On the present occasion, having cruised from port to port in the Mediterranean for nearly six weeks, it was certainly no ill news to him to hear that Saltash had at last had enough. The weather was perfect, too perfect for a man of his bull-dog instincts. He was thoroughly tired of the endless spring sunshine and of the chattering, fashionable crowds that Saltash was wont to assemble on the yacht. He was waiting with an iron patience for the word that should send them forth over the great Atlantic rollers, with the ocean spray bursting over their bows and the sting of the ocean wind in their faces. That was the sort of life that appealed to him. He had no use for civilization; the froth of society had no attraction for him. He preferred a deeper draught.
Saltash was thoroughly cosmopolitan in his tastes; he liked amusement, but he abhorred boredom. He declared that for him it was the root of all evil. He was never really wicked unless he was bored. And then—que voulez-vous? He did not guide the star of destiny.
"Yes," he said, after a thoughtful silence, "we will certainly put to sea to-morrow—unless—" he turned his head and threw a merry grin at his companion—"unless Fortune has any tricks up her sleeve for me, for I am going ashore for one more fling to-night."
Larpent smoked on immovably, his blue-grey eyes staring out to the vivid sky-line, his sunburnt face quite imperturbable.
"We shall be ready to start as soon as you come aboard, my lord," he said.
"Good!" said Saltash lightly. "I may be late, or—more probably—very early. Leave the gangway for me! I'll let you know when I'm aboard."
He got up as if he moved on springs and leaned against the rail, looking down quizzically at the man who sat stolidly smoking in the deck-chair. No two people could have formed a stronger contrast—the yacht's captain, fair-bearded, with the features of a Viking—the yacht's owner, dark, alert, with a certain French finesse about him that gave a strange charm to a personality that otherwise might have been merely fantastic.
Suddenly he laughed. "Do you know, Larpent, I often think to myself what odd tricks Fate plays? You for instance—you, the captain of a private yacht when you ought to be roving the high seas in a Flying Dutchman! You probably were a few generations ago."
"Ah!" Larpent said, through a cloud of smoke. "Life isn't what it was."
"It's an infernal fraud, most of it," said Saltash. "Always promising and seldom fulfilling!"