"Then I'll stay here," snapped Jemima, with all the recklessness of a woman prepared to sacrifice anything and everything to gain her end. "If I see you speaking to that slut, Zara, I'll go straight to Chard. So now you know."
Slade did know, as he also knew that even though it were to ruin them both, she would carry out her threat. He spent the best part of his dinner-hour trying to explain his position, and to pacify the perturbed Jemima. He succeeded only in rendering her more unreasonable and jealous than ever. Mrs. Slade was nothing if not feminine, and her argumentative tactics were strikingly so. So soon as one position she took up was assailed and destroyed, she retreated to another, until beaten on that, she returned to her initial standpoint. Fearful lest she should drive him through sheer exasperation to use physical violence, Slade left the house. When he banged the door, Jemima sat down victorious, and proceeded to twist up her hair, which had broken loose in her excitement.
"Zara, indeed!" she went on viciously to herself. "I'll tear the eyes out of her if I catch her as much as looking at my 'usband."
And in this strain the good lady continued until she was tired.
Meanwhile, Jeremiah, chafing with anger at his wife, and at women in general, went on his beat, which for the day happened to be on the beach road. He noticed a new vessel anchored in the harbour--a graceful schooner of some 600 tons. She was a rakish-looking craft, smart and workmanlike in appearance; and Slade, giving way to his curiosity for the moment, strolled down to the jetty on the chance of hearing something about her. But before he got that far, a boat with two or three men in her put off from the schooner. She reached the pier about the same time as the policeman. To his surprise, he saw that one of the men in the boat was Finland. The young mate sprang lightly up the steps, followed more soberly by a small, sallow-faced man.
"Hullo, messmate!" said Jack, greeting Slade, whom he knew; "here I am again, and yonder is my new ship--the Dayspring, ain't she a clipper?"
"Pretty enough," said Slade, who was grudging of his praise; "but a bit too slight in the build for my taste."
"Stuff! What does a lubber like you know of a craft? Why, she's going round the Horn anyhow, on her way to the South Seas. I just dropped in here to say good-bye to my uncle. I'm first mate this trip, and here's my skipper, Captain Shackel."
Slade eyed the small yellow-looking man thoughtfully. He had some skill in reading a face, and he concluded that the skipper was about the last man he would care to trust. In truth, Jacob Shackel was not prepossessing. He had a mean, rat-like little face, as brown and wrinkled as a walnut-shell, and hardly larger. His body was shrivelled up in a suit of blue serge, apparently several sizes too large for him. His voice was screechy and effeminate. He extended a claw in greeting to Slade.
"Yes, I'm Captain Jacob, I am," said he, winking his one eye, for he was possessed of only a single optic, and that red as any ferret's. "Well known on the high seas I am. Finland's friends is mine."