And before the young man could answer, Anthony had disappeared in the stern-cabin, burdened and exulting.
“Instructions,” commented Mr. Powell. “That was all right. Very likely; but they would be such instructions as, I thought to myself, no ship’s officer perhaps had ever been given before. It made me feel a little sick to think what they would be dealing with, probably. But there! Everything that happens on board ship on the high seas has got to be dealt with somehow. There are no special people to fly to for assistance. And there I was with that old man left in my charge. When he noticed me looking at him he started to shuffle again athwart the saloon. He kept his hands rammed in his pockets, he was as stiff-backed as ever, only his head hung down. After a bit he says in his gentle soft tone: “Did you see it?”
There were in Powell’s head no special words to fit the horror of his feelings. So he said—he had to say something, “Good God! What were you thinking of, Mr. Smith, to try to . . . ” And then he left off. He dared not utter the awful word poison. Mr. Smith stopped his prowl.
“Think! What do you know of thinking. I don’t think. There is something in my head that thinks. The thoughts in men, it’s like being drunk with liquor or—You can’t stop them. A man who thinks will think anything. No! But have you seen it. Have you?”
“I tell you I have! I am certain!” said Powell forcibly. “I was looking at you all the time. You’ve done something to the drink in that glass.”
Then Powell lost his breath somehow. Mr. Smith looked at him curiously, with mistrust.
“My good young man, I don’t know what you are talking about. I ask you—have you seen? Who would have believed it? with her arms round his neck. When! Oh! Ha! Ha! You did see! Didn’t you? It wasn’t a delusion—was it? Her arms round . . . But I have never wholly trusted her.”
“Then I flew out at him, said Mr. Powell. I told him he was jolly lucky to have fallen upon Captain Anthony. A man in a million. He started again shuffling to and fro. “You too,” he said mournfully, keeping his eyes down. “Eh? Wonderful man? But have you a notion who I am? Listen! I have been the Great Mr. de Barral. So they printed it in the papers while they were getting up a conspiracy. And I have been doing time. And now I am brought low.” His voice died down to a mere breath. “Brought low.”
He took his hands out of his pocket, dragged the cap down on his head and stuck them back into his pockets, exactly as if preparing himself to go out into a great wind. “But not so low as to put up with this disgrace, to see her, fast in this fellow’s clutches, without doing something. She wouldn’t listen to me. Frightened? Silly? I had to think of some way to get her out of this. Did you think she cared for him? No! Would anybody have thought so? No! She pretended it was for my sake. She couldn’t understand that if I hadn’t been an old man I would have flown at his throat months ago. As it was I was tempted every time he looked at her. My girl. Ough! Any man but this. And all the time the wicked little fool was lying to me. It was their plot, their conspiracy! These conspiracies are the devil. She has been leading me on, till she has fairly put my head under the heel of that jailer, of that scoundrel, of her husband . . . Treachery! Bringing me low. Lower than herself. In the dirt. That’s what it means. Doesn’t it? Under his heel!”
He paused in his restless shuffle and again, seizing his cap with both hands, dragged it furiously right down on his ears. Powell had lost himself in listening to these broken ravings, in looking at that old feverish face when, suddenly, quick as lightning, Mr. Smith spun round, snatched up the captain’s glass and with a stifled, hurried exclamation, “Here’s luck,” tossed the liquor down his throat.