“You fool!” broke out Shelf with a fresh snarl; “don’t you see you are robbing yourself? If you give me up you lose your own miserable £300. If you get me off you’ll pocket £1500. Hang it, man, I’ll give you three thousand!”
“You said,” retorted the captain, “you’d got some pickings out of this wreck with you! Well, I guess the proper owners’ll have that when the time comes, and I shall have my sixty-fourth, or whatever it is, along with the rest. I know twenty decent men who’ve got about all they own in your rotten concerns, and I wouldn’t think it a fair thing to feather my own nest whilst they got skinned to the bone.—I’ll trouble you, Mr. Theodore Shelf, to take your hand off my arm, or you’ll get your bally teeth knocked down your throat. Don’t you come near me any more—you ain’t wholesome!”
“I will take one of the boats,” said Shelf, desperately, “and get out into the Channel, and try and get picked up by some outward-bound steamer.”
“You will do,” retorted the captain, “nothing of the sort. There’s a tug coming up now to our assistance, and I shall send you off to Bideford in her in charge of my mate. If you’re awkward, you shall travel with a pair of rusty handcuffs on your heels. I’m going,” said the captain, with an acid grin, “to make a bid for popularity in the newspapers. I’m going to be known as the man who nabbed you when you tried to bolt, and I hope I shall get some sympathy for it; and I hope some one will be kind enough to give me another berth in consequence.”
“Just hear me one minute more,” Shelf pleaded.
“I’ve got no use for any of your talk,” said the captain, sturdily; “and there’s the boat in the water. Down you get into her, or else you’ll be put by a pair of quartermasters. You’ll board the tug, and my mate’ll see you safe ashore in Bideford. After that, you can go to the devil for me; but I expect the police’ll be waiting ready for you.”
Mr. Theodore Shelf stepped on shore at the Devonshire seaport a free man, and free he remained for that night and the succeeding morning, as there was no warrant in the town on which to arrest him. The whole place knew his name, and crowded round the hotel where he stayed with open-mouthed interest. The local police bit their fingers, and betted odds that he would commit suicide; and on suicide the wretched man’s thoughts continually turned. But he could not screw himself up to the pitch. He read with morbid carefulness the newspaper accounts of the crash, and he dulled his soul with brandy. Save for one other thing, that was all he did till the police came and fetched him away. His remaining action was a typical one. He ordered in a local tailor, and once more attired himself in somber black broadcloth. The bright-colored tweeds he burnt. If he had to go back to London, it should be as the ghost of his old self, and not as the caricature of his new.
Of the man’s journey to London, and the peering crowds at every stop, there shall be no further word here; nor of the frenzied attempt to lynch him, which a crowd of his victims made in Paddington Station; nor of the sensational trial; nor of the awful details of destitution which spread all over the face of the land. These things were written of at length in the daily Press, and the memory of them is new and raw. Therefore they need not be repeated.
One other short look at him must suffice for the present time.