I did not feel equal to pursuing this conversation in the strain which Forster evidently expected of me, and so I tried to turn it.
‘The tide is very high to-day,’ I remarked, as we rode into the fort, and came in sight of the sea.
‘By Jove! so it is; and yesterday it barely washed the landing-quay. What a sell it would be, Norton, if some day this sea, with its changeable tides, was to take it into its head to overflow the fort and flood the cantonment!’
‘How could it?’ I exclaimed, hastily.
The idea is ridiculous, and as ridiculous my feeling annoyed at it, for I have never heard it mooted by any one before; and yet it is not a pleasant one; for the plain is so very level, and we have no protection whatever from the encroachments of the ocean.
‘Well, I don’t know,’ he answered; ‘but I think I’ve read of such things. It would be a regular washing for these poor devils in the fort, though, wouldn’t it?’
‘Don’t talk of anything so horrible!’ I answered.
And then we hailed a boat; and dismounting from our horses, gave them into the charge of their native grooms, and were soon dancing over the sunny waves. It was dancing with a vengeance; for the cross-currents are so various, that at one moment we were driven a long way out of our course, and the next shot back again in the opposite direction with a rapidity which threatened to upset the frail structure to which we had trusted ourselves. Meanwhile the Ostrich steamed slowly into sight, and took up her station at the usual distance from land; whilst we beat about the harbour for more than an hour, wondering if we should ever board her; and half afraid, more than once, that she would depart again without our having accomplished it. But we were successful at last; and the first object which I saw on reaching the deck was the figure of a girl, sitting apart by herself in a distant and reserved manner, which I immediately singled out as that of Miss Anstruther, and the sequel proved that I was right.
‘Is Miss Anstruther on board?’ was the query which Forster put to his friend Dunn, as they met at the head of the gangway.