“Then, faith, the peril is fifty times greater and nearer than I suspected,” cried he, warmly. “When a man cracks on all that he can carry, and more than is safe, you at least give him credit for knowing the channel, and understanding its bearings; but when he tells you that he neither knows the course nor the soundings, why you set him down as mad.”
“I shall not be very far removed from that condition if you'll not condescend to explain yourself more freely,” said Cashel, with some irritation of manner. “Where is this danger? and what is it?”
Sickleton looked at him for a second or two, then at the old peer; and, at last, with a scarcely perceptible movement of his head, motioned towards the door by which Lady Kilgoff had just passed out.
“You surely cannot mean—you do not suppose—”
“No matter what I suppose; all I say is, there are worse breakers ahead of you just now than the 'Lucciola' had last night; haul your wind, and draw off while you have time. Besides, look yonder,”—and he pointed with a jerk of his thumb to Lord Kilgoff, who still sat with stolid gaze fixed upon the red embers of the fire,—“that would be a victory with but little honor!”
Cashel started to his feet, and, passing his hand over his forehead, seemed, as it were, trying to disabuse his mind of some painful illusion. His features, flushed and animated an instant before, had grown almost livid in pallor; and he stood, with one hand leaning on the chair from which he had risen, like one recovering from a fainting fit At last, and with a voice husky and hoarse from emotion, he said, “Sickleton, if I had thought this—if, I say, I even believed what you hint at possible—”
“Pooh! pooh!” broke in the other; “why anchor in three fathoms when you 've deep water beside you? You 'll not hug a lee-shore with a fresh breeze on your quarter; and all I ask is, that you 'd not risk the loss of that noble craft merely that you may spoil the wreck.”
Cashel grasped the rough seaman's hand in both his own, and shook it with warmth.
“I can only say this,” said the bluff lieutenant, rising, “if such be the object of your cruises, you must seek another shipmate than Bob Sickleton; and so good-night.”
“Are you going?” said Cashel, with a sorrowful voice. “I wish you were not about to leave thus.”