“Can’t Thorne do anything?”
“No; Bindo fights shy of us all, and no wonder either. I am sure I should do the same in his place. If you could only have got hold of him, and made him feel that we were rather glad than otherwise that our useless belongings had gone towards nursing Harry, he’d have got back his self-respect and been less shy of us. But our last hope went when you failed. What the plague made you call him Eric instead of Bindo?”
“Heaven only knows,” I answered, “or its Antipodes.”
I told Thorne one day of Eastonville’s report, and asked him what he thought of it.
“Just nothing at all,” he said. “He knows no more of what Bindo’s doing than all the rest of us. For myself, I believe he’s got work of some kind. I grant he’s seen sometimes at shady music halls with shady companions; and that’s what Eastonville means. But, after all, a fellow must have some one to speak to in the evening, especially if he’s at work all day; and if he’s lost his old friends he must fill up their places with the best he can. Besides, it’s quite possible that Bindo has grown wise enough by this time to make sure they do him no harm.”
A few months later Thorne dropped in again. “Now you’ll be happy, I suppose; at least I am. Bindo starts to-morrow for Brazil in the Magdalena. We came across him to-day. He’s had work on hand all the year, though he kept it quietly to himself; and now he’ll be quit of all his old associations and be able to make another, and, I hope, a better start.”
I made up my mind, of course, that I must see him before he sailed. But how to do it? Fortunately I knew the name of the boat he was to travel by, unless he had wilfully put Thorne off the scent. But it was too late to get a train that night, and, as the boat I knew sailed at two o’clock, it gave me none too much time to hunt him up at Southampton.
When a letter came to me next morning by the early post, requiring an article at once for the afternoon papers, it was only what I expected. Fate had come between me and Bindo every time I had wished to help him, and she was at her old games again. So I sat down and wrote off my article—doggedly rather than savagely—in the spirit of one who gives up the game against chance, yet knowing, all the time I was writing, that I was losing my train, and that it was doubtful whether the next one would catch the Magdalena at all. The official at the Dock entrance told me that she was already throwing off from the quay wall, and it would be quite impossible to get on board. “Far and away your best chance,” he added, “is to run round this way to the Dock gates. You’ll be there before she is, for it takes a lot of time to back and turn her. Then if you want to say good-bye to anyone very particularly (and he smiled), you’ll get a word with her perhaps. For the vessel’s loaded deep, and her portholes won’t stand very high above the quay wall. Besides, she’ll only creep through the gates, but you’ve no time to lose.”
I hardly stopped to thank him then. On my way back he got, not only thanks, but, to his great astonishment, a five-shilling piece. “Well; he must have wanted to see her badly,” I heard him whisper to his mate.
The preliminaries of throwing off, backing, warping, were all over by the time I reached the gates, and the big vessel was beginning to make a move under her own steam. I looked eagerly for Bindo among the passengers. Fate had been kind to me, and given me yet another chance. What if I missed it like the last? But she favoured me this time. He was leaning over the deck-rail, watching the leave-takings as the great vessel swept slowly past the wall. His cap was thrown back and his hair blown off his forehead. What a boy he looked to be starting a new life in a new world, without a friend and with worse than failure for the past!