The Rescue Part 17

Lingard shook his head in denial.

"Poor girl," said Mrs. Travers. "Are they all so pretty?"

"Who-all?" mumbled Lingard. "There isn't an other one like her if you were to ransack the islands all round the compa.s.s."

"Edith!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mr. Travers in a remonstrating, acrimonious voice, and everyone gave him a look of vague surprise.

Then Mrs. Travers asked:

"Who is she?"

Lingard very red and grave declared curtly:

"A princess."

Immediately he looked round with suspicion. No one smiled. D'Alcacer, courteous and nonchalant, lounged up close to Mrs. Travers' elbow.

"If she is a princess, then this man is a knight," he murmured with conviction. "A knight as I live! A descendant of the immortal hidalgo errant upon the sea. It would be good for us to have him for a friend.

Seriously I think that you ought--"

The two stepped aside and spoke low and hurriedly.

"Yes, you ought--"

"How can I?" she interrupted, catching the meaning like a ball.

"By saying something."

"Is it really necessary?" she asked, doubtfully.

"It would do no harm," said d'Alcacer with sudden carelessness; "a friend is always better than an enemy."

"Always?" she repeated, meaningly. "But what could I say?"

"Some words," he answered; "I should think any words in your voice--"

"Mr. d'Alcacer!"

"Or you could perhaps look at him once or twice as though he were not exactly a robber," he continued.

"Mr. d'Alcacer, are you afraid?"

"Extremely," he said, stooping to pick up the fan at her feet. "That is the reason I am so anxious to conciliate. And you must not forget that one of your queens once stepped on the cloak of perhaps such a man."

Her eyes sparkled and she dropped them suddenly.

"I am not a queen," she said, coldly.

"Unfortunately not," he admitted; "but then the other was a woman with no charm but her crown."

At that moment Lingard, to whom Ha.s.sim had been talking earnestly, protested aloud:

"I never saw these people before."

Immada caught hold of her brother's arm. Mr. Travers said harshly:

"Oblige me by taking these natives away."

"Never before," murmured Immada as if lost in ecstasy. D'Alcacer glanced at Mrs. Travers and made a step forward.

"Could not the difficulty, whatever it is, be arranged, Captain?" he said with careful politeness. "Observe that we are not only men here--"

"Let them die!" cried Immada, triumphantly.

Though Lingard alone understood the meaning of these words, all on board felt oppressed by the uneasy silence which followed her cry.

"Ah! He is going. Now, Mrs. Travers," whispered d'Alcacer.

"I hope!" said Mrs. Travers, impulsively, and stopped as if alarmed at the sound.

Lingard stood still.

"I hope," she began again, "that this poor girl will know happier days--" She hesitated.

Lingard waited, attentive and serious.

"Under your care," she finished. "And I believe you meant to be friendly to us."

"Thank you," said Lingard with dignity.

"You and d'Alcacer," observed Mr. Travers, austerely, "are unnecessarily detaining this--ah--person, and--ah--friends--ah!"

"I had forgotten you--and now--what? One must--it is hard--hard--" went on Lingard, disconnectedly, while he looked into Mrs. Travers'

violet eyes, and felt his mind overpowered and troubled as if by the contemplation of vast distances. "I--you don't know--I--you--cannot . . . Ha! It's all that man's doing," he burst out.

For a time, as if beside himself, he glared at Mrs. Travers, then flung up one arm and strode off toward the gangway, where Ha.s.sim and Immada waited for him, interested and patient. With a single word "Come," he preceded them down into the boat. Not a sound was heard on the yacht's deck, while these three disappeared one after another below the rail as if they had descended into the sea.

V

The afternoon dragged itself out in silence. Mrs. Travers sat pensive and idle with her fan on her knees. D'Alcacer, who thought the incident should have been treated in a conciliatory spirit, attempted to communicate his view to his host, but that gentleman, purposely misunderstanding his motive, overwhelmed him with so many apologies and expressions of regret at the irksome and perhaps inconvenient delay "which you suffer from through your good-natured acceptance of our invitation" that the other was obliged to refrain from pursuing the subject further.

"Even my regard for you, my dear d'Alcacer, could not induce me to submit to such a bare-faced attempt at extortion," affirmed Mr. Travers with uncompromising virtue. "The man wanted to force his services upon me, and then put in a heavy claim for salvage. That is the whole secret--you may depend on it. I detected him at once, of course." The eye-gla.s.s glittered perspicuously. "He underrated my intelligence; and what a violent scoundrel! The existence of such a man in the time we live in is a scandal."

D'Alcacer retired, and, full of vague forebodings, tried in vain for hours to interest himself in a book. Mr. Travers walked up and down restlessly, trying to persuade himself that his indignation was based on purely moral grounds. The glaring day, like a ma.s.s of white-hot iron withdrawn from the fire, was losing gradually its heat and its glare in a richer deepening of tone. At the usual time two seamen, walking noiselessly aft in their yachting shoes, rolled up in silence the quarter-deck screens; and the coast, the shallows, the dark islets and the snowy sandbanks uncovered thus day after day were seen once more in their aspect of dumb watchfulness. The brig, swung end on in the foreground, her squared yards crossing heavily the soaring symmetry of the rigging, resembled a creature instinct with life, with the power of springing into action lurking in the light grace of its repose.

A pair of stewards in white jackets with bra.s.s b.u.t.tons appeared on deck and began to flit about without a sound, laying the table for dinner on the flat top of the cabin skylight. The sun, drifting away toward other lands, toward other seas, toward other men; the sun, all red in a cloudless sky raked the yacht with a parting salvo of crimson rays that shattered themselves into sparks of fire upon the crystal and silver of the dinner-service, put a short flame into the blades of knives, and spread a rosy tint over the white of plates. A trail of purple, like a smear of blood on a blue s.h.i.+eld, lay over the sea.