For the abominable selfishness of this remark I could have struck him.
"Are you a man that you can talk like this in the presence of a woman?" I cried. "For shame, sir, for shame! Get up and let me conduct you to your own cabin."
With this I lifted him to his feet and, whether he liked it or not, half led and half dragged him along the saloon to his own quarters. Once there I placed him on his settee, but the next roll of the vessel brought him to the floor and left him crouching in the corner, still clutching the monkey, his knees almost level with his shoulders, and his awful face looking up at me between them. The whole affair was so detestable that my gorge rose at it, and when I left him I returned to the saloon with a greater detestation of him in my heart than I had felt before. I found the Fräulein Valerie seated at the table.
"Fräulein," I said, seating myself beside her, "I am afraid you have been needlessly alarmed. As I said in there, I give you my word there is no immediate danger."
"I am frightened," she answered. "See how my hands are trembling. But it is not death I fear."
"You fear that man," I said, nodding my head in the direction of the cabin I had just left; "but I assure you, you need not do so, for to-day, at least, he is harmless."
"Ah! you do not know him as I do," she replied. "I have seen him like this before. As soon as the storm abates he will be himself again, and then he will hate us both the more for having been witnesses of his cowardice." Then, sinking her voice a little, she added: "I often wonder, Mr. Forrester, whether he can be human. If so, he must be the only one of his kind in the world, for Nature surely could not permit two such men to live."
CHAPTER X.
It was almost dark when the yacht entered the harbour of Port Said, though the sky at the back of the town still retained the last lingering colours of the sunset, which had been more beautiful that evening than I ever remembered to have seen it before. Well acquainted as I was with the northern shores of the Mediterranean, this was the first time I had been brought into contact with the southern, and, what was more important, it was also the first occasion on which I had joined hands with the Immemorial East. In the old days I had repeatedly heard it said by travellers that Port Said was a place not only devoid of interest, but entirely lacking in artistic colour. I take the liberty of disagreeing with my informants in toto. Port Said greeted me with the freshness of a new life. The colouring and quaint architecture of the houses, the vociferous boatmen, the monotonous chant of the Arab coalers, the string of camels I could just make out turning the corner of a distant street, the donkey boys, the Soudanese soldiers at the barriers, and last, but by no means least, the crowd of shipping in the harbour, constituted a picture that was as full of interest as it was of new impressions.