He shot a glance at her. Was it possible that she had divined his state of mind? Woman's intuition was a thing of which he stood in deadly awe.
But they were arriving at the dock, and there was no time to indulge in subtleties. He sprang from the wagon before it came to a halt.
"The Saluria!" he demanded wildly of a man in uniform. "Has she sailed?"
"The Saluria?" repeated the man with maddening deliberation. "Let's see. Yellow funnels, ain't she? Yep, that's her a-going out of the harbor now."
VI
IN THE WIND-SHELTER
When Mrs. Western, anxiously watching the passengers come aboard from the last launch, had failed to see Bobby Boynton, she was partly reassured by young Vaughn, who was quite confident he had seen her on the dock. Not being satisfied, however, she made a tour of the crowded decks, looking into the music room, the writing-room and even the smoking-room, It was not until she went below and peeped into Bobby's empty cabin that she became seriously alarmed. Hurrying back on deck, she found, to her consternation, that the gang-planks had been lifted and the ship had weighed anchor. In great excitement she rushed to the bridge to find the captain, but he was not there. Five interminable minutes had been lost before she found him and stated her case.
The captain of an ocean-liner is too used to false alarms to be easily excited, and it was only after another thorough search was made, and no trace of Bobby and the Englishman found, that Captain Boynton concerned himself. Just what he said need not be chronicled. It was extremely crude and extremely personal, and punctuated by phrases that would have shocked the delicate sensibilities of the Honorable Percival.
His humor was not improved by the dictatorial messages that began to arrive by wireless: