After luffing to pick him up, the brigantine had been again pulled off on the port tack. The fury of the gale seemed rather to have waxed than waned, and the Alethea was bending low under the relentless fury of its blasts, driving hard, with leeward channels awash. Under her port counter, a mile away, the crimson light-ship wallowed in a riot of breaking combers. Sheerness lay abeam, five miles or more. Ahead the northeast headland of the Isle of Sheppey was bulking large and near. The cat-boat had vanished....
More important still, no one aboard the brigantine resembled in the remotest degree either of the Calendars, father or daughter, or even Mulready, the black-avised.
"I sye, 're you lookin' for some one you know?"
"Yes—your passengers. I presume they're below—?"
"Passengers!"
A hush fell upon the group, during which Kirkwood sought Stryker's eye in pitiful pleading; and Stryker looked round him blankly.
"Where's Miss Calendar?" the young man demanded sharply. "I must see her at once!"
The keen and deep-set eyes of the skipper clouded as they returned to Kirkwood's perturbed countenance. "Wot're you talking about?" he demanded brusquely.
"I must see Miss Calendar, or Calendar himself, or Mulready." Kirkwood paused, and, getting no reply, grew restive under Stryker's inscrutable regard.
"That's why I came aboard," he amended, blind to the absurdity of the statement; "to see—er—Calendar."