During all this time Bella had been below with Gilbert and a prey to terrible anguish, yet endeavouring in every way to cheer and solace him and to thrust her own fears and forebodings into the background. Fears and forebodings of she scarcely knew what, yet fears that were, all the same, assuming by degrees a more or less tangible shape. For of late--indeed, long since--there had been intensifying more and more in her mind that feeling of dislike and mistrust of Stephen Charke which she had experienced from the first moment that she had discovered him to be the second in command of the vessel in which she was to make so long a voyage; for, over and over again, she had remembered, had recalled, how he had said that he was never baulked in the end of what he desired to obtain, and that if he wanted a thing he generally managed to get it. And she knew that he had meant it as a warning, if not a threat; though, certainly, since that miracle had happened which had brought her lover into the very ship which was taking her to India and to him, she had laughed at, had inwardly despised, the threat, if it was one.
But now--now! With Gilbert stricken down by her side, helpless, crippled by blindness, unable to do aught for himself or her, and with her uncle broken down and worn almost to equal helplessness with his enforced labour and his despair at the ruin which threatened him through the probable destruction of his ship, what--what might not Charke do? He was not blind yet, nor----
Then, as her meditations reached this point, and while Gilbert sat by her side on the pretty plush-covered locker with his head on her shoulder, he broke in on those meditations, and what he said could not by any possibility be construed by her as helping to dispel them, but, rather, indeed, to aggravate them. 'At the rate we have been going on,' he said, 'since I came aboard, there will not be a living soul left with their eyesight by the end of the next two or three days. Oh, my God! Bella, what will it be like when this ship is at the mercy of the ocean, with every person on board blind.'
'Don't let us think about it, darling. Don't, don't! And even now some may retain their sight. Uncle, I, Mr. Charke, the men----'
'Ah,' he said, 'Charke; yes, Charke. Excepting you, dearest, I would sooner Charke kept his sight than almost any one else.'
'Why?' she asked, thinking that of all who were in the ship she, perhaps, cared less whether Charke preserved his sight or not.
'Think what a strong, self-confident man he is. Even if all the others were blinded and he was not, he would devise something for keeping the vessel afloat, though, of course, he could not work her. He would manage to get us all taken off somehow.'
This, the girl acknowledged, not only to him but herself, was true enough. As regarded Charke's sailor-like self-confidence, courage and determination, as well as how to do everything best that was necessary in the most sudden emergency, there was nobody on board the ship, nor ever had been, who was superior, or even equal, to him. Yet--in sole command and possession of that ship, supposing the other inhabitants of her should also be attacked with blindness and helplessness--what might he not do, if his dogged resolution never to be baulked of anything he had set his mind upon was allowed full sway? Her imagination was not a tragic one, nor more romantic than that of most young women who had been brought up as she had been, yet--yet--she shuddered at fears which were almost without actual shape in her thoughts. With all the others blind, herself included; with none to observe what Charke did; with the opportunity of removing for ever from his path any who had crossed it--of removing the one whom she felt sure, whom she divined, he was anxious to remove; with an open sea around him----'Oh, God!' she broke off, while exclaiming to herself, even as her reflections shaped themselves thus, 'never--never will I believe it. Never will I think so basely of any man, especially since he has given me no cause to do so. And, as yet, there are plenty left with their eyesight; plenty to see what is going on.'
Her uncle and aunt came into the saloon now, full of a distress that was visibly marked upon both their faces as well as their demeanour, yet both as kindly as ever in their manner, and uttering expressions of sympathy with Gilbert in his affliction. But, all the same, Bella could not but observe the look of absolute illness and grief on Captain Pooley's countenance, nor help trembling inwardly at the fear that he might be the next one attacked.
Nevertheless, he said cheerfully enough, after he had exhausted his condolences with the young man: 'We are doing some good now, at any rate. The "cherub" is marking about six knots; if the wind keeps where and as it is we may yet fetch Mahe, or one of the other Seychelles. In fact, we must reach them, or some other place, or----'