The commodore tried to wave him to Hugh but the senator's big hand gently prevented. "It begs," he went on, "and every friend of Gideon Hayle and John Courteney on this boat insists, that Madame Hayle be required to leave this suicidal work she's doing and with her daughter and youngest son be put aboard the Antelope to join her husband ahead of all bad news." With his under lip pushed out he smiled into the commodore's serene face.
Hugh spoke. "The Votaress being slow?" he inquired.
"Not at all! But, my young friend, the Votaress can't hold funerals and outrun the Antelope at the same time."
The commodore had turned to Watson: "Want to see me?" The two moved a few paces aft.
"Then it isn't," Hugh asked the senator, "that your hundred signers of this thing are afraid madame will get the cholera?" He took the petition's free end between thumb and finger and softly pulled. But its holder held on.
"Why, yes," said the holder-on, "we fear that, too. Good Lord, she may have the contagion now!" It gave him grim amusement to note that the grandson's face was as quiet as the old man's, yet as hard and heavy as any of the Antelope's big castings. He thought how much better it were to have this chap for an adherent than opponent.
"Yet you're all willing," slowly pressed Hugh, while—with their pull on the paper increasing—they here and the commodore and Watson yonder returned the bow of the bishop as he came from below and passed on up to the sick-room—"you're willing to send the cholera aboard the Antelope?"
"Willing, my God, no, sir! compelled!—to risk it—for the sake of Gideon Hayle and his people and of you and yours, in a great public interest centring in you and them." The speaker smilingly tapped the hard-pulled document so lately urged upon the grandfather. "We couldn't write that—in this paper. When I've explained that I'll hand you this—don't pull it."
"Well, then, let go of it," said Hugh, with a light jerk which put it wholly into his possession.
The senator's eyes blazed, but when he saw that Hugh's, though as much too wide as his own, looked out of a face as set and hard as ever, he recovered his suavity, puffed his cigar, waved it abroad, and said: "That's all right. Take that to the captain at once, will you?"