A Mediterranean mystery

by Fred E. Wynne

But at the same time I knew I was the one member of the party who could not be affected by the news, whatever it might be.

Still holding his letter in both hands and glancing at it, Captain Welfare walked across to Edmund and spoke to him.

Edmund nodded, called Jakoub, and handed over the wheel to him. Then they both disappeared down the companion.

I set down all these details as minutely as I can remember them, because it is from them that I have since had to piece together in my mind all that was happening during this time when I had no clue to their meaning.

I had no mind to speak to Jakoub, and stood leaning over the bulwark watching the lessening smudge of black smoke that represented the little steamer.

Edmund had left us sailing with free sheets on our course to Guernsey, so I was surprised on looking up to see the crew getting in sheets, while Jakoub put us on a course close-hauled to windward.

I surprised a look in Jakoub’s face as though he were waiting for some sign of uneasiness on my part. His face was more than usually insolent, I thought, so I merely looked up along the leech of the sail till the tremor died from it as the Astarte settled to her new work. Then I returned to my former posture and waited ten minutes by my watch before I went below.

The saloon was empty, but I heard voices from Welfare’s cabin, which had room for a good-sized table in it, and served as a kind of office and chart-room.

I lay down on one of our delightfully comfortable locker couches with a novel I had been trying to get interested in. The steady motion of the boat and the soft diffused light that came down from the skylight were very soothing.

The book was one that Captain Welfare regarded as a masterpiece of literature. He would not be satisfied until I had read and praised it. I was conscientiously trying to do the former, and intended afterwards to praise it without consulting my conscience. It was one of those novels that people write again and again, like the pictures that turn up season after season at the Academy—“Nymphs Bathing,” “Autumn’s Fiery Finger,” and the like. I forget whether this book was about Cavaliers and Roundheads, or the French Revolution. But very soon I began to be interested in the patterns made by the spaces between the printed words; they seemed to run in wavy lines down the page, and soon the book had lost all power to bore me. Presently I heard the cabin-door open, and Edmund and Welfare came out, speaking in low tones.