"Are you engaged to her?" he asked, in rather a queer voice; and I realized how much I was at his mercy, as, fascinated, I watched his brown hand tighten on the wheel. If he liked, he could stop "Mascotte" in mid sea, and let me lie at the mercy of the enemy. I could do nothing. Hendrik would obey him, not me. Even Tibe would not seize him by the throat to please me. Tibe likes and respects Alb even more, strange to say, than he does me.
But, to do Alb justice, he was not slowing down. On the contrary, he was putting on speed, as much, I feared, as "Mascotte" was capable of making.
"I'm not engaged," I admitted; "but I was going to propose to her to-day, if this hadn't happened. For goodness' sake, hurry."
"I wonder you have the cheek to tell me that, and then ask me to hurry. Why should I help you to get her?"
"Do you still want her?" I asked.
"More than I ever wanted or shall want anything else."
"Then it's all up with me!" I groaned.
"Do you mean——"
"I only mean that you can make me lose her. If Alec MacNairne boards us like a pirate, and yells for his Fay, I shall be discovered as a perjured villain, just in the very hour when it's necessary for me to appear most virtuous. Heavens! If this could only have happened afterwards. Once I was sure of her, I'd have confessed everything, for I could have made her understand how it was all done for her sake—for love of her."
"And her stepsister," said Alb, bitterly, as he did to the wheel what perhaps he would have liked to do to my throat.