“Proctor,” and Rothesay rose to his feet, and placed his hands on the table, “listen to me. You may think that I have treated you badly. My wife died two years ago, and I——”
Proctor waved his hand impatiently. “Let it pass if you have wronged me. But, because I got drunk and lost my ship, I don't see how you are to blame for it.”
A look of relief came into Rothesay's face. Surely the man had not heard whom he had married, and there was nothing to fear after all.
For a minute or so neither spoke, then Proctor picked up his cap.
“Proctor,” said Rothesay, with a smile, “take a glass of grog with me for the sake of old times, won't you!”
“No, thank you, sir,” he replied calmly, and then without another word he walked out of the cabin, and presently Rothesay heard him take the wheel again from the man who had relieved him.
Two days later the Kate Rennie sailed round the north cape of Bougainville, and then bore up for a large village on the east coast named Numa Numa, which Rothesay hoped to make at daylight on the following morning.
At midnight Jensen came to the wheel again. The night was bright with the light of shining stars, and the sea, although the breeze was brisk, was smooth as a mountain lake, only the rip, ripy rip of the barque's cutwater and the bubbling sounds of her eddying wake broke the silence of the night. Ten miles away the verdure-clad peaks and spurs of lofty Bougainville stood clearly out, silhouetted against the sea-rim on the starboard hand. The wind was fair abeam and the ship as steady as a church, and Proctor scarce glanced at the compass at all. The course given to him was W.S.W., which, at the rate the ship was slipping through the water, would bring her within two miles of the land by the time he was relieved. Then she would have to go about and make another “short leg,” and, after that, she could lay right up to Numa Numa village.
Late in the day Rothesay had lowered one of the ship's boats, whose timbers had opened under the rays of the torrid sun, and was keeping her towing astern till she became watertight. Presently Proctor heard a voice calling him.
“Peter, I say, Peter, you got a match?”