“My dear boy,” said I, “we mustn’t put too stupendous a value on our fascinations. Denvarre and his brother are good men all through. And you and I are detrimentals—or at any rate I only shave it by a short head,” I added, as I thought of the collection which was to bring in a tidy trifle.
Poor Gerry. He just let himself loose upon the word. He cursed wealth and all that wealth brings with a sudden burst of passion that I had never dreamed he was capable of. He railed at Lady Delahay; he condemned the name of Garlicke to the lowest pit; he anathematized every usage of polite Society and every useless luxury that we are bred to consider a necessity, showing the aptest reasons for considering them the true creators of every vice and cruelty that is perpetrated beneath the sun. He swore in a very storm of passionate bitterness, leaving no object of his hatred untouched. He went into comminatory details which were almost superfluous. And I let him rave.
For, mark me, there are masculine moods where oaths and curses are the equivalent of feminine tears, and in neither case should you attempt to restrain them if they are the culmination of some great tribulation. They sweep out the bitterness in their stream, and though the ache be left in the wound, it has no longer a poisoned smart. And that is why Gerry shook my hand a few minutes later, and let less haggard lines pervade his countenance, while he confessed himself a fool. And in this worthier frame of mind I led him aft, and into the conversation of his fellows.
As the dusk drew down—and you must recollect it was nearly mid-summer in those latitudes, and the nights were but an hour or two long—we managed to get some sort of dinner. The cook evolved a meal which he would have considered unbefitting his dignity at another time, but which we ate on our cracked plates with great appreciation. For the first time for over a week we fed at a steady table, and enjoyed the peaceable conversation of our companions. Gerry, under the influence of coffee and chartreuse, even rose to the lengths of chaffing poor little Lessaution.
The latter had spent the afternoon in unavailing effort. Supplied with a boat and crew he had set forth to fend along the great rock wall which seemed to stretch unbroken to the horizon, seeking, but with an utter want of success, for a means of ascending the same. And the poor little chap was taking it most seriously.
Gerry thought fit to twit him on his futile adventure, and he was furious as a trapped rat. It was suggested to him that the quest was, and ever would be, hopeless, and that we had better give it up before we all got cricks in our necks staring up precipices we were never destined to climb. We declared our conviction that we were in the wrong spot altogether—the responsibility for our position rested in the first place with the Professor, I should explain, who had worked out by some intricate scheme of his own the probable route the storm-driven Mayans must have taken—and that he must have entirely misjudged the wind, or the currents, or something. Finally, that there could not possibly be anything worth seeing if he did happen to claw up the barren crags.
The little savant fell upon his adversary, foot, horse, and artillery. He demonstrated that he was a disgrace to the name of Englishman, and had of imagination no single jot. That it did not matter, in effect, what such an unsportsmanlike rascal did think, for fortunately our destinies lay with me—the good earl, let it be understood—who would be guided in this matter by the dictates of sense and practicality. He himself would only give up the quest with his breath, and staked his reputation on his success. Cowards might do and say what they pleased. Finally, in an access of irritation he flung from us to go on deck and compose his vehement mortification with a cigar, and to gaze hungrily at the cliffs which mocked him with cold white serenity.
Small talk and amiability were the order of the hour. Induced by our fervent representation, Gwen even went to the piano and enlivened these desolate solitudes with a song or two. We were settling into a thoroughly pleasant evening, though amongst us two hearts were still throbbing lonelily.
Suddenly a shrill yell resounded from above. There was the sound of hurried footsteps on the companion, and Lessaution burst back into our midst. His eyes were agleam, his hair stuck up like quills in his excitement. He bellowed at us.
“The ice goes, the ice goes!” he hallooed. “It goes, it disappears, it draws itself off. The sea runs away. There will be nothing—nothing at all. You shall see. We sink to the bottom; no water shall remain at all. Name of a pipe! what is to become of us?”