Jimmy felt more cheerful when he dined with Aynsley in the saloon. The depression that had rested on them all seemed to have been lifted with the disappearance of the wreck. Even Clay appeared to be brighter. He sent a request for Jimmy to come to him as soon as he finished dinner.
When Jimmy entered the cabin, Clay lay in his berth, comfortably raised on pillows. He gave Jimmy a friendly nod.
“She’s gone? You made a good job?”
“Yes,” Jimmy answered cheerfully. “We didn’t spare the dynamite.”
Clay beckoned him forward, and, reaching out awkwardly to a small table by his berth, took up a glass of champagne. Another stood near it, ready filled.
“I make a bad host and soon get tired, but Aynsley will do his best for you,” he said cordially. He smiled and raised his glass. “Good luck to you; you’re a white man!”
Jimmy drained his glass, and took Clay’s from his shaking hand. When the elder man thanked him with a gesture, Jimmy saw that he was too ill to talk, and he went out quietly and joined Aynsley on deck.
He spent three days on board the yacht, which steamed steadily south, but late on the fourth night a steward awakened him.
“It’s blowing fresh, sir,” he said. “The captain thought you’d like to know your boat’s towing very wild and he can’t hold on to her long.”
Jimmy had been prepared for such an emergency, and he was on deck in five minutes, fully dressed with his sea-boots and slickers on; and Aynsley joined him in the lee of the deckhouse with a pilot coat over his pajamas. The engines were turning slowly, and the rolling of the yacht and the showers of spray showed that the sea was getting up.