern, and a great wave comes roaring over her, sweeping the poop by several feet. Half stunned by the concussion the sleeper starts up, to be knocked half senseless by violent contact with the stump of the mainmast; yet even then instinct moves him to grip hold of something firm and hang on for all he knows, and well for him that it is so, or he would have been whirled into the sea in a moment by the volume of water sweeping over him. An immense blaze of lights flashes before his dazed gaze, together with a very babel of voices and a wild roaring and a rush of white foam—then another wave rolls over him. Half stunned, half choked, he strives to lift up his voice, but it refuses its office. At last he succeeds in effecting a hoarse attempt at a shout.

But the receding lights away there in the black gloom are receding farther and farther, the receding babel of voices too, and amid these and the roar of steam how shall his hoarse-throated, feeble shout find its way across the intervening waste? It cannot. Instinctively he springs for his canoe, with a wild idea of overtaking his one chance of rescue by sheer strength of arm. But of it there is no sign—except the frayed end of the painter rope by which it had been made fast. Swamped, crushed by the weight of water which had swirled over the hulk, it has gone to the bottom, and with it his slender stock of provisions. And the tiers of lights are now far distant, and he is left here, as one before him was left—alone on this ghastly hulk—left to die, with his one chance of rescue gliding away in demoniacal mockery upon the black midnight sea.

Chapter Thirty Seven.The Echo of a Prophecy.“Let me pass. Quick! I want to see the captain.”“But you can’t go on the bridge, miss; it’s against orders.” And the stalwart quartermaster barred with his substantial form the steps leading up to the bridge.“But I must see the captain, and I will. Do you hear? Let me pass,” with a quick stamp of the foot.Seen by the electric lights the speaker was a well-formed, beautiful girl, her face pale, and her eyes glowing with excitement and purpose. Behind her, a little in the background, buzzed a throng of excited passengers.“Very sorry, miss, but it can’t be done,” reaffirmed the quartermaster, not without misgivings, for the speaker was a favourite on board, and not a little so with the captain himself, a grizzled and, withal, crusty salt, of whom those under him stood considerably in awe. “If there were any message now, miss, I might make so bold as to take it,” he added conciliatorily.“Message? Message? No; I must tell him myself,” came the quick rejoinder, accompanied by another stamp of the foot. “Let me up! Man, man, a life—lives—depend on it—at any rate one.”The seaman gave way, resigning himself to a “logging,” and, perchance, other pains and penalties. In a moment the girl had gained the bridge. The captain and two of the officers turned in anger, which subsided on the part of the latter as they saw the identity of the intruder. The first still looked grim.“Well, young lady?” he began in a voice that would have sent most of the other passengers down double quick with a stuttered apology, but with this one it went for nothing.“Captain, that ship we just ran into—there was someone on board.”The captain looked grimmer still. “Just ran into” had a characteristically ugly sound in his ears.“Humph!” he snorted. “Just ran into! Just ran into! That infernal old blasted derelict hulk, whose owners ought to be—” And then he remembered the sex and identity of the speaker, and with a gulp went on. “Now, how the—how the—well, how d’you make out there’s anyone on board her?” he rapped out in a sort of subdued hurricane blast of a voice.“Because I saw. I saw a man lying on her deck as plainly as I see you and Mr Gibson now. Do turn back and see—quick—or you may never find her again in the dark. I saw him, mind you—I swear to God I saw him—by the deck lights as we crashed past. You can’t leave him alone to die. You can’t!”“Saw him? Saw a mare’s nest,” grumbled the captain. “Let me tell you, young lady, it’s not my business to start overhauling derelict hulks at midnight—brutes that might have sent us to the bottom. Fortunately, we only scraped this one. Well, well,” he appended sourly, “we’re ahead of our time, so we might as well make sure of this. Put her round, Gibson.”“Ah! I thought sailors were always ready to help each other,” said the girl triumphantly.An order was given, and, in the result, theRunicchanged her course, and was bearing round, going dead slow, so as to head for the late dangerous obstruction. The excitement was intense among the passengers, who thronged the bulwarks at every coign of vantage, eagerly scanning the dark, silent sea. Suddenly the engines stopped, and a boat was lowered.“Where is she? Can you see her?” were among the buzzed, eager comments as the boat’s lantern receded into the gloom. Soon came a hail and the sound of gruff voices over the water. The light of the lantern grew larger and larger. The boat was returning.Heavens! what was this? With the boat’s crew there stepped aboard a tall, bearded man burned almost to the copper hue of a savage and wearing what looked like the attire of one. Thus he appeared in the electric lights to the eyes of the excited throng.“Who are you, my man, and what’s your ship?” began the captain brusquely.“Thank God, I’m going home at last!” exclaimed the stranger, gazing around in a weary and dazed sort of way.“Yes—yes; but—who are you?” repeated the captain more crisply.“Why—it’s Mr Wagram!”The interruption or answer proceeded from the girl who had been the cause of the search. The castaway turned, looking more puzzled than ever.“Yes; that’s my name,” he answered. “But—I ought to know that voice, and yet—and yet—”“Of course you ought,” and, casting all conventionality to the winds, the girl sprang forward, seizing one of his hands in both of hers. “Oh, how thankful I am that we have been the means of saving you! What must you have been through! Welcome—a thousand times welcome!”“Miss Calmour, surely? Why, of course it is. How glad I am to see you again.” And in the face of this sun-tanned and unkempt-looking savage here under the ship’s lights Delia could detect the same look as that which had glanced down upon her in the park at Hilversea that glowing summer afternoon after the life-and-death struggle with the escaped beast. “I was a passenger on theBaleka, captain,” he went on to explain.“Passenger on theBalekawere you? Then, my good sir, it’s lucky we’re homeward bound, because your people will be just about beginning to go to law over your leavings,” returned the captain, who was of a cynical bent. “The only passenger missing from her was given up as lost. But—you haven’t been aboard that old hooker ever since, I take it?”“No; indeed. I’ve had some strange experiences—can hardly believe I’m not dreaming now. What ship’s this?”“TheRunic. White Torpedo line, bound for London from Australian ports.”“And what of theBaleka’speople? Were they found?”“Yes; all picked up, some here, some there.”“Captain,” interrupted that same clear, sweet, fluty voice, “I’m surprised at you. Here’s a shipwrecked mariner been thrown on board, and instead of doing all you can for him you keep him standing here all night answering questions.”“By Jove! you’re right, Miss Calmour,” was the bluff reply. “Gibson,” turning to the chief, “take the gentleman to the saloon, and tell the stewards to get him all he wants.”“I don’t want much at present, thanks,” answered Wagram. “A barber, and some clothes are my most urgent needs; but I suppose we can compass something in that line to-morrow.”“Why, of course,” said Delia; “but don’t throw away that picturesque costume. Come along below, now. I’m going to take care of you this evening.”And she did—laying her commands upon the stewards for this and for that as if the whole ship belonged to her. Then she sat and talked to him as he ate some supper, forestalling every possible want, pressing this and that upon him, and yet without ostentatious fuss. And the castaway, who for months had beheld no woman’s face save those of brutal, debased blacks, wondered uneasily whether he were dreaming, as this beautiful girl sat there attending to his wants with an almost loving assiduity. Yes; he decided, she certainly was beautiful. Time, change, the conditions of a new life, had put the last touches to the sufficiency of her attractiveness as he remembered her.“By Jove!” exclaimed the chief officer, who had dropped in to hear some of the castaway’s story, “you’ve had some pretty rough ups and downs, and no mistake; and you might as well have tumbled into the boats with the rest after all, for the kid was all right and not left below at all.”“Is that a fact?” said Wagram eagerly.“Rather. You were throwing away your life going below at such a time in any case, and in this instance it was all for nothing.”Delia had been wishing the chief officer anywhere. She wanted Wagram to herself, and here Gibson sat prosing his tiresome old sea yarns. Now, however, she brisked up, and insisted upon hearing the whole story. She had been quite out of the way of newspapers of late, and had not even heard of the loss of theBaleka, or that the man sitting here before her had been given up as lost, a victim to his own heroic act.“By George! I must go,” said the chief. “Mind you ask for anything you want, Mr Wagram, for I conclude you’ve come aboard in a state of temporary and complete destitution.”“That’s just my case,” laughed Wagram. “Funny, isn’t it?” turning to the girl in time to catch the look in her eyes called there by the story she had just heard. “And now tell me about yourself, and how they all are in Bassingham.”“We’ve left Bassingham, you know, Mr Wagram. My father died soon after you went, and we couldn’t stop on at Siege House. So we went up to London, and—well, things were not easy.”“I didn’t know; I have had no news from Hilversea for a long, long time—have been so on the move, you know.”“How you must long to get back. Dear old, beautiful Hilversea!”The bright spirits and former lightheartedness seemed to have left her. Her voice was sad. The other made a mental note of it, and deduced that they had fallen upon hard times. Well, that he would certainly do his best to remedy by some means or other. Then she told him about herself; how her other sister—not Clytie—had married in Australia, married very fairly well, too, and had got her out there on a visit. But they had not got on—she did not tell him that the other had conceived a jealousy of her from the very first—and so she was returning to England.They talked on until even the other passengers, who, by twos and threes, had been passing through the saloon in quite unusual numbers to catch another glimpse of the castaway, had disappeared, and the stewards were rolling up the carpets.“Good-night, Mr Wagram,” said the girl as they parted. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you again, and what a happiness it is to think that the ship I was on board of was the one to rescue you. To-morrow you must tell me your adventures in full. You will—won’t you?”He promised, with some reservations, and they parted. But Delia found that sleep utterly refused to come her way—and she wanted to sleep, wanted to look her best in the morning. Her cabin mate, an elderly lady, was fast asleep, but she herself seemed doomed to night-long wakefulness. The scuttle was open and she lay with her face to it, watching the dark sky with its twinkle of misty stars, half lulled by the rush and “sough” of smooth water from the sides of the liner. What wonderful workings of Fate had thrown this man here? And he would not have been here but for her. But for her persistence he would have been miles and miles behind, left to perish miserably on the lonely deep. The other passengers had treated her statement with good-humoured ridicule; the captain himself would hardly be persuaded to put back—and what if he had not? But he had—and it had been entirely due to her that he had. She had saved Wagram’s life—as surely as any life ever had been saved—she and she alone.The sweetness of the thought began to soothe her, and sleep seemed to be coming at last. Then, through it, something—perhaps the sight of the smooth sea through which the great liner was rushing on even keel—brought back to her mind certain words uttered on a woodland road in the dusk of a winter afternoon; weird words about green seas, smooth and oily, and a battered ship, and terrors—and, perhaps, death, but, if not death, then great happiness. The croakings of the old gipsy came back now—and, good heavens! what coincidence was this? Here were all the conditions—the smooth seas and the battered hulk—the terror gone through—terrors of every kind, up to that of being left on the derelict—the agony of seeing this ark of safety recede from reach of call. “Perhaps death?” He had been snatched from death at that moment, snatched from it by her, as surely as though by her own hand. “But, if not death, then great happiness.” In the hot, thick stillness of the night Delia’s brain was busy. The prediction had been directed to herself, not to him. And then it seemed to merge into a joint prediction, but—great happiness? Well, was it not? She had rescued him from death—she alone. Was not that a great happiness? Further, it would be nearly a fortnight ere they reached England, and during that time she would see him daily, talk with him, under conditions of which a week was equivalent to a year under the old state of things. Would not that be “great happiness?”And then she remembered not only the prediction, but the scorn and contempt with which he had treated both it and its utterer, extending just an overflow ripple of it to her. And with a smile at the recollection she fell into a quiet sleep. Nearly a whole fortnight of happiness—great happiness—lay before her.In the event so it proved. From the next morning, when they met—he clothed and barbered, and looking exactly as she remembered him in the dear old days of yore—“clothed, and in his right mind” as he smilingly told her in his old, dry, humorous way—pacing the deck in the cool hours, or seated in some snug, shady corner in roomy deck-chairs, talking about home—they two were nearly always together; and the home-sick wanderer felt at home already, and the girl forgot for the time her own dreary prospects, with the struggle for life all opening out before her, to be begun and gone through again. He would go back to luxury and his high estate, while she—? Yet even this she forgot in those sweet, dreamy, sunny days which would soon—only too soon—be over.There were others on board, though, to whom this change was not so welcome, and who—for human nature is human after all—fervently wished this picked-up castaway—well—back again on the hulk from which he had been picked up. For Delia Calmour, with her beauty and tact and sunniness of disposition, had reigned a queen among the male section of the passengers, and the long voyage, now nearing its close, had been long enough to render more than one heart rather sore.“I must not monopolise you all day, and every day, like this, child,” Wagram had said to her. “You are good-nature itself towards a tiresome old bore with but one idea in his head. You must go and make things lively for the others a bit sometimes or I shall feel like an interloper.”“Am I tiring you, then?” she would answer softly.“Now, you know that is absurd. Still, I must not be selfish.”“You—selfish? What next?”“I’m afraid I am—very. Now, they are getting up that last fancy-dress dance before we get into what may possibly be rough water. Go and help them in that as you would have done before. I want to see you enjoying yourself. I am afraid I am too much of a fogey to cut into that sort of thing actively myself.”She did not answer that “that sort of thing” was an inane and vapid method of enjoying herself, compared with half-an-hour of ordinary conversation with him. She complied—and submissively. Incidentally, she found that the “enjoyment” involved a heated passage-of-arms with the third officer; item, subsequently with a fine young Australian whom she had refused twice during the voyage; but these were trifles light as air under the circumstances.Then the days grew fewer and fewer, and the grey waters of the Bay of Biscay gave way to the greyer waters of the English Channel. TheRunicwould soon be securely docked in her berth.

“Let me pass. Quick! I want to see the captain.”

“But you can’t go on the bridge, miss; it’s against orders.” And the stalwart quartermaster barred with his substantial form the steps leading up to the bridge.

“But I must see the captain, and I will. Do you hear? Let me pass,” with a quick stamp of the foot.

Seen by the electric lights the speaker was a well-formed, beautiful girl, her face pale, and her eyes glowing with excitement and purpose. Behind her, a little in the background, buzzed a throng of excited passengers.

“Very sorry, miss, but it can’t be done,” reaffirmed the quartermaster, not without misgivings, for the speaker was a favourite on board, and not a little so with the captain himself, a grizzled and, withal, crusty salt, of whom those under him stood considerably in awe. “If there were any message now, miss, I might make so bold as to take it,” he added conciliatorily.

“Message? Message? No; I must tell him myself,” came the quick rejoinder, accompanied by another stamp of the foot. “Let me up! Man, man, a life—lives—depend on it—at any rate one.”

The seaman gave way, resigning himself to a “logging,” and, perchance, other pains and penalties. In a moment the girl had gained the bridge. The captain and two of the officers turned in anger, which subsided on the part of the latter as they saw the identity of the intruder. The first still looked grim.

“Well, young lady?” he began in a voice that would have sent most of the other passengers down double quick with a stuttered apology, but with this one it went for nothing.

“Captain, that ship we just ran into—there was someone on board.”

The captain looked grimmer still. “Just ran into” had a characteristically ugly sound in his ears.

“Humph!” he snorted. “Just ran into! Just ran into! That infernal old blasted derelict hulk, whose owners ought to be—” And then he remembered the sex and identity of the speaker, and with a gulp went on. “Now, how the—how the—well, how d’you make out there’s anyone on board her?” he rapped out in a sort of subdued hurricane blast of a voice.

“Because I saw. I saw a man lying on her deck as plainly as I see you and Mr Gibson now. Do turn back and see—quick—or you may never find her again in the dark. I saw him, mind you—I swear to God I saw him—by the deck lights as we crashed past. You can’t leave him alone to die. You can’t!”

“Saw him? Saw a mare’s nest,” grumbled the captain. “Let me tell you, young lady, it’s not my business to start overhauling derelict hulks at midnight—brutes that might have sent us to the bottom. Fortunately, we only scraped this one. Well, well,” he appended sourly, “we’re ahead of our time, so we might as well make sure of this. Put her round, Gibson.”

“Ah! I thought sailors were always ready to help each other,” said the girl triumphantly.

An order was given, and, in the result, theRunicchanged her course, and was bearing round, going dead slow, so as to head for the late dangerous obstruction. The excitement was intense among the passengers, who thronged the bulwarks at every coign of vantage, eagerly scanning the dark, silent sea. Suddenly the engines stopped, and a boat was lowered.

“Where is she? Can you see her?” were among the buzzed, eager comments as the boat’s lantern receded into the gloom. Soon came a hail and the sound of gruff voices over the water. The light of the lantern grew larger and larger. The boat was returning.

Heavens! what was this? With the boat’s crew there stepped aboard a tall, bearded man burned almost to the copper hue of a savage and wearing what looked like the attire of one. Thus he appeared in the electric lights to the eyes of the excited throng.

“Who are you, my man, and what’s your ship?” began the captain brusquely.

“Thank God, I’m going home at last!” exclaimed the stranger, gazing around in a weary and dazed sort of way.

“Yes—yes; but—who are you?” repeated the captain more crisply.

“Why—it’s Mr Wagram!”

The interruption or answer proceeded from the girl who had been the cause of the search. The castaway turned, looking more puzzled than ever.

“Yes; that’s my name,” he answered. “But—I ought to know that voice, and yet—and yet—”

“Of course you ought,” and, casting all conventionality to the winds, the girl sprang forward, seizing one of his hands in both of hers. “Oh, how thankful I am that we have been the means of saving you! What must you have been through! Welcome—a thousand times welcome!”

“Miss Calmour, surely? Why, of course it is. How glad I am to see you again.” And in the face of this sun-tanned and unkempt-looking savage here under the ship’s lights Delia could detect the same look as that which had glanced down upon her in the park at Hilversea that glowing summer afternoon after the life-and-death struggle with the escaped beast. “I was a passenger on theBaleka, captain,” he went on to explain.

“Passenger on theBalekawere you? Then, my good sir, it’s lucky we’re homeward bound, because your people will be just about beginning to go to law over your leavings,” returned the captain, who was of a cynical bent. “The only passenger missing from her was given up as lost. But—you haven’t been aboard that old hooker ever since, I take it?”

“No; indeed. I’ve had some strange experiences—can hardly believe I’m not dreaming now. What ship’s this?”

“TheRunic. White Torpedo line, bound for London from Australian ports.”

“And what of theBaleka’speople? Were they found?”

“Yes; all picked up, some here, some there.”

“Captain,” interrupted that same clear, sweet, fluty voice, “I’m surprised at you. Here’s a shipwrecked mariner been thrown on board, and instead of doing all you can for him you keep him standing here all night answering questions.”

“By Jove! you’re right, Miss Calmour,” was the bluff reply. “Gibson,” turning to the chief, “take the gentleman to the saloon, and tell the stewards to get him all he wants.”

“I don’t want much at present, thanks,” answered Wagram. “A barber, and some clothes are my most urgent needs; but I suppose we can compass something in that line to-morrow.”

“Why, of course,” said Delia; “but don’t throw away that picturesque costume. Come along below, now. I’m going to take care of you this evening.”

And she did—laying her commands upon the stewards for this and for that as if the whole ship belonged to her. Then she sat and talked to him as he ate some supper, forestalling every possible want, pressing this and that upon him, and yet without ostentatious fuss. And the castaway, who for months had beheld no woman’s face save those of brutal, debased blacks, wondered uneasily whether he were dreaming, as this beautiful girl sat there attending to his wants with an almost loving assiduity. Yes; he decided, she certainly was beautiful. Time, change, the conditions of a new life, had put the last touches to the sufficiency of her attractiveness as he remembered her.

“By Jove!” exclaimed the chief officer, who had dropped in to hear some of the castaway’s story, “you’ve had some pretty rough ups and downs, and no mistake; and you might as well have tumbled into the boats with the rest after all, for the kid was all right and not left below at all.”

“Is that a fact?” said Wagram eagerly.

“Rather. You were throwing away your life going below at such a time in any case, and in this instance it was all for nothing.”

Delia had been wishing the chief officer anywhere. She wanted Wagram to herself, and here Gibson sat prosing his tiresome old sea yarns. Now, however, she brisked up, and insisted upon hearing the whole story. She had been quite out of the way of newspapers of late, and had not even heard of the loss of theBaleka, or that the man sitting here before her had been given up as lost, a victim to his own heroic act.

“By George! I must go,” said the chief. “Mind you ask for anything you want, Mr Wagram, for I conclude you’ve come aboard in a state of temporary and complete destitution.”

“That’s just my case,” laughed Wagram. “Funny, isn’t it?” turning to the girl in time to catch the look in her eyes called there by the story she had just heard. “And now tell me about yourself, and how they all are in Bassingham.”

“We’ve left Bassingham, you know, Mr Wagram. My father died soon after you went, and we couldn’t stop on at Siege House. So we went up to London, and—well, things were not easy.”

“I didn’t know; I have had no news from Hilversea for a long, long time—have been so on the move, you know.”

“How you must long to get back. Dear old, beautiful Hilversea!”

The bright spirits and former lightheartedness seemed to have left her. Her voice was sad. The other made a mental note of it, and deduced that they had fallen upon hard times. Well, that he would certainly do his best to remedy by some means or other. Then she told him about herself; how her other sister—not Clytie—had married in Australia, married very fairly well, too, and had got her out there on a visit. But they had not got on—she did not tell him that the other had conceived a jealousy of her from the very first—and so she was returning to England.

They talked on until even the other passengers, who, by twos and threes, had been passing through the saloon in quite unusual numbers to catch another glimpse of the castaway, had disappeared, and the stewards were rolling up the carpets.

“Good-night, Mr Wagram,” said the girl as they parted. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you again, and what a happiness it is to think that the ship I was on board of was the one to rescue you. To-morrow you must tell me your adventures in full. You will—won’t you?”

He promised, with some reservations, and they parted. But Delia found that sleep utterly refused to come her way—and she wanted to sleep, wanted to look her best in the morning. Her cabin mate, an elderly lady, was fast asleep, but she herself seemed doomed to night-long wakefulness. The scuttle was open and she lay with her face to it, watching the dark sky with its twinkle of misty stars, half lulled by the rush and “sough” of smooth water from the sides of the liner. What wonderful workings of Fate had thrown this man here? And he would not have been here but for her. But for her persistence he would have been miles and miles behind, left to perish miserably on the lonely deep. The other passengers had treated her statement with good-humoured ridicule; the captain himself would hardly be persuaded to put back—and what if he had not? But he had—and it had been entirely due to her that he had. She had saved Wagram’s life—as surely as any life ever had been saved—she and she alone.

The sweetness of the thought began to soothe her, and sleep seemed to be coming at last. Then, through it, something—perhaps the sight of the smooth sea through which the great liner was rushing on even keel—brought back to her mind certain words uttered on a woodland road in the dusk of a winter afternoon; weird words about green seas, smooth and oily, and a battered ship, and terrors—and, perhaps, death, but, if not death, then great happiness. The croakings of the old gipsy came back now—and, good heavens! what coincidence was this? Here were all the conditions—the smooth seas and the battered hulk—the terror gone through—terrors of every kind, up to that of being left on the derelict—the agony of seeing this ark of safety recede from reach of call. “Perhaps death?” He had been snatched from death at that moment, snatched from it by her, as surely as though by her own hand. “But, if not death, then great happiness.” In the hot, thick stillness of the night Delia’s brain was busy. The prediction had been directed to herself, not to him. And then it seemed to merge into a joint prediction, but—great happiness? Well, was it not? She had rescued him from death—she alone. Was not that a great happiness? Further, it would be nearly a fortnight ere they reached England, and during that time she would see him daily, talk with him, under conditions of which a week was equivalent to a year under the old state of things. Would not that be “great happiness?”

And then she remembered not only the prediction, but the scorn and contempt with which he had treated both it and its utterer, extending just an overflow ripple of it to her. And with a smile at the recollection she fell into a quiet sleep. Nearly a whole fortnight of happiness—great happiness—lay before her.

In the event so it proved. From the next morning, when they met—he clothed and barbered, and looking exactly as she remembered him in the dear old days of yore—“clothed, and in his right mind” as he smilingly told her in his old, dry, humorous way—pacing the deck in the cool hours, or seated in some snug, shady corner in roomy deck-chairs, talking about home—they two were nearly always together; and the home-sick wanderer felt at home already, and the girl forgot for the time her own dreary prospects, with the struggle for life all opening out before her, to be begun and gone through again. He would go back to luxury and his high estate, while she—? Yet even this she forgot in those sweet, dreamy, sunny days which would soon—only too soon—be over.

There were others on board, though, to whom this change was not so welcome, and who—for human nature is human after all—fervently wished this picked-up castaway—well—back again on the hulk from which he had been picked up. For Delia Calmour, with her beauty and tact and sunniness of disposition, had reigned a queen among the male section of the passengers, and the long voyage, now nearing its close, had been long enough to render more than one heart rather sore.

“I must not monopolise you all day, and every day, like this, child,” Wagram had said to her. “You are good-nature itself towards a tiresome old bore with but one idea in his head. You must go and make things lively for the others a bit sometimes or I shall feel like an interloper.”

“Am I tiring you, then?” she would answer softly.

“Now, you know that is absurd. Still, I must not be selfish.”

“You—selfish? What next?”

“I’m afraid I am—very. Now, they are getting up that last fancy-dress dance before we get into what may possibly be rough water. Go and help them in that as you would have done before. I want to see you enjoying yourself. I am afraid I am too much of a fogey to cut into that sort of thing actively myself.”

She did not answer that “that sort of thing” was an inane and vapid method of enjoying herself, compared with half-an-hour of ordinary conversation with him. She complied—and submissively. Incidentally, she found that the “enjoyment” involved a heated passage-of-arms with the third officer; item, subsequently with a fine young Australian whom she had refused twice during the voyage; but these were trifles light as air under the circumstances.

Then the days grew fewer and fewer, and the grey waters of the Bay of Biscay gave way to the greyer waters of the English Channel. TheRunicwould soon be securely docked in her berth.

Chapter Thirty Eight.Time’s Chance.Wagram was seated in his private study at Hilversea, thinking.It was a lovely spring morning, and through the open window came a very gurgle of bird voices from shrubbery and garden. The young green was rapidly shouldering out the winter brown of the woods, especially where the sprouting tassels of the larch coverts seem to grow beneath one’s very gaze.Ah, how good it was to be back home again after his wandering and exile and anguish of mind—to be back here in his idolised home, in peace till the end of his days—and surely it would be so. He had done his uttermost to find his half-brother, and had failed—had failed, possibly, because Everard was no longer in the land of the living—murdered by that savage miscreant the renegade, so many of whose atrocities he himself had witnessed. And yet, if Develin Hunt’s account of Everard were correct, it was possible that he might have been slain by the other acting in self-defence.What a unique experience had this last one been. He had no idea as to the identity of the wild tribes among whom he had moved, and the very haziest as to the part of the coast on which he had landed. As to the latter point, the opinions of the captain and officers of theRunichad differed considerably; indeed, he was not quite sure whether they entirely believed his story in every particular—not implying that he had deliberately invented it, but that parts of it might be due to hallucination begotten of anxiety and privation.“That you should come to board that derelict twice, with an interval of months between, and each time by a sheer accident, is one of the tallest sea experiences within my knowledge, Mr Wagram,” had said Gibson, the chief officer of theRunic, one day when he was disclosing parts of his story. And he had laughed good-humouredly, and agreed that it really must be.As a matter of fact, he had been very reticent over his experiences; partly that they would sound rather too wonderful, and partly that the recollection of them was distressing to himself and he would fain help them to fade.Well, if Everard were no longer alive he himself was just where he had been. But was he? There were others with a claim. No; there were not. On this point he had seriously made up his mind. The very distant branch of the family—so distant, indeed, that it was doubtful whether it could establish a claim at all—he was not even acquainted with, but it was very wealthy. He remembered his father’s solemn declaration: “Morally, and in the sight of God, your position is just what it would have been but for this accident.” And his father had been right. Whatever doubt as to this may have crossed his mind at the time the words were uttered it held none whatever now. He had been brought back to that position, so to say, in spite of himself, had been restored to it by a chain of occurrences well-nigh miraculous, so much so, indeed, that others could scarcely credit them. Surely the finger of Heaven had been directing them.There was just one thorn beneath the rose leaves, and it spelt Develin Hunt. What if that worthy should, on hearing of his return, conclude to try for a little more blackmail? In that event he had made up his mind to defy him. He was in possession—and such “possession” as that meant was practically unassailable legally; and it was only with the legal side of the situation he felt now concerned. But nothing had been heard of the adventurer since he had received the last instalment of his price. He seemed to have disappeared as suddenly as he had arisen.Decidedly Wagram’s train of thought was strange that morning. Everything had been restored to him—everything as it had been; and yet—and yet—something was wanting. A feeling as of loneliness was upon him—upon him, the envied of all his acquaintance. He missed his father now that he reigned alone—missed him every minute of the day. The dear old man’s chair at table, in which he himself now sat—he missed him even while he was sitting there; his constant flow of sparkling reminiscence, his pungent wit, his good-natured cynicism and his affection for himself; and yet—and yet—he missed something else. What was it? The musical flow of a sweet young voice, the bright presence and ready and tactful sympathy of one who had been his companion for a short—in point of time, but in actual fact concentrated—fellowship. He went over again his first meeting with Delia Calmour and his father’s unhesitating dictum upon the house of Calmour in general. “A Calmour at Hilversea! Pho!” And now it seemed to him that the one thing lacking to render his cup of contentment full was the presence of one Calmour at Hilversea, and that one Delia. Incidentally, it struck him that for present purposes it was a good thing that old Calmour had been removed to another, and, he hoped, a better world; but only incidentally, for, having come to the conclusion he had, the mere removal of old Calmour and Siege House to a remoter part of the realm than Bassingham, and that under far greater conditions of comfort than that old toper could ever have pictured in his wildest dreams, would have been the merest matter of detail. However, old Calmour was no longer there, which simplified matters.Then the cynical element came uppermost. His experience of the matrimonial bond had been lamentable; why, then, should he be ill-advised enough to make a second experiment of it? And yet—and yet—he had had ample opportunities of watching this girl, and she had seemed to shine out as pure gold from the alloy of her surroundings and bringing up. He was no fool, and had a large experience of the seamy side of life, which was sufficient to safeguard him from illusions. She was in poor circumstances, and life to her must be one of struggle. Such a bait as his position and wealth would be under the circumstances irresistible, but it was not under these circumstances that he wanted her. He was considerably her senior in years, and it was probable that in her young mind he ranked as a serious and elderly bore, whom she might have reason to hold in some regard, perhaps; but still—Against that, again, he remembered how that bright, beautiful face used to light up on such occasions as their first meeting of a morning, while on board ship, and on others. No; there was a spontaneity and genuineness about that expression that was due to no sordid motive.Since his return he had been overwhelmed with calls and congratulations; indeed, part of his aim in life seemed to have become the dodging of such whenever practicable. Invitations, too, had not been lacking, with very propitious “beauty’s eyes” in the background, but for such he had no inclination. This girl whose acquaintance he had made in so strange and semi-tragical a manner, whose character he had watched develop ever since, seemed to have become bound up with his life, and now the last phase in the acquaintance was that she—and she alone—had been the actual instrument in the saving of his life. For herself, she had come out splendidly through all her disadvantages. Yes; her presence here was the one thing he needed—and he needed it greatly.He remembered the arrival of theRunic. Clytie had been there to meet her sister, and the frank, cheerful greeting which she had extended to him had impressed him very favourably. He had been to see them since, and the favourable impression had deepened. There was no pretence about them in their new home. They had got to work, and work pretty hard too, and they were doing it with a brave hopefulness that was beyond all praise. And he had extracted a promise from them that if ever they found themselves in need of a friend—no matter what manner of difficulty might overtake them—they were to apply to him unhesitatingly, which was all he was able to do for them for the present.Then his train of thought took another turn. The tin case he had found in the cuddy of the derelict he had never yet investigated—had not even opened it. He had been very busy since his return, and had put it aside till arrears of business should have been disposed of. He had resisted an inclination to open it on board theRunic, moved by the consciousness that there is no real privacy on board ship, and this, he felt instinctively, was a matter needing undisturbed and uninterrupted attention. Now he thought the time had come when he might very well do so.He unlocked a safe and got out the tin case. It was all corroded with its long submersion in salt water but quite intact. It brought back to him that gruesome dive into the heart of the spectral derelict; and for a few minutes he sat there, going over in his mind that time alone on the oily waters of the glistening deep, and that awful moment in the darkness when the receding lights had betokened that he was left to his fate—the hand of rescue stretched forth only to be withdrawn. He shook the recollection off, as that of a nightmare from which one awakes, then, procuring the requisite tools, set to work to open the case.It was full of papers—close packed, full to bursting. Some two or three were of parchment-looking substance, others of thin rice paper. The latter were stitched together with a kind of thin thread of animal fibre. This detail he took in at once, the result of his recent and complete savage training. He spread them out upon the capacious writing-table in front of him, and then—Great Heaven! what was this? “Develin Hunt!” There was the name, not at the end of a document, but in the middle of it. He stared again, and could hardly believe his eyes. Develin Hunt! He had expected to find some clue as to his lost brother’s fate, which was his reason for not having handed over the box to the captain of theRunicas containing a possible clue to the identity of the Red Derelict, but instead the first name to meet his eye was that of Develin Hunt!He pulled himself together, and, with mind cool and business-like, set himself to examine the documents, beginning with this one. And it was the most important of all, for it was nothing more nor less than a marriage certificate.He gazed at it for a moment, then got up again and went to the safe. From this he extracted a document, and spread it side by side with the first one. It was a copy of another marriage certificate, that which Develin Hunt had produced for the enlightenment of his father and himself, but—the one he had just extracted from the tin box bore date four years earlier.What then? The man might have been a widower at the time. So far he himself was—well, just where he was—where he had been.He had forgotten for the moment all about Everard and his fate. Eagerly he turned over the other papers. They seemed to have no bearing on the subject until he got to the thin ones, which, in effect, were a sort of diary, stitched together, as we have said. And before he had gone far through this he realised that the discovery of this other marriage certificate was of very first-rate importance indeed, for it set forth unmistakably that the other party referred to was alive at the time of his mother’s marriage with his father—alive, in fact, long subsequently thereto, if not alive at the present day. It was further obvious that any information to be sought for on the subject must be sought in South Africa. Could this be established it followed that Develin Hunt’s marriage with his mother was invalid and that of his father was valid.South Africa! Haldane might help him here; he had spent years of his life in those parts. And yet, he remembered, to Haldane’s mind Develin Hunt’s name had conveyed no idea other than as subject-matter for a joke, even as it had done to his own. Well, this need mean nothing, unless it were that, like many adventurers, this man had not always gone under his own name.Again and again he read through the paper, and with each perusal the piecing together of the puzzle became easier. And as it did so came another thought. Would it not be far easier and quicker to get into communication with the adventurer himself, and, at the possible price of some further blackmail, obtain from him at first hand the solution of the whole difficulty? It was wrong and immoral, no doubt, to compound so grave and dangerous an offence as blackmailing, but the awful anguish of mind he had gone through seemed to justify anything—anything in the abstract, such as this was, and not hurtful to any individual—to ensure relief. Even so, a weight seemed to have been lifted from him—the whole weight, in fact—and, with the consciousness, other words spoken by the old Squire came back to him: “There is no telling what Time may work, so give Time his chance.” Prophetic they sounded now, words of gold-mouthed wisdom. He had given Time his chance, and Time had worked accordingly; and lo, from the bowels of this spectral relic of a ship floating for years on the slimy surface of the tropical seas, Time had yielded up this its secret.And then he was brought back to everyday realities by two sounds—the ringing of the luncheon bell and the voice of his son outside.

Wagram was seated in his private study at Hilversea, thinking.

It was a lovely spring morning, and through the open window came a very gurgle of bird voices from shrubbery and garden. The young green was rapidly shouldering out the winter brown of the woods, especially where the sprouting tassels of the larch coverts seem to grow beneath one’s very gaze.

Ah, how good it was to be back home again after his wandering and exile and anguish of mind—to be back here in his idolised home, in peace till the end of his days—and surely it would be so. He had done his uttermost to find his half-brother, and had failed—had failed, possibly, because Everard was no longer in the land of the living—murdered by that savage miscreant the renegade, so many of whose atrocities he himself had witnessed. And yet, if Develin Hunt’s account of Everard were correct, it was possible that he might have been slain by the other acting in self-defence.

What a unique experience had this last one been. He had no idea as to the identity of the wild tribes among whom he had moved, and the very haziest as to the part of the coast on which he had landed. As to the latter point, the opinions of the captain and officers of theRunichad differed considerably; indeed, he was not quite sure whether they entirely believed his story in every particular—not implying that he had deliberately invented it, but that parts of it might be due to hallucination begotten of anxiety and privation.

“That you should come to board that derelict twice, with an interval of months between, and each time by a sheer accident, is one of the tallest sea experiences within my knowledge, Mr Wagram,” had said Gibson, the chief officer of theRunic, one day when he was disclosing parts of his story. And he had laughed good-humouredly, and agreed that it really must be.

As a matter of fact, he had been very reticent over his experiences; partly that they would sound rather too wonderful, and partly that the recollection of them was distressing to himself and he would fain help them to fade.

Well, if Everard were no longer alive he himself was just where he had been. But was he? There were others with a claim. No; there were not. On this point he had seriously made up his mind. The very distant branch of the family—so distant, indeed, that it was doubtful whether it could establish a claim at all—he was not even acquainted with, but it was very wealthy. He remembered his father’s solemn declaration: “Morally, and in the sight of God, your position is just what it would have been but for this accident.” And his father had been right. Whatever doubt as to this may have crossed his mind at the time the words were uttered it held none whatever now. He had been brought back to that position, so to say, in spite of himself, had been restored to it by a chain of occurrences well-nigh miraculous, so much so, indeed, that others could scarcely credit them. Surely the finger of Heaven had been directing them.

There was just one thorn beneath the rose leaves, and it spelt Develin Hunt. What if that worthy should, on hearing of his return, conclude to try for a little more blackmail? In that event he had made up his mind to defy him. He was in possession—and such “possession” as that meant was practically unassailable legally; and it was only with the legal side of the situation he felt now concerned. But nothing had been heard of the adventurer since he had received the last instalment of his price. He seemed to have disappeared as suddenly as he had arisen.

Decidedly Wagram’s train of thought was strange that morning. Everything had been restored to him—everything as it had been; and yet—and yet—something was wanting. A feeling as of loneliness was upon him—upon him, the envied of all his acquaintance. He missed his father now that he reigned alone—missed him every minute of the day. The dear old man’s chair at table, in which he himself now sat—he missed him even while he was sitting there; his constant flow of sparkling reminiscence, his pungent wit, his good-natured cynicism and his affection for himself; and yet—and yet—he missed something else. What was it? The musical flow of a sweet young voice, the bright presence and ready and tactful sympathy of one who had been his companion for a short—in point of time, but in actual fact concentrated—fellowship. He went over again his first meeting with Delia Calmour and his father’s unhesitating dictum upon the house of Calmour in general. “A Calmour at Hilversea! Pho!” And now it seemed to him that the one thing lacking to render his cup of contentment full was the presence of one Calmour at Hilversea, and that one Delia. Incidentally, it struck him that for present purposes it was a good thing that old Calmour had been removed to another, and, he hoped, a better world; but only incidentally, for, having come to the conclusion he had, the mere removal of old Calmour and Siege House to a remoter part of the realm than Bassingham, and that under far greater conditions of comfort than that old toper could ever have pictured in his wildest dreams, would have been the merest matter of detail. However, old Calmour was no longer there, which simplified matters.

Then the cynical element came uppermost. His experience of the matrimonial bond had been lamentable; why, then, should he be ill-advised enough to make a second experiment of it? And yet—and yet—he had had ample opportunities of watching this girl, and she had seemed to shine out as pure gold from the alloy of her surroundings and bringing up. He was no fool, and had a large experience of the seamy side of life, which was sufficient to safeguard him from illusions. She was in poor circumstances, and life to her must be one of struggle. Such a bait as his position and wealth would be under the circumstances irresistible, but it was not under these circumstances that he wanted her. He was considerably her senior in years, and it was probable that in her young mind he ranked as a serious and elderly bore, whom she might have reason to hold in some regard, perhaps; but still—Against that, again, he remembered how that bright, beautiful face used to light up on such occasions as their first meeting of a morning, while on board ship, and on others. No; there was a spontaneity and genuineness about that expression that was due to no sordid motive.

Since his return he had been overwhelmed with calls and congratulations; indeed, part of his aim in life seemed to have become the dodging of such whenever practicable. Invitations, too, had not been lacking, with very propitious “beauty’s eyes” in the background, but for such he had no inclination. This girl whose acquaintance he had made in so strange and semi-tragical a manner, whose character he had watched develop ever since, seemed to have become bound up with his life, and now the last phase in the acquaintance was that she—and she alone—had been the actual instrument in the saving of his life. For herself, she had come out splendidly through all her disadvantages. Yes; her presence here was the one thing he needed—and he needed it greatly.

He remembered the arrival of theRunic. Clytie had been there to meet her sister, and the frank, cheerful greeting which she had extended to him had impressed him very favourably. He had been to see them since, and the favourable impression had deepened. There was no pretence about them in their new home. They had got to work, and work pretty hard too, and they were doing it with a brave hopefulness that was beyond all praise. And he had extracted a promise from them that if ever they found themselves in need of a friend—no matter what manner of difficulty might overtake them—they were to apply to him unhesitatingly, which was all he was able to do for them for the present.

Then his train of thought took another turn. The tin case he had found in the cuddy of the derelict he had never yet investigated—had not even opened it. He had been very busy since his return, and had put it aside till arrears of business should have been disposed of. He had resisted an inclination to open it on board theRunic, moved by the consciousness that there is no real privacy on board ship, and this, he felt instinctively, was a matter needing undisturbed and uninterrupted attention. Now he thought the time had come when he might very well do so.

He unlocked a safe and got out the tin case. It was all corroded with its long submersion in salt water but quite intact. It brought back to him that gruesome dive into the heart of the spectral derelict; and for a few minutes he sat there, going over in his mind that time alone on the oily waters of the glistening deep, and that awful moment in the darkness when the receding lights had betokened that he was left to his fate—the hand of rescue stretched forth only to be withdrawn. He shook the recollection off, as that of a nightmare from which one awakes, then, procuring the requisite tools, set to work to open the case.

It was full of papers—close packed, full to bursting. Some two or three were of parchment-looking substance, others of thin rice paper. The latter were stitched together with a kind of thin thread of animal fibre. This detail he took in at once, the result of his recent and complete savage training. He spread them out upon the capacious writing-table in front of him, and then—

Great Heaven! what was this? “Develin Hunt!” There was the name, not at the end of a document, but in the middle of it. He stared again, and could hardly believe his eyes. Develin Hunt! He had expected to find some clue as to his lost brother’s fate, which was his reason for not having handed over the box to the captain of theRunicas containing a possible clue to the identity of the Red Derelict, but instead the first name to meet his eye was that of Develin Hunt!

He pulled himself together, and, with mind cool and business-like, set himself to examine the documents, beginning with this one. And it was the most important of all, for it was nothing more nor less than a marriage certificate.

He gazed at it for a moment, then got up again and went to the safe. From this he extracted a document, and spread it side by side with the first one. It was a copy of another marriage certificate, that which Develin Hunt had produced for the enlightenment of his father and himself, but—the one he had just extracted from the tin box bore date four years earlier.

What then? The man might have been a widower at the time. So far he himself was—well, just where he was—where he had been.

He had forgotten for the moment all about Everard and his fate. Eagerly he turned over the other papers. They seemed to have no bearing on the subject until he got to the thin ones, which, in effect, were a sort of diary, stitched together, as we have said. And before he had gone far through this he realised that the discovery of this other marriage certificate was of very first-rate importance indeed, for it set forth unmistakably that the other party referred to was alive at the time of his mother’s marriage with his father—alive, in fact, long subsequently thereto, if not alive at the present day. It was further obvious that any information to be sought for on the subject must be sought in South Africa. Could this be established it followed that Develin Hunt’s marriage with his mother was invalid and that of his father was valid.

South Africa! Haldane might help him here; he had spent years of his life in those parts. And yet, he remembered, to Haldane’s mind Develin Hunt’s name had conveyed no idea other than as subject-matter for a joke, even as it had done to his own. Well, this need mean nothing, unless it were that, like many adventurers, this man had not always gone under his own name.

Again and again he read through the paper, and with each perusal the piecing together of the puzzle became easier. And as it did so came another thought. Would it not be far easier and quicker to get into communication with the adventurer himself, and, at the possible price of some further blackmail, obtain from him at first hand the solution of the whole difficulty? It was wrong and immoral, no doubt, to compound so grave and dangerous an offence as blackmailing, but the awful anguish of mind he had gone through seemed to justify anything—anything in the abstract, such as this was, and not hurtful to any individual—to ensure relief. Even so, a weight seemed to have been lifted from him—the whole weight, in fact—and, with the consciousness, other words spoken by the old Squire came back to him: “There is no telling what Time may work, so give Time his chance.” Prophetic they sounded now, words of gold-mouthed wisdom. He had given Time his chance, and Time had worked accordingly; and lo, from the bowels of this spectral relic of a ship floating for years on the slimy surface of the tropical seas, Time had yielded up this its secret.

And then he was brought back to everyday realities by two sounds—the ringing of the luncheon bell and the voice of his son outside.

Chapter Thirty Nine.Time’s Consummation.“Well, Gerard, old chap? Been keeping your nose hard to the grindstone?” said Wagram as they sat down at table.“Rather. Old Churton takes care of that,” laughed the tall, handsome lad. “He must have been a terror at Rugby.”Wagram had taken his son from school for a quarter on his return. He yearned to have the boy with him after his long separation, and his restoration to life, as it were; but he sent him to read every morning with a neighbouring Anglican rector, an ex-public school master.“Glad to hear it. Churton’s a conscientious man and an energetic one. It must be almost the renewal of his youth to start as bear leader again.”“Don’t know about ‘leader’—‘driver’ would be nearer the right word, pater. I say, what are you doing this afternoon?”“Going over to Haldane’s. Want to come?”“Rather. Bike, I suppose?”Wagram nodded. “In an hour after lunch, then,” he said.Gerard found his father somewhat absent as they spun along between the newly-sprouting hedges in the spring sunlight, and wondered. The fact was that Wagram had made up his mind to take Haldane into confidence, at any rate partially, and was thinking over how much he should tell him as yet. To this end he had brought with him the tin case.“Hallo, Gerard,” he cried, waking from his abstraction as they neared their objective. “By George! I’m a dullish companion for a young ’un on a bike ride—eh, old chap?”“That’s all right, pater. Look. There’s Yvonne under the elm; and, great Scott! what the mischief has she been doing to herself? Oh, I say!”The girl had started forward to meet them, and lo! her mantle of rippling gold no longer draped her shoulders: it formed a shining crown instead.“You needn’t stare like that, Gerard,” she began. “It’s beastly rude, you know. Never saw anyone with their hair up before?” this with dignity. “No; but, Mr Wagram, isn’t it detestable? Will have to do the grown-up now, I suppose.”“We must all grow up one day, Sunbeam,” was the answer. “Even I am not exempt from the process; and as for Gerard here, why he’s gone through it long ago.”“That you, Wagram?” And Haldane came forward with a newspaper in one hand and a half-smoked pipe in the other. “Come along and find a cool seat, and I should think something else cool would go down after your spin—something long and sparkling and with a musical tinkle of ice in it, for choice. Oh, the child,” following their glances. “Yes. She’s just been trying an experiment. I tell her she’s canonised now with this bright and shining halo round her head. Think it improves her?”“I don’t know that it does,” struck in Gerard frankly. “Ah-ah! I see. She’s hoisted it all up so that Reggie and I can’t tweak it any more.”“Quite likely,” retorted Yvonne. “If you did now it’d be a case of ‘great cry and little wool,’ as Henry the Eighth said when he got hold of the wrong pig by the ear.”“When he did what?” said Wagram, mystified. “History does not spare the memory of that bloody-minded monarch, Sunbeam, but it is absolutely silent on the deed you have just named—at least so far as my reading of it goes.”Gerard threw back his head and roared. Haldane was absolutely speechless.“Well, what is it, then? What ought I to have said? Gerard, d’you hear? I don’t believe you know yourself.”“Oh, Lord! I shall die in a moment. ‘As Henry the Eighth said’!” he gasped. “What you were feeling after is ‘as the devil said when he tried to shear the pig.’”“Of course! Oh, what an ass I am!” cried the girl, going off into a rippling peal.“However, the confusion of the identity of the two particular parties is not inexcusable,” pronounced Wagram.“You’ll be the death of us one of these days, Sunbeam,” gasped Haldane when he recovered his speech. “Hallo, Wagram, what’s the row?”“Row? Oh, nothing,” answered Wagram in a strange voice. He had ceased to join in the general mirth. He had, in fact, picked up the paper which Haldane had let fall. It was only theBassingham Chronicle, given over mainly to crops, and Petty Sessions and ecclesiastical presentations, and yet something in it had availed to change the expression of his countenance as well as his voice. Only a name—a name and a paragraph. Thus ran the latter:“Motor accident—We regret to learn that Mr Develin Hunt, a gentleman who made some stay in our midst a year or two ago, and was so impressed with the natural attractions of our neighbourhood that he came to repeat it, was knocked down last evening by a motor car in front of the Golden Crown Hotel, where he is staying, and received severe internal injuries. He was carried up to his room, and Dr Foss, who was at once sent for, has advised that his relatives be at once communicated with. Those in charge of the motor car made off with all haste, and have not yet been traced.”“Oh, ah! I meant to have told you,” said Haldane, following his glance. “That’s the chap with the rum name we were all exercising our wit on, if you remember. Poor devil! I expect he’s a ‘goner.’ ‘Severe internal injuries’ always has a dashed ugly sound.”“By the way, Haldane, I wanted to get your opinion on a matter of importance,” said Wagram. “How would it do now?”“Right. Come inside.”“This is it,” when they were alone: “I want you to go over to Bassingham with me while I interview this very Develin Hunt. You’ve no idea what a lot depends upon it—for me. And it may be necessary for him to swear a statement.”Haldane was too old a campaigner to evince astonishment at any mere coincidence, so he only answered:“All right. I’ll tell them to inspan the dogcart. That’ll get us there in no time.”There was something of an outcry on the part of their juniors at this sudden move.“We’ll be back again before you have time to turn round, Sunbeam,” said Haldane. “Keep that fellow Gerard out of mischief—take him to try for a trout, or something. So long!”Haldane liked things done smartly, and generally had them so done, consequently the dogcart was already at the door. On the road, for they had purposely not taken a groom, Wagram told him of the finding of the tin case on board theRed Derelict, and how its contents bore largely on his own affairs and on those of the man they were about to visit. “You can’t call to mind this man’s name or identity in the course of your former South African wanderings?” he concluded.“No; I’ll be hanged if I can. You see, the name was bound to have stuck, unless—”“Unless what?”“Unless he ran under some other name. That’s not such an uncommon thing in some parts of the round world.”“Ah! Well, it’s possible he did. That’s just the thought that struck me.”“If you can contrive me a glimpse of the joker I’ll soon let you know for cert. I never forget a face.”“That might be done. We might go into the room together—then, if he’s the wrong man, you could apologise and clear.”“Then that’s what we’ll do,” said Haldane the decisive.The fast-trotting nag pulled up at the “Golden Crown” just within the hour of their start.“Good-day, Smith,” said Wagram as the landlord appeared. “How is your guest—the one who got bowled over by a motor?”“Well, Mr Wagram, I couldn’t say exactly. But,” lowering his voice, “the doctor says he’ll hardly last till night.”“Poor fellow. I came to see if I could do anything for him. He called on us about some business, you know, when he was here before.”“He’ll be glad to see you, I know, Mr Wagram. I’ve just been sitting with him a bit, and he was talking a lot about you—asking if you were at home, and all that. Come upstairs.”He led the way, and they ascended to the first landing, Haldane bringing up the rear. A tap at the door, then the landlord opened it.“Here’s Mr Wagram come to see you, Mr Hunt,” he announced.The room was somewhat darkened, but not much. Wagram made out a form half propped up in bed. The red-brown face of the adventurer was of a sallow paleness. He heard the door softly close behind him.“It’s good of you to come and see me, Wagram,” he began. “Hallo! Who’s with you?”“Why, it’s Jack—Jack Faro. How are you, Jack, old man?”The interruption proceeded from Haldane. The man on the bed started and stared, then he recovered himself.“That’s Haldane, for a tenner,” he pronounced. “I heard you were down in these parts, Haldane, and thought of looking you up, only I heard you’d become such a tearing big swell. Thought you’d not have been over-glad to see me.”“Oh, bosh! You ought to have known better. By the Lord! didn’t we stand them off in that ruction at Ikey Mo’s, when we’d broken the whole bally bank? Jack and I had to skip over Montsioa’s border for a time, you know, Wagram,” he parenthesised. “We’d done some shooting, you understand—but—we had to.”“Rather, we had, and we did,” and the adventurer’s eyes lit up over the recollection.“I say, Jack, d’you ever hear anything of the missis now?” went on Haldane in the cordial-old-comrade tone. “I must have seen her since you did, for I was passing through Kimberley only half-a-dozen years back, and she was throwing out fire and slaughter against you as hard as ever.”Wagram, taking this in with all his ears, felt that an immense weight had lifted. Haldane had known this man’s former wife, had seen her quite lately. She was probably alive still.“Oh, she’s got nothing to complain of,” returned the adventurer testily. “I’ve never kept her short.”“Of course not. But, you know, women are the devil for grievances, and she was always swearing that, as your lawful wife, her place was with you.”“I’d have murdered her long ago if it had been,” was the weary reply. “I shunted her to save her life and my neck. Women are the very devil, Haldane. I can’t think why the blazes they were ever invented.”“Oh, you’re not alone in that opinion, old man,” laughed the other. “But, look here, when is Foss going to get you up again?”“Never. He swears I’ll be a stiff before morning, and for once I believe him—though these quacks are the most infernal set of humbugs, as a rule. Now, Haldane, do me a favour, like a good chap, and skip downstairs for a little while. I want to hold a bit of anindabawith Wagram alone.”“Right. So long, then.”There was a moment or two of silence after the door had closed on Haldane. Then Hunt said:“Well, you heard all that?”“Yes; it is true, then?”“Every word of it. I’m glad you heard, because it’ll save me the trouble of going over it all again.”“Then you obtained thirty thousand pounds out of us under false pretences?”“That’s one way of putting it, but I suppose it’s the correct one. The thing was a gamble; but, hang it, I didn’t think the money side would have bothered you over-much, Wagram. Why, as I said before, it’s only like a half-crown to you. Haldane and I have brought off bigger things than that in the old Kimberley days.”Wagram stiffened.“Do you mean to tell me, then, that Haldane was associated with you in blackmailing? Because, if so, you had better tell it in his presence.”“No—no—no. Of course, I don’t mean anything of the sort. Haldane is as straight and square a chap as ever walked. This affair was off my own. I couldn’t resist it when I stumbled against Butcher Ned, and he put me up to who he was, and used to talk about his people too. Lord! how he used to hate you—you, especially. I’d have been sorry for you if he’d ever got the chance of squinting at you for a moment from behind the sighting of a rifle or pistol. By the way, you never found him, did you?”“No. But before we talk further will you make a statement as to this first marriage of yours? Haldane is a magistrate, and you might make it before him.”“I would willingly, but it isn’t in the least necessary. The whole thing is entirely between ourselves so far, and you can easily verify the facts.”“I have verified them already. Do you know this?” And he held up the tin case.“Oh, good Lord! Yes; I ought to. And you have opened it and gone into the contents? Well, then, Wagram, it isn’t like you making an unnecessary fuss. You’ve got all you want in there already.”“Meaning the certificate. Here it is.”“That’s right. You can burn the other things. And now, where on earth did you pick up that box?”Wagram told him, also hurriedly, about his intervening adventures. The dying man’s face underwent some curious changes—not the least curious being that which passed over it on beholding the skeleton pistol.“Rum thing that you should have stumbled on to that hooker not once but twice,” he said. “But, good Lord! life for me has been made up of even rummier things than that, and now I’ve got to the end of it. Yes; I know that pistol. That bright half-brother of yours plugged a hole into me with it that’ll last till my dying day—which, by the way, has come. And I?—well, I planted a mark on him that’ll last till his.”He checked himself suddenly, with a queer look.“What was the story of the Red Derelict?” said Wagram, after a pause.“Better leave that alone—except that it was a story of red murder and piracy such as you’d think only existed in books. And now, Wagram,” he went on, “I’ve been yarning a lot more than any man in my state ought to yarn, and I’m feeling tired. You’d never guess what brought me down here this time. It wasn’t to fleece you again—no, no. Fact is, I heard you were back, and I was curious to see you again and hear how you had got on. And I have. You shook hands with me once; I’d be glad if you’d do it again.”But Wagram’s hand did not come forward, nor did he move.“That was when I thought your story a true one,” he said. “On your own showing you have heaped dishonour upon my family, and I can testify that you hastened my father’s end. It is not in human nature to forgive that—at any rate, all at once.”“Later than ‘all at once’ will be too late, and by refusing your forgiveness to a dying man you will be denying your own creed.”He smiled as he watched the struggle going on within the other. Then Wagram slowly put forth his hand.“For any injury to me I forgive you freely,” he said. “For the rest I will try to. Good-bye.”“And you will succeed. Good-bye, Wagram. You will never regret this. And ask Haldane to come up for a minute. I should like to bid him good-bye for the sake of old times.”Wagram bent his head and left the room, and at a word from him Haldane went up.“This is a bad lookout, Jack,” he began in his downright way. “No chance, I suppose, old chap?”“No; none.”“You wouldn’t like, I suppose—er—to see a parson—er—or anyone in that line?”“No—no. I’ve no use for any parson. The last sight of a man like Wagram’s a sight better than any parson. Has he told you about his adventures and the Red Derelict, eh?”“Yes; and they sounded so jolly tall that, if anybody but Wagram had told me, I shouldn’t have believed half of them.”“But they’re true, all the same. I could take you to the very place. And the white man who put him through all that lively time was no other than the chump he was looking for—his half-brother, Butcher Ned, as we used to call him—otherwise Everard Wagram.”“Good Lord!”“Fact. But I wasn’t going to tell him that, neither must you—d’you hear?—neither must you. Because if you do nothing’ll prevent him from starting right away to put himself in the power of that infernal cut-throat again—under the pretence of trying to reclaim him. Reclaim Butcher Ned!”There was a world of expression in the dying adventurer’s weakening voice over these last words. He went on:“Wagram would never have got out of that camp alive if he hadn’t got out when he did. Don’t you see, that’s why Ned wanted to make him bring his boy out there. Then he’d have done for the pair, and come and set up here at Hilversea. He would, sure as eggs. So never let on about it.”“All right, I won’t.” And after a little more talk the old comrades bade each other good-bye.“You know, Wagram, it’s a deuced rum world,” said Haldane as the two were driving home again. “Fancy this poor chap Develin Hunt, over whose absurd name we were roaring when that first yarn about the derelict came to hand, turning out to be my old pal Jack Faro of the early, rousing, Kimberley days! Poor chap! How he wilted over the recollection of that old crock of his. You know, it was an echo of the old camp chaff I was firing off on him—the point of which was that the said old ruin was fond of bragging that she was Jack’s real and lawful wife, whatever others might be, and brandishing what she called her ‘lines’ in the faces of all comers. Poor old Jack! He was fairly straight as men go—and yet—and yet—I don’t know—there were things whispered about him even then. Well, he’s gone now.”Haldane never learned of the said Develin Hunt’s—otherwise Jack Faro’s—lastcoup, for on that Wagram was for ever silent.That night Develin Hunt died.

“Well, Gerard, old chap? Been keeping your nose hard to the grindstone?” said Wagram as they sat down at table.

“Rather. Old Churton takes care of that,” laughed the tall, handsome lad. “He must have been a terror at Rugby.”

Wagram had taken his son from school for a quarter on his return. He yearned to have the boy with him after his long separation, and his restoration to life, as it were; but he sent him to read every morning with a neighbouring Anglican rector, an ex-public school master.

“Glad to hear it. Churton’s a conscientious man and an energetic one. It must be almost the renewal of his youth to start as bear leader again.”

“Don’t know about ‘leader’—‘driver’ would be nearer the right word, pater. I say, what are you doing this afternoon?”

“Going over to Haldane’s. Want to come?”

“Rather. Bike, I suppose?”

Wagram nodded. “In an hour after lunch, then,” he said.

Gerard found his father somewhat absent as they spun along between the newly-sprouting hedges in the spring sunlight, and wondered. The fact was that Wagram had made up his mind to take Haldane into confidence, at any rate partially, and was thinking over how much he should tell him as yet. To this end he had brought with him the tin case.

“Hallo, Gerard,” he cried, waking from his abstraction as they neared their objective. “By George! I’m a dullish companion for a young ’un on a bike ride—eh, old chap?”

“That’s all right, pater. Look. There’s Yvonne under the elm; and, great Scott! what the mischief has she been doing to herself? Oh, I say!”

The girl had started forward to meet them, and lo! her mantle of rippling gold no longer draped her shoulders: it formed a shining crown instead.

“You needn’t stare like that, Gerard,” she began. “It’s beastly rude, you know. Never saw anyone with their hair up before?” this with dignity. “No; but, Mr Wagram, isn’t it detestable? Will have to do the grown-up now, I suppose.”

“We must all grow up one day, Sunbeam,” was the answer. “Even I am not exempt from the process; and as for Gerard here, why he’s gone through it long ago.”

“That you, Wagram?” And Haldane came forward with a newspaper in one hand and a half-smoked pipe in the other. “Come along and find a cool seat, and I should think something else cool would go down after your spin—something long and sparkling and with a musical tinkle of ice in it, for choice. Oh, the child,” following their glances. “Yes. She’s just been trying an experiment. I tell her she’s canonised now with this bright and shining halo round her head. Think it improves her?”

“I don’t know that it does,” struck in Gerard frankly. “Ah-ah! I see. She’s hoisted it all up so that Reggie and I can’t tweak it any more.”

“Quite likely,” retorted Yvonne. “If you did now it’d be a case of ‘great cry and little wool,’ as Henry the Eighth said when he got hold of the wrong pig by the ear.”

“When he did what?” said Wagram, mystified. “History does not spare the memory of that bloody-minded monarch, Sunbeam, but it is absolutely silent on the deed you have just named—at least so far as my reading of it goes.”

Gerard threw back his head and roared. Haldane was absolutely speechless.

“Well, what is it, then? What ought I to have said? Gerard, d’you hear? I don’t believe you know yourself.”

“Oh, Lord! I shall die in a moment. ‘As Henry the Eighth said’!” he gasped. “What you were feeling after is ‘as the devil said when he tried to shear the pig.’”

“Of course! Oh, what an ass I am!” cried the girl, going off into a rippling peal.

“However, the confusion of the identity of the two particular parties is not inexcusable,” pronounced Wagram.

“You’ll be the death of us one of these days, Sunbeam,” gasped Haldane when he recovered his speech. “Hallo, Wagram, what’s the row?”

“Row? Oh, nothing,” answered Wagram in a strange voice. He had ceased to join in the general mirth. He had, in fact, picked up the paper which Haldane had let fall. It was only theBassingham Chronicle, given over mainly to crops, and Petty Sessions and ecclesiastical presentations, and yet something in it had availed to change the expression of his countenance as well as his voice. Only a name—a name and a paragraph. Thus ran the latter:

“Motor accident—We regret to learn that Mr Develin Hunt, a gentleman who made some stay in our midst a year or two ago, and was so impressed with the natural attractions of our neighbourhood that he came to repeat it, was knocked down last evening by a motor car in front of the Golden Crown Hotel, where he is staying, and received severe internal injuries. He was carried up to his room, and Dr Foss, who was at once sent for, has advised that his relatives be at once communicated with. Those in charge of the motor car made off with all haste, and have not yet been traced.”

“Oh, ah! I meant to have told you,” said Haldane, following his glance. “That’s the chap with the rum name we were all exercising our wit on, if you remember. Poor devil! I expect he’s a ‘goner.’ ‘Severe internal injuries’ always has a dashed ugly sound.”

“By the way, Haldane, I wanted to get your opinion on a matter of importance,” said Wagram. “How would it do now?”

“Right. Come inside.”

“This is it,” when they were alone: “I want you to go over to Bassingham with me while I interview this very Develin Hunt. You’ve no idea what a lot depends upon it—for me. And it may be necessary for him to swear a statement.”

Haldane was too old a campaigner to evince astonishment at any mere coincidence, so he only answered:

“All right. I’ll tell them to inspan the dogcart. That’ll get us there in no time.”

There was something of an outcry on the part of their juniors at this sudden move.

“We’ll be back again before you have time to turn round, Sunbeam,” said Haldane. “Keep that fellow Gerard out of mischief—take him to try for a trout, or something. So long!”

Haldane liked things done smartly, and generally had them so done, consequently the dogcart was already at the door. On the road, for they had purposely not taken a groom, Wagram told him of the finding of the tin case on board theRed Derelict, and how its contents bore largely on his own affairs and on those of the man they were about to visit. “You can’t call to mind this man’s name or identity in the course of your former South African wanderings?” he concluded.

“No; I’ll be hanged if I can. You see, the name was bound to have stuck, unless—”

“Unless what?”

“Unless he ran under some other name. That’s not such an uncommon thing in some parts of the round world.”

“Ah! Well, it’s possible he did. That’s just the thought that struck me.”

“If you can contrive me a glimpse of the joker I’ll soon let you know for cert. I never forget a face.”

“That might be done. We might go into the room together—then, if he’s the wrong man, you could apologise and clear.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do,” said Haldane the decisive.

The fast-trotting nag pulled up at the “Golden Crown” just within the hour of their start.

“Good-day, Smith,” said Wagram as the landlord appeared. “How is your guest—the one who got bowled over by a motor?”

“Well, Mr Wagram, I couldn’t say exactly. But,” lowering his voice, “the doctor says he’ll hardly last till night.”

“Poor fellow. I came to see if I could do anything for him. He called on us about some business, you know, when he was here before.”

“He’ll be glad to see you, I know, Mr Wagram. I’ve just been sitting with him a bit, and he was talking a lot about you—asking if you were at home, and all that. Come upstairs.”

He led the way, and they ascended to the first landing, Haldane bringing up the rear. A tap at the door, then the landlord opened it.

“Here’s Mr Wagram come to see you, Mr Hunt,” he announced.

The room was somewhat darkened, but not much. Wagram made out a form half propped up in bed. The red-brown face of the adventurer was of a sallow paleness. He heard the door softly close behind him.

“It’s good of you to come and see me, Wagram,” he began. “Hallo! Who’s with you?”

“Why, it’s Jack—Jack Faro. How are you, Jack, old man?”

The interruption proceeded from Haldane. The man on the bed started and stared, then he recovered himself.

“That’s Haldane, for a tenner,” he pronounced. “I heard you were down in these parts, Haldane, and thought of looking you up, only I heard you’d become such a tearing big swell. Thought you’d not have been over-glad to see me.”

“Oh, bosh! You ought to have known better. By the Lord! didn’t we stand them off in that ruction at Ikey Mo’s, when we’d broken the whole bally bank? Jack and I had to skip over Montsioa’s border for a time, you know, Wagram,” he parenthesised. “We’d done some shooting, you understand—but—we had to.”

“Rather, we had, and we did,” and the adventurer’s eyes lit up over the recollection.

“I say, Jack, d’you ever hear anything of the missis now?” went on Haldane in the cordial-old-comrade tone. “I must have seen her since you did, for I was passing through Kimberley only half-a-dozen years back, and she was throwing out fire and slaughter against you as hard as ever.”

Wagram, taking this in with all his ears, felt that an immense weight had lifted. Haldane had known this man’s former wife, had seen her quite lately. She was probably alive still.

“Oh, she’s got nothing to complain of,” returned the adventurer testily. “I’ve never kept her short.”

“Of course not. But, you know, women are the devil for grievances, and she was always swearing that, as your lawful wife, her place was with you.”

“I’d have murdered her long ago if it had been,” was the weary reply. “I shunted her to save her life and my neck. Women are the very devil, Haldane. I can’t think why the blazes they were ever invented.”

“Oh, you’re not alone in that opinion, old man,” laughed the other. “But, look here, when is Foss going to get you up again?”

“Never. He swears I’ll be a stiff before morning, and for once I believe him—though these quacks are the most infernal set of humbugs, as a rule. Now, Haldane, do me a favour, like a good chap, and skip downstairs for a little while. I want to hold a bit of anindabawith Wagram alone.”

“Right. So long, then.”

There was a moment or two of silence after the door had closed on Haldane. Then Hunt said:

“Well, you heard all that?”

“Yes; it is true, then?”

“Every word of it. I’m glad you heard, because it’ll save me the trouble of going over it all again.”

“Then you obtained thirty thousand pounds out of us under false pretences?”

“That’s one way of putting it, but I suppose it’s the correct one. The thing was a gamble; but, hang it, I didn’t think the money side would have bothered you over-much, Wagram. Why, as I said before, it’s only like a half-crown to you. Haldane and I have brought off bigger things than that in the old Kimberley days.”

Wagram stiffened.

“Do you mean to tell me, then, that Haldane was associated with you in blackmailing? Because, if so, you had better tell it in his presence.”

“No—no—no. Of course, I don’t mean anything of the sort. Haldane is as straight and square a chap as ever walked. This affair was off my own. I couldn’t resist it when I stumbled against Butcher Ned, and he put me up to who he was, and used to talk about his people too. Lord! how he used to hate you—you, especially. I’d have been sorry for you if he’d ever got the chance of squinting at you for a moment from behind the sighting of a rifle or pistol. By the way, you never found him, did you?”

“No. But before we talk further will you make a statement as to this first marriage of yours? Haldane is a magistrate, and you might make it before him.”

“I would willingly, but it isn’t in the least necessary. The whole thing is entirely between ourselves so far, and you can easily verify the facts.”

“I have verified them already. Do you know this?” And he held up the tin case.

“Oh, good Lord! Yes; I ought to. And you have opened it and gone into the contents? Well, then, Wagram, it isn’t like you making an unnecessary fuss. You’ve got all you want in there already.”

“Meaning the certificate. Here it is.”

“That’s right. You can burn the other things. And now, where on earth did you pick up that box?”

Wagram told him, also hurriedly, about his intervening adventures. The dying man’s face underwent some curious changes—not the least curious being that which passed over it on beholding the skeleton pistol.

“Rum thing that you should have stumbled on to that hooker not once but twice,” he said. “But, good Lord! life for me has been made up of even rummier things than that, and now I’ve got to the end of it. Yes; I know that pistol. That bright half-brother of yours plugged a hole into me with it that’ll last till my dying day—which, by the way, has come. And I?—well, I planted a mark on him that’ll last till his.”

He checked himself suddenly, with a queer look.

“What was the story of the Red Derelict?” said Wagram, after a pause.

“Better leave that alone—except that it was a story of red murder and piracy such as you’d think only existed in books. And now, Wagram,” he went on, “I’ve been yarning a lot more than any man in my state ought to yarn, and I’m feeling tired. You’d never guess what brought me down here this time. It wasn’t to fleece you again—no, no. Fact is, I heard you were back, and I was curious to see you again and hear how you had got on. And I have. You shook hands with me once; I’d be glad if you’d do it again.”

But Wagram’s hand did not come forward, nor did he move.

“That was when I thought your story a true one,” he said. “On your own showing you have heaped dishonour upon my family, and I can testify that you hastened my father’s end. It is not in human nature to forgive that—at any rate, all at once.”

“Later than ‘all at once’ will be too late, and by refusing your forgiveness to a dying man you will be denying your own creed.”

He smiled as he watched the struggle going on within the other. Then Wagram slowly put forth his hand.

“For any injury to me I forgive you freely,” he said. “For the rest I will try to. Good-bye.”

“And you will succeed. Good-bye, Wagram. You will never regret this. And ask Haldane to come up for a minute. I should like to bid him good-bye for the sake of old times.”

Wagram bent his head and left the room, and at a word from him Haldane went up.

“This is a bad lookout, Jack,” he began in his downright way. “No chance, I suppose, old chap?”

“No; none.”

“You wouldn’t like, I suppose—er—to see a parson—er—or anyone in that line?”

“No—no. I’ve no use for any parson. The last sight of a man like Wagram’s a sight better than any parson. Has he told you about his adventures and the Red Derelict, eh?”

“Yes; and they sounded so jolly tall that, if anybody but Wagram had told me, I shouldn’t have believed half of them.”

“But they’re true, all the same. I could take you to the very place. And the white man who put him through all that lively time was no other than the chump he was looking for—his half-brother, Butcher Ned, as we used to call him—otherwise Everard Wagram.”

“Good Lord!”

“Fact. But I wasn’t going to tell him that, neither must you—d’you hear?—neither must you. Because if you do nothing’ll prevent him from starting right away to put himself in the power of that infernal cut-throat again—under the pretence of trying to reclaim him. Reclaim Butcher Ned!”

There was a world of expression in the dying adventurer’s weakening voice over these last words. He went on:

“Wagram would never have got out of that camp alive if he hadn’t got out when he did. Don’t you see, that’s why Ned wanted to make him bring his boy out there. Then he’d have done for the pair, and come and set up here at Hilversea. He would, sure as eggs. So never let on about it.”

“All right, I won’t.” And after a little more talk the old comrades bade each other good-bye.

“You know, Wagram, it’s a deuced rum world,” said Haldane as the two were driving home again. “Fancy this poor chap Develin Hunt, over whose absurd name we were roaring when that first yarn about the derelict came to hand, turning out to be my old pal Jack Faro of the early, rousing, Kimberley days! Poor chap! How he wilted over the recollection of that old crock of his. You know, it was an echo of the old camp chaff I was firing off on him—the point of which was that the said old ruin was fond of bragging that she was Jack’s real and lawful wife, whatever others might be, and brandishing what she called her ‘lines’ in the faces of all comers. Poor old Jack! He was fairly straight as men go—and yet—and yet—I don’t know—there were things whispered about him even then. Well, he’s gone now.”

Haldane never learned of the said Develin Hunt’s—otherwise Jack Faro’s—lastcoup, for on that Wagram was for ever silent.

That night Develin Hunt died.

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