“You must have worked hard to accomplish all this?”
“Pretty hard, no doubt. You remember those little boats with the holes in 'em at Lindau. They did the business for me. I was fool enough at that time to imagine that you had got a clew to my discovery, and were after me to pick up all the details. I ought to have known better! It was easy enough to see that you could have no head for anything with a 'tough bone' in it. Light, thoughtless creatures of your kind are never dangerous anywhere!”
I was not quite sure whether I was expected to return thanks for this speech in my favor, and therefore only made some very unintelligible mutterings.
“There's only one liner now to be raised, and all the guns are already out of her, but I can return to-morrow. I am free; my contract is completed; and the 'Ignatief' sloop-of-war is at my orders at Balaklava to convey me to any port I please in Europe.”
He said this so boastfully and so vaingloriously that I really felt Potts in his humility was not the smaller man of the two. Nor, perhaps, was my irritation the less, at seeing how little surprise our singular meeting had caused him, and how much he regarded all I had done in his behalf as being ordinary and commonplace services. But, perhaps, the coup de grace of my misery came as he said,—
“Though I forwarded that ten-pound note you lent me to Rome, perhaps you 'll like to have it now. If you need any more, say so.”
My heart was in my mouth, and I felt that I 'd have died of starvation rather than accept the humblest benefit at his hands.
“Very well,” said he to my refusal; “all the better that you 've no need of cash, for, to tell the truth, Potts, you 're not much of a doctor, nor are you very remarkable as a man of genius; and it is a kind thing of Providence when such fellows as you are born with even a 'pewter spoon' in their mouths.”
I nearly choked, but I said nothing.
“If you 'd like me to land you anywhere in the Levant, or down towards the Spanish coast, only tell me.”