Jefferson was grimly in earnest, and it was evident that his thoroughness, which overlooked nothing, compelled the engineer's admiration. It also occurred to Austin that, while there are many ways in which a lover may prove his devotion, few other men would probably have cared for the one Jefferson had undertaken. He was not a very knightly figure when he emerged, smeared with rust and scale, from the second-hand boiler, or crawled about the launch's engines with blackened face and hands; but Austin, who remembered it was for Muriel Gascoyne he had staked all his little capital in that desperate venture, forebore to smile. He knew rather better than Jefferson did that it was a very forlorn hope indeed the latter was venturing on. One cannot heave a stranded steamer off without strenuous physical exertion, and the white man who attempts the latter in a good many parts of Western Africa incontinently dies.
At last all was ready, and one night Jefferson steamed off to the African liner from Las Palmas mole, taking with him the steamboat donkey-man and another English seafarer, who were at the time disgracefully drunk, as well as six Spaniards from the coasting schooners. He said that when he reached the Cumbria he would hire niggers, who would be quite as reliable, and considerably cheaper. As it happened, the Estremedura was going to sea that night, bound for the eastern islands, and Mrs. Hatherly, who was never seasick, and had heard that the climate of one of them where it scarcely ever rained was good for rheumatic affections, had determined to visit it in her. Jacinta, for no very apparent reason, decided to go with her, and it accordingly came about that most of her few acquaintances were with Muriel Gascoyne when she said good-bye to Jefferson at the head of the mole. She kissed him unblushingly, and then, when the launch panted away across the harbour, turned, a little pale in face, but with a firm step, towards the Estremedura, and an hour later stood with Jacinta on the saloon deck, watching the liner's black hull slide down the harbour. Then as the steamer lurched out past the mole, with a blast of her whistle throbbing across the dusky heave, Muriel shivered a little.
"I don't know whether we shall ever meet here again, but I think I could bear that now, and it really couldn't be so very hard, after all," she said. "It would have been horrible if he had gone and had not told me."
Jacinta looked thoughtful, as in fact she was. She was of a more complex, and, in some respects, more refined nature than her companion, while her knowledge of the world was almost startlingly extensive; but wisdom carries one no further than simplicity when one approaches the barriers that divide man's little life from the hereafter. Indeed, there is warrant for believing that when at last they are rolled away, it is not the wise who will see with clearest vision.
"I am not—quite—sure I understand," she said.
There was a trace of moisture on Muriel Gascoyne's cheek, but she held herself erect, and she was tall and large of frame, as well as a reposeful young woman. Though she probably did not know it, there was a suggestion of steadfast unchangeableness in her unconscious pose.
"Now," she said, very simply, "he belongs to me and I to him. If he dies out there—and I know that is possible—it can only be a question of waiting."
Jacinta was a little astonished. She felt that there had been a great and almost incomprehensible change in Muriel Gascoyne since she fell very simply and naturally in love with Jefferson. It was also very evident that she was not consoling herself with empty phrases, or repeating commendable sentiments just because they appealed to her fancy, as some women will. She seemed to be stating what she felt and knew.
"Ah!" said Jacinta, "you knew he might die there, and you could let him go?"
Muriel smiled. "My dear, I could not have stopped him, and now he is gone I think I am in one way glad that it was so. I do not want money—I have always had very little—but, feeling as he did, it was best that he should go. He would not have blamed me afterwards—of that I am certain—but I think I know what he would have felt if hardship came, and I wanted to spare it him." Then, with a faint smile, which seemed to show that she recognised the anti-climax, she became prosaic again. "One has to think of such things. Eight thousand pounds will not go so very far, you know."