“Doubt it not,” returned Mrs Wyllys. “In no event shall you ever be betrayed.”
“Betrayed! For myself, Madam, I have little fear. If you suspect me of personal apprehension you do me great injustice.”
“We suspect you of nothing unworthy,” said Gertrude hastily, “but—we are very anxious for ourselves.”
“Then will I relieve your uneasiness, though at the expense of”——
A call, from one of the mates to the other, arrested his words for the moment, and drew his attention to the neighbouring ship.
“The slaver’s people have just found out that their ship is not made to put in a glass case, to be looked at by women and children,” cried the speaker in tones loud enough to send his words into the fore-top, where the messmate he addressed was attending to some especial duty.
“Ay, ay,” was the answer; “seeing us in motion, has put him in mind of his next voyage. They keep watch aboard the fellow, like the sun in Greenland six months on deck, and six months below!”
The witticism produced, as usual, a laugh among the seamen, who continued their remarks in a similar vein, but in tones more suited to the deference due to their superiors.
The eyes, however, of Wilder had fastened themselves on the other ship. The man so long seated on the end of the main-yard had disappeared, and another sailor was deliberately walking along the opposite quarter of the same spar, steadying himself by the boom, and holding in one hand the end of a rope, which he was apparently about to reeve in the place where it properly belonged. The first glance told Wilder that the latter was Fid, who was so far recovered from his debauch as to tread the giddy height with as much, if not greater, steadiness than he would have rolled along the ground, had his duty called him to terra firma. The countenance of the young man, which, an instant before, had been flushed with excitement, and which was beaming with the pleasure of an opening confidence, changed directly to a look of gloom and reserve. Mrs Wyllys who had lost no shade of the varying expression of his face, resumed the discourse, with some earnestness, where he had seen fit so abruptly to break it off.
“You would relieve us,” she said, “at the expense of”——