“I will thank you for your caution and remember it,” Mr. Sabin answered. “Farewell!”
Felix raised his hat, and Mr. Sabin returned the salute. The whistle sounded. Felix stepped out on to the platform.
“You will not forget the letter?” he asked
“I will deliver it in person without fail,” Mr. Sabin answered.
CHAPTER XLI
MR. AND MRS. WATSON OF NEW YORK
It was their third day out, and Mr. Sabin was enjoying the voyage very much indeed. The Calipha was a small boat sailing to Boston instead of New York, and contemptuously termed by the ocean-going public an old tub. She carried, consequently, only seven passengers besides Mr. Sabin, and it had taken him but a very short time to decide that of those seven passengers not one was interested in him or his affairs. He had got clear away, for the present at any rate, from all the complications and dangers which had followed upon the failure of his great scheme. Of course by this time the news of his departure and destination was known to every one whom his movements concerned. That was almost a matter of course, and realising even the impossibility of successful concealment, Mr. Sabin had made no attempt at any. He had given the name of Sabin to the steward, and had secured the deck’s cabin for his own use. He chatted every day with the captain, who treated him with respect, and in reply to a question from one of the stewards who was a Frenchman, he admitted that he was the Duc de Souspennier, and that he was travelling incognito only as a whim. He was distinctly popular with every one of the seven passengers, who were a little doubtful how to address him, but whom he succeeded always in putting entirely at their ease. He entered, too, freely into the little routine of steamer life. He played shuffleboard for an hour or more every morning, and was absolutely invincible at the game; he brought his golf clubs on deck one evening after dinner, and explained the manner of their use to an admiring little circle of the seven passengers, the captain, and doctor. He rigorously supported the pool each day, and he even took a hand at a mild game of poker one wet afternoon, when timidly invited to do so by Mr. Hiram Shedge, an oil merchant of Boston. He had in no way the deportment or manner of a man who had just passed through a great crisis, nor would any one have gathered from his conversation or demeanour that he was the head of one of the greatest houses in Europe and a millionaire. The first time a shadow crossed his face was late one afternoon, when, coming on deck a little behind the others after lunch, he found them all leaning over the starboard bow, gazing intently at some object a little distance off, and at the same time became aware that the engines had been put to half-speed.
He was strolling towards the little group, when the captain, seeing him, beckoned him on to the bridge.