"'Look here,' she told me. 'I've had enough of this. I want to be alone. Thank you for troubling to come over.'"
The doctor lifted his shoulders, and made a wry face, that might have been disdain or pity.
"I was leaving her, but she called to me, and I went back. She held out her hand. 'I do thank you for troubling about me. Of course I do. But I want to stay on here—I must.'
"'Well, you know the penalty,' I said. 'I was bound to tell you that.'
"'What of it?' she said, and laughed at me. 'We musn't bother about penalties. Good-bye!'
"I must say she made me feel that if the skipper of that ship had been of different metal, she might almost have pulled him through. But what a man. What a man! I saw his miserable little figure standing not far from where my boat was when I was going. He made as if he were coming to me, and then stopped. I was going to take no notice of him, but went up and explained a thing or two. I'll bet he'll remember them. All he said was: 'I was afraid you'd never change her mind,' and turned away. What a man! There was a pair for you. I could understand him, but what could have been in her mind? Whatever made her talk like that? That's the way of it. There's your romance of the tropics, and your squalid Garden of Eden, when you know it. A monotonous and dreary job, and a woman."
The landlord returned. The monocle fixedly and significantly regarded me. "Have another, Doctor," said the landlord, pointing to the empty tankard. "How long were you in Macassar?" The doctor turned briskly to his old friend, and began some chaff.
4
Ferguson, who had just come into port with a damaged propeller shaft, was telling us how it was. This was his first expansive experience, and there could be no doubt the engine-room staff of the Torrington had behaved very well. The underwriters had recognized that, and handsomely, at a special meeting at Cornhill. Though Ferguson was young for a chief engineer, his professional elders, who were listening to him, showed some critical appreciation of the way he solved his problem. He was sitting at a table of the Negro Boy, drawing a diagram on it, and they stood round.
"There. That was where it was. You see what we had to do. It would not have been so bad in calm weather, but we were labouring heavily, all the way from Savannah. Our old man did not think it possible to do it. But it was no good waiting for something worse to happen."