"It is the golden rule of life," said Ewing, "not to repent too soon. There is a time and season for all things."
That very up-to-date yacht the Humming Top carried a wireless plant and a Marconi operator. Aerials hung between the slim masts, and their range of contact with the outside world extended for five hundred miles—by day. By night it was much wider. The operator, as they hummed along, picked up the news of the day for Madame's edification; it cannot be said that he was overworked.
I think Madame's state room—it really was worthy of that abused epithet—must have been designed for the use of Sir John Toppys and his departed lady, in the days when space at sea was a new luxury. With its appurtenances—a dressing-room at one end and a bathroom at the other—it was thirty feet long, and it contained, as has been said, a spring bedstead hung hammock-wise. The bed gave discreetly to the roll of the ship. In the dressing-room which had a door of direct communication, was installed Madame's maid, a French girl who detested the sea and did not conceal her hatred. She became reconciled to the months of sea travel by the gratifying circumstance that she and Madame were two lone women in a man-infested ship. Marie could do with a large surplusage of Man.
The saloon on the upper deck was the Mess of Madame and the chief officers; to the two junior deck officers and the two assistant Engineers was assigned the Mess Room aft on the main deck out of which their cabins opened, and to them, at their own request, was added the society at meals of Marie.
"How many?" enquired Madame, when Ching diffidently communicated the invitation. "Four of them? Marie could keep a dozen busy. She will make four hop pretty briskly." In spite of bouts of sea-sickness I fancy that Marie enjoyed her voyage.
Between Madame Gilbert and her companions grew up a close friendship. She talked freely with them except upon the purpose of her travels. That was maintained for the present as a Family Secret. They, simple creatures, sometimes wondered why Sir John Toppys should spend so much money upon Madame's pleasures and refrain from sharing them with her. His absence was grateful in their sight—for did they not between them monopolise a most gracious and entertaining lady?—but they often wondered at his lack of enterprise.
"Ching," said Ewing confidentially, "you are married as tightly as I am, and both of us are faithful—in reason—to our wedded wives. But if you had the chance of an unlawful holiday cruise with our beautiful Madame Gilbert, would you not jump at it?"
"Ewing," said Ching, as confidentially, "I am a sinful man. I should."
"Sir John Toppys must be a meeracle," declared Ewing, after a long pause.
"Perhaps it is Madame who is the miracle," observed the Skipper shrewdly.