Pam and the Countess

by E. E. Cowper

Hughie pushed his craft cleverly up to the counter, shipped his sculls, and gripped the stern rail as he stood up. It was neatly done. He pushed the dinghy a little farther, holding on till he got the bows in position, then he bent the towing rope--the painter--on to the rail, and climbed up. Being there he made sure of the painter--he never left things to chance like Adrian did, and he possessed in a remarkable degree the quick neatness of the born sailor's handling of things.

Having finished, he stood still and looked about.

The deck showed white. The mainsail was not stowed, but just let down and lightly lashed, ready to haul up quickly in the morning: there was nothing to hurt it but dew--dew was everywhere and the footing slippery. As he stood looking along the shadowy white outline against which the mast rose oddly black, and the rigging seemed like black spiders' web, Hughie again wished he had the torch. Then an idea struck him entirely to his taste. It was better certainly to be in the dark, especially as he knew where the matches were kept. All was well.

He stepped off the counter down into the well and looked at the companion doors--open half-way. Hughie gave a cursory examination to that, and then went along the deck to find out the state of the fore-hatch. That was lifted sideways an inch or two--Adrian had slipped a marline-spike under the edge of it to insure a draught. Without question this had not been touched. She was inside, and she had entered by the companion.

Hughie crept back along the side of the deck-house roof, let himself down, and took a seat on the companion steps. He wanted to listen, also he was reviewing the position and the probabilities. What would this girl do? He had never been at close quarters, or even near her, but when one is only seven and small, without being a coward it is reasonable to calculate chances of warfare with a person double that age and strong.

Hughie considered the black, silent interior that showed through the opening, then he murmured in the faintest whisper--under cover of the tide-rush rippling against the bows.

"If she kills me she'll be hung." It was a comforting thought to have British law on his side. Sir Marmaduke would see justice done undoubtedly, in spite of his mysterious dealings with the stranger. "She's his prisoner," thought Hughie, which seemed simple enough.

He was as noiseless as a cat, and as wiry--he slipped through the gap into the darkness within and proceeded on all fours. In his mind was a certain small and neat lantern belonging to Adrian--it was plated, and fitted with a bit of candle in such a way that nothing disturbed its flame. He proposed to light this, and the thought occurred that some day, when this business came out, he would ask Addie to give it to him--when he went back to school. Surely the labourer was worthy of some sort of hire, and that lantern would add extraordinary joy to "the cave" in dull winter days to come.

Thinking all these matters over, Hughie achieved a noiseless passage through the saloon into the store pantry. He reasoned that the girl was more likely to be in the fore-cabin--as a more remote hiding place; at the same time she might easily be asleep on one of the saloon bunks; these formed cushioned seats in the day-time, and, when the lids were lifted, hammocks within, for which the cushions were used. She could not know about that, so she would lie down on the outside, and it made him tingle to realize that she might be within a few inches of him. He reached the pantry, amidships, without hearing or seeing anything, and there sat down again, his back against the partition, to listen and locate her whereabouts if possible before he betrayed himself by lighting the lantern.

The silence was profound; he could hear the water rippling along the hull underneath. Then he thought it might be wise to creep through into the fore-cabin; to that end he felt along the shelf for the admired lantern, could not find it, and realized that Adrian might have moved it; he could not find the matches either. It was tiresome, for he began to want light, and time was getting on without tangible results. Then the faint greyness along one side of the raised fore-hatch reminded him that he could mount the steps of the little ladder, push the hatch aside, and see better, without much trouble. It was still dark outside, but that was nothing to the profounder dark inside, where the only means of seeing at all was through the thick ground glass, double, along the top of the saloon above deck.