“Ah!”
“So I told him the seas were too high for you; you’d got seasick and changed your mind.”
Roberta looked away. “I told you if I stayed in my cabin, it must be on account of something else—even neuralgia. You know that I never get seasick; I hate people who get seasick.”
She rose suddenly and walked away. He thought for an instant that she had used a different tone—not quite the same tone which had surprised him at Stoketon when she gave herself to his protection, but at least something like that tone. But, as he watched her walk away, he knew he must have imagined it. Her air of complete disregard of him had never piqued him more. He jumped up and caught step with her.
“Kindly do not assume that the Corinthian is certain to beat us in!”
“How are you going to prevent it?” she questioned practically.
He did not tell her, for the sufficient reason that he did not know; but that it must be done he now was certain; and there was little time to lose to learn the way to do it. He let her leave him and go within without protest. He paced round and round the deck.
“Fog’s thinning.” His friend, the relief wireless operator, stopped beside him at the rail.
Indeed, it was fog no longer; the cessation of the blasts of the siren overhead admitted it; only mist remained, and it was a swiftly melting mist which blew with the breeze and vanished under the noon high sun. The horizon showed sharp, clear, as the pale blue of the sunny sky met the deep green of the sea in a line all about the circle of sight. One blotch only broke it—a spot of smoke on the very horizon edge, a spot which was quite abreast the Cumberland, and slowly, very slowly, but quite surely, was creeping ahead.
The operator went into the wireless station and returned.