“I had forgotten,” said Skelton, dismissing the subject.
There were no guests. Ponsonby was to have come, but he was indisposed; yet the luncheon was just as formal an affair as though a dozen had been present instead of two.
Half-way through the meal, however, Ratcliffe’s spirits began to brighten under the influence of Perrier Jouet and the harlequin thought that began to dance in his head, “I am going for a honeymoon to the sandspit with Jude!”
He laughed occasionally at nothing in particular, and Skelton thought his manner strange, heady, queer, and began to thank his stars that Ponsonby was indisposed. He noticed also that Ratcliffe’s hands, despite scrubbing, bore the evidence of hard work not dissociated with tar. There was also something queer about his hair.
There was! Satan had barbarized it down at Cormorant with the pair of scissors he used on Jude.
Skelton, in asking Ratcliffe on board to luncheon, had considered himself a most forgiving individual. Leaving aside their little quarrel at Palm Island, remained the fact that Ratcliffe had left his ship, deserted him for the company of those Yankee “scowbankers,” and, to make matters worse, Ratcliffe seemed to have enjoyed the exchange.
Now, in closer company with the delinquent, he was beginning to regret his forgiveness. “The man had deteriorated!”
As a result of this impression his manner had stiffened; he felt irritated and bored.
The steward had withdrawn, having placed the dessert on the table, and Skelton was in the act of carving a pineapple in the only way a pineapple ought to be carved,—that is to say by tearing it into pieces with two forks,—when Ratcliffe, who had been staring at the fruit as though hypnotized, suddenly broke into a chuckle of laughter.
The pineapple, connecting itself, maybe, with canned pineapples robbed from the store room of the Haliotis, had suddenly brought up the vision of Satan.