Was he alive still? She could not tell; but that she would find out now. For once she adjudged old Godfrey O'Neill to be wrong. She was not going to let the discreet veil remain any longer over a man who, whatever his subsequent career had been, at any rate was a martyr once, and her father.
CHAPTER XXI
THE FEELING ON THE COAST
"Well, Carter-me-lad," said Captain Image, coming into the room, "they tell me you're the most unpopular man in Liverpool. They want to give you dinners, and put your photo in the papers, and hear you make a speech, and you won't have anything to do with anybody. What's broke? Tin troubling you?"
"Oh! tin's all right. But I've got a constitutional dislike to marching along at the tail of a brass band, that's all. Besides I feel an awful humbug when all these silly stay-at-home people insist on believing that the one and only reason I went up country was to chop down old Kallee's private crucifixion tree. Have a cigar?"
"Not me in here, me lad. I came home from the Islands with the old M'poso full of passengers, and I've smoked myself half sick on cigars. I'll suck at a pipe. By the way, I've got a message for you from Kallee. The old sinner came on board himself when we were lying off Edmondson's factory trying to get your ore, and nearly drank the ship dry before I could get quit of him. Owe-it Slade's been palming off I.O.U.'s on him. He'd got quite a sheaf of them. He says when you marry Laura he'll give them to you as a wedding present, or words to that effect. But in the meanwhile if he can catch Slade he's just going to chop his head off to prevent him putting any more paper into circulation."
"Well?"
"Well, you see, me lad, Slade owes our fo'c'sle shop a matter of four pounds odd which we can't collect, and he's got a Holland gun of mine that I shouldn't really like to lose. Besides, come to thinking of it, I suppose Laura's fond of him anyway. Couldn't you do something for him?"
Carter stared. "Has he left O'Neill and Craven's, then?"
Captain Image stopped down the tobacco in his pipe with a horny forefinger. "Why, no, and you'll have to pay to get him away."