Mr. Smith, returning to his soup, was heard to murmur something unintelligibly about his nephew. He looked worried and pre-occupied; and when his neighbour, who happened to be the pearl-fishing man from Port Darwin, asked him a question, he hesitated, stammered, and finally gave an answer so incoherent that the other stared.
“He’s a rum chap, that,” the Port Darwin man, John West, confided to Jim, later. “You’d almost think he had something on his mind. Anybody after him, do you think?”
“Well—he joined the ship in a hurry at the last moment,” Jim said. “Naturally, he didn’t mention if any one were on his track.”
“If you come to that, I did the same thing myself,” said West, laughing. “Going down to Port Adelaide, I was thinking I should have to chase the old ship down the Gulf in a motor-boat! So I can’t very well afford to talk about Smith. And I daresay he’s all right—he’s only worried about his precious nephew. I told him at lunch that there were heaps of other people’s nephews in the contingent, so his wouldn’t be lonesome; but it did not seem to comfort him to any noticeable extent. There isn’t much emotion left for a wife or mother when a mere uncle takes on like Smith!”
“He’s a man of feeling—and there aren’t many among you hard-headed young Australians!” said the doctor, laughing in his turn. “You can’t understand a man showing any emotion at all. Smith, being fat and soft, is different—that’s all. Look at him now.”
They were sitting in the deck-lounge, smoking. A few yards away Mr. Smith came into view, an unlit cigar in his mouth. His broad face was almost comically lined and perplexed, and he passed them without any sign of observing them. Immediately behind him came Norah, encumbered with a large, restless baby.
“Wherever did you get that thing, Norah?” Jim called to her.
“He isn’t a thing,” said Norah, indignantly. “He’s a very nice person—only his mother is apt to get a bit tired.”
“I don’t wonder,” said the doctor, as the baby executed a leap that would have been a somersault but for his bearer’s firm grip. “Is he training for a porpoise, do you think? Come and sit down, Miss Norah—he’s too heavy to be carried for long at a stretch.”
Norah sat down thankfully, and the baby graciously accepted the doctor’s silver tobacco-box, and proceeded to concentrate all his energies on opening it.