And the consternation he felt was reflected on the faces of Southerley and Bayre.
CHAPTER VII.
SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE
There was no doubt about it; there, in the very middle of their pile of light luggage, some of which had been carefully displaced to make room for it, the three young men found the substantial basket they had last seen under the arm of the peasant girl on the quay; and in the basket, lightly covered over by a dark woollen shawl, through the meshes of which it could breathe perfectly well, was a live child.
Repton had moved the shawl, on seeing something move underneath, just far enough back to disclose the tiny face of a healthy-looking infant, some fifteen to eighteen months old, who, just waking from sleep, was staring up at the strangers with its face puckered in readiness for a good cry.
Repton was the first to ascertain this fact, and his increased consternation took a murderous form.
“Let’s chuck it overboard!” cried he, with ferocity.
“Give it to the stewardess,” suggested Southerley, more humanely.
Bayre, meanwhile, with presence of mind amounting to genius, had dashed forward, and seizing an indiarubber tube attached to a boat-shaped bottle containing some opaque fluid which lay beside the child, had thrust it into the infant’s mouth and thereby checked the utterance of its very first scream.
His friends looked at him in admiration, but the little group of passengers and ship’s hands who had been attracted by the commotion looked with more derision than sympathy upon the heroic fellow as he made further investigations into this alarming article of luggage.
“It’s not a peasant’s child,” he said, when he had noted the quality of the baby’s clothes.