Isobel Baring raised her head from the cushions.
“Ventana was a determined wooer, then? What did he do?” she asked.
“He—he pestered me with his attentions. Oh, I should have liked to flog him with a whip!”
“He was always that sort of person—too serious,” and the head dropped again.
The steward returned. He was a half-caste; his English was to the point.
“De captin say he busy, he no come,” was his message.
Elsie’s display of irritation vanished in a merry laugh. Isobel bounced up from the depths of the chair; her dark eyes blazed wrathfully.
“Tell him—” she began.
Then she mastered her annoyance sufficiently to ascertain what it was that Captain Courtenay had actually said, and she received a courteous explanation in Spanish that the commander could not leave the chart-house until the Kansas had rounded the low-lying, red-hued Cape Caraumilla, which still barred the ship’s path to the south—the first stage of the long voyage from Valparaiso to London.
But pertinacity was a marked trait of the Baring family; otherwise, Isobel’s father, a bluff, church-warden type of man, would not have won his way to the chief place in the firm of Baring, Thompson, Miguel & Co., Mining and Export Agents, the leading house in Chile’s principal port. Notwithstanding Elsie’s previous outburst, the steward was sent back to ask if the ladies might visit the bridge later. Meanwhile, would Captain Courtenay like a cup of tea? All things considered, there was only one possible answer; Captain Courtenay would be charmed if they favored him with both the tea and their company.