There was a loud clink of bottle or glass, and then quite plainly came the setting down of something hard upon a shelf, the sound coming plainly through the opening we had so laboriously made when Mr Preddle was a prisoner in this cabin, and Mr Frewen and I in the next.
Then I heard a loud cough. There was a squeaking sound of a cork being thrust into a bottle, and the doctor went out of his cabin, shut the door sharply, and went off, while it was like an electric shock through me, and I stared wildly, for Walters started up, and in a vicious angry voice exclaimed—
“Brute! Beast! I only wish—”
He stopped short as he vigorously wrenched himself round.
“I thought you were gone,” he said blankly. “He told you to come away.”
“I stopped to help you,” I said. “I did not like to have you left when you were so bad.”
“No, you didn’t,” he cried, with a vicious snarl. “You stopped to play the miserable, contemptible, cowardly spy. It’s just like you, Dale. You always were a beast!”
“If you call me a beast, I’ll knock your head off!” I cried, for my temper was rising against him and against myself, for I felt that I had been imposed upon, and horribly weak and stupid in my sympathy for one who was shamming from beginning to end.
“It would take a better man than you,” he snarled.
“Not it, though you are bigger and stronger,” I cried. “Get up, and I’ll show you.”