“I know he did,” answered the captain grimly, with a complacent recollection of the savage wigging that rash youth had received at his hands. The other passenger struck in:
“I told him it would have been still more unlucky if we hadn’t sighted her till—say, an hour later. She was right bang in our course.”
The captain looked not altogether pleased at this remark, but the speaker was a personage of some consideration on board.
“We keep a look out, you know, Mr Wagram,” he said.
“Of course. But I always notice that the first hour of these tropical nights is the darkest, perhaps because of the suddenness with which it rushes down. Now, a hulk like that, flush with the surface and showing no lights, would it be discernible until too late?”
The captain knew that the chances were twenty to one it wouldn’t, but for expediency’s sake he was not going to own as much. As he had said before, passengers were a skeery crowd, and didn’t want any extra frightening.
“Chances are it would,” he answered, “especially in a smooth sea like this. There’s always a disturbance on the surface as the thing rises and falls, an extra gleam of phosphorus, or something that the lookout man on the forecastle can’t miss.”
“That’s satisfactory,” rejoined the lady. “Do you believe in luck, Mr Wagram?”
“In the sense in which we are going to be unlucky because we’ve seen a dismantled hulk—decidedly not. The idea is too puerile even for discussion.”
“Oh, I wish I were as strong-minded! Do you know, I’m terribly superstitious.”