“What are you saying, man?” I demanded, much dismayed. “You need not miscall your own niece, I should think. But what of her? Do you mean she has left you?”
“Aye, what else should I mean? And right glad I am to be rid of such a trollop, drawing all the rapscallions of the port in here, and bringing my tavern into disrepute.”
He spoke so bitterly that I believe he was trying to talk himself into thinking he had profited by her departure. For in reality she had brought him the chief part of his custom, and there was at that moment, as I could perceive, not a soul in the tavern beside ourselves. But I did not stop to reflect on this.
“Where has she gone? What has happened?” I questioned breathlessly, with a terrible fear in my heart.
“Nay, whither she has gone is more than I can tell you, for as likely as not the jade has lied to me. But she left this place two days ago, in the afternoon, and all the account she gave me was that she had taken her passage in the Fair Maid for her father’s house in Calcutta.”
I fell down on a bench, like a man stunned, and groaned aloud. Then I sprang to my feet again and made for the door.
“I will follow her!” I cried out madly. “If she has gone to the end of the world I will go after her, and all the devils in hell shall not hold me back!”
And leaving the man there, staring at me as if he thought I was crazed, I ran out of the house, and so stumbled right into the arms of a pressgang come ashore off a king’s ship which had that morning dropped anchor in Yarmouth Roads.