But boats are lowered quickly on an American whale-ship—quicker than on any other ship afloat—and in less than ten minutes Tom Masters was picked up and, in face of a blinding rain squall, brought on board the John Bright. Then a long illness—almost death.
Three months afterwards, as the schooner was slowly crawling along over the North Pacific towards Honolulu, she spoke a timber ship bound to the Australian colonies from Port Townsend in Puget Sound; and Masters, now recovering from the terrible shock he had received, went on board and asked the captain to let him work his passage. But the Yankee skipper of the lumber ship did not seem to like the idea of having to feed such a hollow-eyed, gaunt-looking being for another six weeks or so, and refused his request. And so Masters, in a dulled, apathetic sort of way went back to the John Bright, climbed up her side, and, with despair in his heart, lay down in his bunk and tried to sleep, never knowing that, half an hour before, when he was speaking to the captain of the lumberman, a letter to his wife from Laurance lay in a locker not three feet away from him, telling her of her husband's death at sea and his own heartfelt sorrow and sympathy.
And Laurance was honest and genuine in his sympathy. He had had a warm feeling of friendship for Tom Masters, and his heart was filled with pity for the poor little wife left alone without a friend in the world. He had tried to express himself clearly in his letter, but all that Nellie Masters could understand was that Tom had been drowned at sea, that Laurance would be back in Sydney in a month or two and give her all particulars, and that she was not utterly friendless and alone in the world.
Within a month of Harry Laurance's return she began to think more of him and of his goodness to her, than of her dead husband—and then gratitude became love. She was only a poor little woman, and of a weakly, irresolute nature, unable to think for herself, and unfitted to battle alone with the world and poverty. So one day when Laurance, whose big heart was full of love and pity for her, asked her to be his wife, she gave him a happy smile and said 'Yes.' Before a second month had passed they were quietly married.
Masters, meanwhile, had been pursued by the demon of ill-luck. When the schooner reached Honolulu, he, a mere wreck, physically and mentally, of his former self, had been carried ashore to the hospital, and was making a slow recovery, when the Sydney whaling brig, Wild Wave came into port with some of her crew injured by a boat accident. One of the men was placed in a bed next to that occupied by Masters, and one day his captain came to see him and brought him some colonial newspapers which had just arrived.
'Here, mate,' said the sailor, tossing one of the papers over to Masters, 'you're a Sydney man, and there's a Sydney newspaper.'
Masters took up the paper, and the first lines he read were these:—
'Laurance—Masters. On the 10th inst., at the Scots Church, Church Hill, Henry A. Laurance to Helen, widow of the late Thomas Masters.'
Possibly, had he been well enough to have returned to Sydney, he would have gone back and made three persons' lives unhappy. But, although an Englishman, he had not the rigidly conventional idea that the divorce court was part of the machinery of the Wrath of God against women who unknowingly committed bigamy, and ought to be availed of by injured husbands. So, instead of having a relapse, he pulled himself together, left the hospital, and got placidly drunk, and concluded, when he became sober, not to disturb them.
'I suppose neither of them is to blame,' he thought. 'How were either of them to know that I was not drowned?... And then poor little Nell had only ten shillings a week to live upon until I came back.'