A few days later I was sailing down the Bay of Biscay, bound for Barcelona, where I hoped I might find Salambo, who had been captain of the pirate ship.
[1] "Croust" is a corruption of the word "carouse." This designates a meal which harvesters and haymakers have between ordinary meals on account of specially hard work.—EDITOR.
CHAPTER XXV
THE VOICE OF A FRIEND
The journey to Barcelona was uneventful, at any rate for me. During the whole time I lived in a kind of hideous dream. I was ever thinking of what I had seen and done during the little time I had been in England, but nothing was real save a horrible weight that oppressed me. I know that the captain sought to be friendly, while some of the passengers seemed to be interested in the sad, silent man who ever sought to be alone, but I paid little heed to their overtures. How could I when two ghastly passions, hatred and remorse, possessed me?
Sometimes I caught myself thinking of what Ruth had told me during those two or three sweet hours we were together. I remember asking her why she had seemed to love Wilfred the better, and why, when she saw how I loved her, she did not in some way let me know that she cared for me. And blushingly she told me that, besides the reports about my boasting that she would have to marry me, which she only half believed, she was afraid I would think her forward and immodest. This set me thinking how it had all ended. How through misunderstandings our lives had been ruined, until life seemed a tragedy, and Providence only a dream. But no relief came to me, the burdens which I had myself made still crushed me to the earth, and I could see no brightness in the future.
We reached Barcelona at length, and I set out to find Salambo. I knew that if all had gone well with him I should have little difficulty in this. He had given me instructions which were unmistakable as to his whereabouts, so I started at once for the house at which he told me to inquire.
I found that this house was occupied by his own parents, and no welcome could be warmer than mine when I told them my name.
I asked them if their son was well, and I quickly found that he was well and happy, that he had found Inez, that they had been wedded, and were living not far away from them.