“We ran her in,” he told them, “with the snow blinding us. It was working up for a heavy blow, and as we’d have to beat her out we couldn’t take sail off her. We stood on until we heard the sea along the edge of the ice, and then there was nothing to do but jam her on the wind and thrash her clear. There was only a plank or two of the boat, an oar, and Charly’s cap, when we came back again!”
“After all, though the boat was smashed, they might have gotten out,” Hastings suggested.
“Well,” said Dampier simply, “it didn’t seem likely. The ice was sharp and ragged, and there was a long wash of sea. A man’s not tough enough to stand much of that kind of hammering.”
Agatha’s face grew whiter, but Dampier went on again.
“Anyway,” he said, “they didn’t turn up at the inlet as we’d fixed, and that decided the thing. If Wyllard had been alive, he surely would have been there.”
“Isn’t it just possible that he might have fallen into the hands of the Russians?” asked Hastings.
“I naturally thought of that, but so far as the chart shows there isn’t a settlement within leagues of the spot. Besides, supposing the Russians had got him, how could I have helped him? They’d have sent him off in the first place to one of the bigger settlements in the South, and if the authorities couldn’t have connected him with any illegal sealing they’d no doubt have managed to send him across to Japan by and by. In that case, he’d have gotten home without any trouble.”
Dampier paused, and it was significant that he turned to Agatha with a deprecatory gesture.
“No,” he added, “there was nothing I could do.”
It was evident that Agatha acquitted him, but she asked a question.