"What are you waiting for?" demanded Sir Bryson.
"I have something to tell you," Jack said, mildly. "Garrod——"
"What about him?"
"He is very sick. He appears to have gone out of his mind."
"What nonsense is this?" puffed Sir Bryson.
"Mad, insane, crazy; whatever word you like," said Jack.
The little governor was startled out of his pomposity. He turned to Baldwin Ferrie, plucking at his beard. For the moment he forgot his animosity against Jack, and asked him innumerable questions.
"Set you adrift?" he said, when Jack had told his tale. "What could have led him to do that?"
This was the moment Jack had been dreading. He drew a long breath, and, looking Sir Bryson in the eye, told him the whole story of himself and Frank Garrod. Sir Bryson, as Jack expected, sneered and pooh-poohed it throughout. On the face of it, it was a fantastic and improbable tale, but a disinterested person seeing Jack's set jaw and level eyes, and hearing his painstakingly detailed account, could scarcely have doubted he was telling the truth. Baldwin Ferrie was impressed, and he was not altogether disinterested.
"Lost the note-book, eh?" sneered Sir Bryson. "And you expect me to believe this on your unsupported word! Garrod's life has been exemplary!"