“I am afraid,” said my father sadly, “that we shall never see your three passengers again. I have left men upon the beach in case they should be washed up, but I fear it is hopeless. I saw them go down when the vessel split, and no man could have lived for a moment among that terrible surge.”
“Who were they?” I asked. “I could not have believed that it was possible for men to appear so unconcerned in the face of such imminent peril.”
“As to who they are or were,” the captain answered, puffing thoughtfully at his pipe, “that is by no means easy to say. Our last port was Kurrachee, in the north of India, and there we took them aboard as passengers for Glasgow. Ram Singh was the name of the younger, and it is only with him that I have come in contact, but they all appeared to be quiet, inoffensive gentlemen. I never inquired their business, but I should judge that they were Parsee merchants from Hyderabad whose trade took them to Europe. I could never see why the crew should fear them, and the mate, too, he should have had more sense.”
“Fear them!” I ejaculated in surprise.
“Yes, they had some preposterous idea that they were dangerous shipmates. I have no doubt if you were to go down into the kitchen now you would find that they are all agreed that our passengers were the cause of the whole disaster.”
As the captain was speaking the parlour door opened and the mate of the barque, a tall, red-bearded sailor, stepped in. He had obtained a complete rig-out from some kind-hearted fisherman, and looked in his comfortable jersey and well-greased seaboots a very favourable specimen of a shipwrecked mariner.
With a few words of grateful acknowledgment of our hospitality, he drew a chair up to the fire and warmed his great, brown hands before the blaze.
“What d'ye think now, Captain Meadows?” he asked presently, glancing up at his superior officer. “Didn't I warn you what would be the upshot of having those niggers on board the Belinda?”
The captain leant back in his chair and laughed heartily.
“Didn't I tell you?” he cried, appealing to us. “Didn't I tell you?”