"It's an interesting story," Capper said. "P'raps you'd like to hear it."
Maud was silent.
He proceeded as if she had answered in the affirmative. "It was on a dark night in the Atlantic ten years ago. Do you remember the wreck of the Hyperion? No, maybe you wouldn't. She ran into a submerged iceberg and was nearly torn in two. I was knocked down by the shock and got jammed against a locker in the saloon. It was a case of every man for himself, and I was soon left to my fate. But Jake--he was working his way across as ship's carpenter--came back on his own to see if there were anyone left below, and found me, wedged there in the wreckage. We were settling down fast, the water was over our knees, and I told him to look out for himself; but he wouldn't. I cursed him for a fool, I remember." Capper's yellow face was strangely alight; his fingers gripped hers tensely. "But that didn't make any difference. He had no time to go and get any implements to work with, so he just set to with his hands and ripped and tore at the wood till at last it splintered and he got me free. He worked like a Titan. I've never forgotten. He got me out just in time, Heaven knows how. The water was above his waist before he'd done, and I was on the verge of drowning. But he did it, and more also. He grabbed me up out of that death-trap, as if I had been a priceless possession of his own. He dragged me upon deck and roped me to him because I was too damaged to help myself. And when we went down, as we very soon did, we sank together and we came up together, and he managed at last to get me to a boat. Now you'll never get him to speak of that episode, but it's about the finest piece of work I've ever come across. The man was utterly unknown to me and I to him. Yet he never thought of passing me by, but just kept on till he'd saved my life. Not a thought to his own safety, mark you. He wasn't out for that. And he wasn't out for reward either. When I offered him money later he just laughed in a purring sort of fashion and told me to keep it for some chap who had failed. 'We don't all of us win out on the hundredth chance,' he said. 'Thank the high gods, not me!' I saw he meant it, so of course I let him have his way. But it's been a sort of bond between us ever since--a bond that stretches but never breaks."
He ceased to speak, ceased also to hold her hand. Maud's face was turned towards him, her blue eyes were intently fixed upon his. She said nothing whatever, and there fell a silence that was curiously intimate between them.
Capper broke it at length. "He's been a bit of a rover, but I've never quite lost sight of him since that night. When I make a friend like that, I can't afford to lose him again. But I've never had a chance of doing him a service till now. He's a married man and considerably more civilized than he was in those days. But I have a notion that there's a leaven of the wild ass still in his composition. That's why I'm afraid you may not realize that he's gold all through--all through." He paused a moment, looking at her quizzically; then: "By way of light relief," he said, "I guess you know the fascinating story of the princess and the frog. She had to take the beast as he was, and even give him her pillow o' nights. But only when she struck at last and threw him against the wall did she find out that she'd caught a prince after all. I guess the man who wrote that story was a student of human nature. It's a comic story anyway."
Maud was laughing. Somehow, inexplicably, the man had eased her burden. "I don't think you are presumptuous, Doctor," she said. "I think you are very kind."
"It's mighty fine of you to take that view," said Capper, with a tug at his yellow beard. "I shall do my best to deserve it."
CHAPTER XXXII
THE ONLY SOLUTION
"Oh, Lord Saltash! So you're home at last! What a pity you didn't come back a little sooner!"