“Well, I’m hanged!” said Ratcliffe, suddenly blazing out. “First you say go and then you say don’t! Of course that’s enough: you’ve practically fired me off your boat.”
“Do not twist my words,” said the other. “That is a subtle form of prevarication I can’t stand.”
“I think we had better stop this,” said Ratcliffe. “I’m going! If I don’t see you again. I’ll say goodby.”
“And please understand,” said the other, who was rather white about the mouth, “please understand—”
“Oh, I know,” said Ratcliffe. “Goodby!”
He dived below to the saloon and rang for his bedroom steward.
Burning with anger and irritation and a feeling that he had been sat upon by Skelton, snubbed, sneered at, and altogether outrageously used, he could not trust himself to do his own packing. He sat on his bunkside while the steward stuffed a portmanteau with necessaries, and as he sat the thought came to him of what would happen were Tyler to refuse to take him. He would have to take refuge on Palm Island. It was a comic opera sort of idea; yet, such was the state of his mind, he actually entertained it.
Skelton was no longer “Skelly,” but “that beast Skelton.” Then he tipped the steward and the chief steward, telling them that he was going for a cruise in that “yawl over there.” On deck he met Norton and Simmons and told them the same tale. Skelton had vanished to his cabin. He told the first and second officers that he had said goodby to his host and asked for a boat to be lowered.
“I’ll pick you up most likely at Havana,” said he to gloze the matter over. “I expect I’ll have a good time, but rather rough. I want to do some fishing.”
The whole thing seemed like a dream and not a particularly pleasant one. Embarked on this business now, he almost wished himself done with it. The yacht was comfortable, the cooking splendid; to satisfy any want, one had only to touch a bell. There were no bells on board the Sarah Tyler. A lavatory and a sort of bathroom invented by “Pap” were the only conveniences, and the bath was impracticable. It was “Pap’s” only failure, for the sea-cock connecting it with the outer ocean was so arranged or constituted that as likely as not it would let in the Caribbean before you could “stop it off.”