"Yes," said Deedes, leaning back against a bulkhead, with his arms still folded. "It's a pilot's cutter—the first thing handy, I suppose—with the police and your father aboard her. One word before he comes. Once you'd have come fast enough to my arms. Enid—I'm done for—come to them now!"
He unfolded and flung them wide as he spoke; a great look lit his face, half mocking, half sublime, and down my duck jacket, where his arms had been, a dark stream trickled to the deck. Before I could get to him he fell in a white heap under our eyes.
| * | * | * | * | * | * | * | * |
Deedes was dead. Watson was dying. Two constables in the cutter were badly hit; and with their ghastly burden the little ships tacked home in consort to Port Philip Heads.
It was midnight when we saw the lights. The bank-manager and I stood together on the cutter's deck, he with a brace of heavy bags between his heels. His daughter was down below, but the thought of her troubled him still. As he said, the money was the bank's, and it was safe; but his daughter was his own, and this scandal would attach forever to her name. I denied it hotly, but the old man would have it so.
"Don't tell me," he grumbled. "I know the world, and Enid will go ashore with something unpleasantly like a slur upon her name."
"Then it won't be for long," I at last retorted. "We meant it to keep until we got there; but with your permission, sir, your daughter and I shall go ashore engaged."