Jerome took the note, opened it, read it through rapidly. He could feel his heart thumping. The communication bespoke his immediate presence aboard the Star of Troy by way of answer. The boy smiled with all his white young teeth, and, in gentle sing-song English, admitted the matter must be urgent, since his instructions were to wait all night if necessary, and to bring back with him no answer but “Misser Stoot.”
What could it mean? Somehow Jerome kept remembering how peculiarly Elsa had gazed at him when she said: “True, what else could you do?” As a matter of fact, he had once thought of speaking to Captain Utterbourne about an opening of some sort; but the opportunity hadn’t just seemed to develop. Here, as though determined he should be kept vividly in the swim, fate submitted an eleventh hour opportunity. Did it amount to that?
He followed his oriental guide eagerly.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
NEWS
I
“Did you ever hear of Daedalus?” asked Captain Utterbourne dreamily when his caller had been shown into the little white cabin he called his shop. “I’ve just come across a fascinating account of him in a book of myths. Daedalus, it seems, was the man who invented sails. Like all advanced spirits from the beginning of time, he was looked upon as mad—just because he was always experimenting—trying to fasten sails on to his own body, and similar devices—h’m? Isn’t it funny how little it takes to make the world think you mad?”
It wasn’t, perhaps, quite tangible—almost, in fact, as though the master of this romantic freighter were himself, after all, part of a myth. “And anyhow,” puzzled Jerome, “tangible or not, what has Daedalus, even if he did invent sails, to do with this hurry-up call on my last night in Borneo?”
His glance discovered upon the table a sheet of paper scrawled over with anchors in many positions. The Captain had evidently been busy on them prior to his arrival. Then his glance strayed to the map of the world, and again, in a parenthetical flash, he felt its peculiar thrill—almost as though it were a special or enchanted map. Jerome had always more or less responded to the thrill of maps—a little, even, in the funny old school geographies. Now that he was himself abroad upon it, the spell was brightly multiplied. What a pace he had gone! At length he was aboard a ship in the harbour of Sandakan, listening to a story about the man who invented sails.... And back of the story there was something—something.... The suspense was terrific; yet “I must be patient,” he told himself; for he guessed that the Captain was a man who, like certain horses, would only proceed the more slowly if urged.