She pointedly did not wait for the answer, but strayed on up the path as if he had already passed from her mind. Yet as she turned at the top her eyes came back to him as if by accident. She had a view of a broad back, and a bent head intent upon the lashings of the raft. She bit her lip. It was a disconcerting young man.
A few minutes later Frank Garrod, the governor's secretary, who until now had been at work in his cabin upon the correspondence the steamboat was to take back next day, came over the gangplank in pursuit of the ladies. He was a slim and well-favoured young man, of about Jack's age, but with something odd and uncontrolled about him, a young man of whom it was customary to say he was "queer," without any one's knowing exactly what constituted his queerness. He had black hair and eyes that made a striking contrast with his extreme pallor. The eyes were very bright and restless; all his movements were a little jerky and uneven.
Hearing more steps behind him, Jack looked around abstractedly without really seeing what he looked at. Garrod, however, obtained a fair look into Jack's face, and the sight of it operated on him with a terrible, dramatic suddenness. A doctor would have recognized the symptoms of what he calls shock. Garrod's arms dropped limply, his breath failed him, his eyes were distended with a wild and inhuman fear. For an instant he seemed about to collapse on the stones, but he gathered some rags of self-control about him, and, turning without a sound, went back over the gangplank, swaying a little, and walking with wide-open, sightless eyes like a man in his sleep.
Presently Vassall, the amiable young A.D.C., descending the after stairway, came upon him leaning against the rail on the river-side of the boat, apparently deathly sick.
"Good heavens, Garrod! What's the matter?" he cried.
The other man made a pitiable attempt to carry it off lightly. "Nothing serious," he stammered. "A sudden turn. I have them sometimes. If you have any whiskey——"
Vassall sprang up the stairway, and presently returned with a flask. Upon gulping down part of the contents, a little colour returned to Garrod's face, and he was able to stand straighter.
"All right now," he said in a stronger voice. "You run along and join the others. Please don't say anything about this."
"I can't leave you like this," said Vassall. "You ought to be in bed."
"I tell you I'm all right," said Garrod in his jerky, irritable way. "Run along. There isn't anything you can do."