All this Charlotte saw. She was looking on when the two men were dragged aboard, the big Irishman still unconscious, and the rescuer in the final ditch of exhaustion—breathless, sodden, reeling with weariness.
And afterward, when the Belle Julie's prow was once more turned to the north, Miss Farnham had no thought of stopping at the clerk's office when she flew back to her state-room with the letter to Mr. Galbraith hidden in her bosom and clutched tightly as if she were afraid it might cry out its accusing secret of its own accord.
X
QUICKSANDS
On the morning following the rescue of the mate, Charlotte Farnham awoke with the conviction that she had been miraculously saved from incurring the penalties dealt out to those who rush blindly into the thick of things without due thought and careful consideration.
In the light of a new day it seemed almost incredible that, only a few hours earlier, she could have been so rash as to assume that there was no possibility of a mistake; that she had been on the verge of sending a possibly innocent man to answer as he could for the sins of the guilty.
Who could be sure? Could she go into court and swear that this man and the man she had seen in the bank were one and the same? Yesterday she had thought that she could; but to-day she was equally sure that she could not.
But the Puritan conscience was not to be entirely silenced. Reason sits in a higher seat than that occupied by the senses, and reason argued that a man who would forgive his enemy, and instantly risk his life in proof of the forgiveness, could not be a desperate criminal. Conscience pointed out the alternative. A little careful investigation would remove the doubt—or confirm it. Somebody on the boat must know the deck-hand, or know enough about him to establish his real identity.