"Great Scott!" he said; "what's the matter?—what are you doing? We leave in ten minutes; why aren't you ready?"
The excuse gurgled in my throat. I stammered out something, and began to pack as though pursued by Furies. Then I put him off by asking what his humour was about. He laughed again at the question—
"What do you think?" he said; "Mary's arrived all right."
"Oh, that's good; I hope she'll like Salisbury," I replied, bundling shirts, collars, and coats into my trunk with indiscriminate vigour.
"Yes, but you don't wait to hear the end," he continued, with a great roar of laughter; "she isn't at Salisbury at all; she's at Plymouth, on board the Celsis. She went straight down there, and devil a bit as much as sent her aunt a telegram!"
I rose up at his word, and looked him in the face.
"Well," he said, "what do you think?—you don't seemed pleased."
"I'm not pleased," I said, going on with my packing. "I don't think she ought to be there."
"I know that; we've talked it all over, but when I think of it, I don't see where the harm comes in; we can't meet mischief crossing the Atlantic, and when the danger does begin in New York I'll see she's well on the lee-side of it."
I did not answer him, for I knew that which he did not know. Perhaps he began to think that he did not do well to treat the matter so lightly, for he was mute when we entered the cab, and he did not open his lips until we were seated in the night mail for Plymouth. The compartment we rode in was reserved for us as he had wished; and, truth to tell, we neither of us had much liking for talk as the train rolled smoothly westward. We had entered upon this undertaking, so vast, so shadowy, so momentous, with such haste, and moved by such powerful motives, that I know not if some thought of sorrow did not then touch us both. Who could say if we should live to tell the tale, if our fate would not be the fate of Martin Hall, if we should ever so much as see the nameless ship, if chance would ever bring us face to face with Captain Black? And whither did we go? When should we set foot again in that England we loved? God alone could tell; and, with one great hope in a guiding and all-seeing Providence, I covered myself up in my rug, and slept until dawn came, and the fresh breezes from the Channel waves brought new strength and men's hearts to us again.