“Ay, and ’tis sense the man speaks,” added McShanus. “The last man in the world would I be to cry off while the fox is running; but, Ean, me bhoy, he’s gone to ground as sure as blazes, and what for would ye flog a good horse to death? Here’s a fortune spent in coal, and a sea hot enough to fry haddocks, and divil of a sign as much as of a row-boat. The Captain’s not behind me in knowing of other people who have a claim upon your consideration. Go to Europe and learn of their welfare. There is one who may need ye sorely. And poor talk will it be that you’ll hear then if they tell you of ‘what might have been.’ Go back to Europe, say I, and learn what has become of Joan Fordibras. ’Tis better work than roasting like a heathen nigger on this blazer of an ocean.”
Well, we were agreed finely, as you will see. But the determination, none the less, had its counterpoise of depression which is not difficult to apologise for. It is in the British blood to persist even when failure seems assured and hope has long been abandoned. We had set out to find the Diamond Ship, and we had failed. That she was still afloat upon the Southern Atlantic remained my unalterable conviction. It was even possible that Joan Fordibras was aboard her, and not in Europe at all. A Council of Prudence said, “Return”; a Vanity of Conviction said, “Go on.” I had listened to the voice of the first-named and surrendered to it. My comrades professed their joy in tones becoming a graveyard. The men heard of our determination with hands thrust deep into their pockets and mouths which emitted surly clouds of smoke. Rarely has a homeward-bound ship carried heavier hearts or a crew as silent. We were going to see the white cliffs of England again; but we were leaving the Diamond Ship for others to take. Everyone, professing to be glad, remained conscious of a personal defeat, of a rebuff which should not have been, and would not have been, but for a caprice of Fortune, unlooked for and unmerited.
Upon my own part, there were conflicting hopes and desires which I could have confessed to none. It certainly had been a blow upon my vanity that the Admiralty had sent no ship to my assistance, and that Scotland Yard had been so long bestirring itself. What could their delay mean but incredulity? They doubted my story, or if they did not doubt it, then they were wasting the precious weeks in vain inquiries at the consulates or formal exchange with the Governments. In due season they would act, when the Diamond Ship had made her last voyage, perhaps, and the master criminal stood beyond their reach. Val Imroth, indeed, appeared to me to be the beginning and the end of this great conspiracy. The others were the puppets with which this king of rogues played a game daring beyond all imagination of meaner minds. Let him be caught, and the house of his crimes would be shattered to ruins. He was the Alpha and the Omega, the brain and the soul of it. I concerned myself with no other—even little Joan must stand in peril until he were taken. My sense of duty forbade another course; I dare not turn aside.
Many a night and oft when the glorious Southern sky looked down upon us, and the sea was still, and nothing but the purring voice of the steamer’s engines could be heard, had I, alone upon the aft deck, asked myself of Joan’s fate and of the future which awaited her. Had the rogues discovered her that night I fled from the Valley House, or had she been spirited away before Okyada came to me? Was it a man’s part to have left the island immediately, or should I have lingered on in the hope of seeing her? I know not to this day.
If a man’s love make claim upon sentiment alone and not upon common-sense, then must I be found blameworthy. But if he is to use his brains as much in an affair of the heart as in that of the common things of the day, then was I justified a thousand times. Again and again did reason tell me that the Jew would hold her as a hostage for his own safety; and that no harm would befall her until danger threatened him. Let me come face to face with him, and then I might fear for her. Alas! that reason cannot always be a comforter. There were blacker hours when I depicted her the prey of the ruffians of the island, the victim of her foster-father’s savage anger, alone and defenceless amongst them all, looking for my coming, and crying in her despair because I did not come. These were the blacker hours, I say. Let the long spell of waiting answer for them. They vanished like the mist when the good news came.
We set the yacht upon a northward course, and lived through a morning of angry silence. Disdaining any lunch but a biscuit and a proud cigar, Timothy McShanus fell to reminiscences. I remember he discussed the law of chances, reminding me of the American citizen, who, being asked if he were a lucky man, replied that he once held four aces at a game of poker in Mexico City, and only got one shot in the leg. In a lachrymose mood, Timothy went on to say that he cared little whether he lived or died, but that he would give much to know what they were doing at the Goldsmith Club in London town. I did not answer him, for at that moment Captain Larry came scurrying along the deck, and one look at his face told me that he had news of moment.
“Well, Larry—and now?”
“There is a message, sir.”
“A message?”