“Well then, shove me ashore, somewhere.”
“That is talking nonsense!” said Skelton.
Ratcliffe had risen and was leaning over the rail beside the other. His eyes were fixed on the Sarah Tyler, the disreputable Sarah, and as he looked at her Jude and Satan suddenly seemed to him real live free human beings and Skelton as being not entirely alive nor, for all his wealth, free.
It was Skelton who gave the Tylers a nimbus, extra color, fascination, especially Jude. There was a lot of fascination about Jude, even without the background of Skelton.
“It’s not talking nonsense a bit,” said he, “and, if you can trundle along the rest of the cruise alone, I’ll drop you here.”
“Drop you on this island?”
“No—I’d like to go for a cruise with those chaps—I mean that chap in the mud barge over there. He asked me, any time I wanted to.”
“Are you in earnest?”
“Of course I am. It would be no end of a picnic, and I want to shove round these seas. I can get a boat back from Havana.”
Skelton felt that this was the washerwoman of Barbados over again,—irresponsibility—bad form. He was, under his courteousness as a host, heartily sick of Ratcliffe and his ways and outlook. A solitary by inclination, he would not at all have objected to finishing this cruise by himself. All the same, he strongly objected to the idea just put before him.