“Yes, sir. I do know where Miss Verena Fontaine is, but I decline to say,” was Pym’s answer when he had listened.
“No, sir, nothing will induce me to say,” he added to further remonstrance, “and you cannot compel me. I am under your authority at sea, Captain Tanerton, but I am not on shore—and not at all in regard to my private affairs. Miss Verena Fontaine is under the protection of friends, and that is quite enough.”
Enough or not enough, this was the utmost we could get from him. His captain talked, and he talked, each of them in a civilly-cold way; but nothing more satisfactory came of it. Pym wound up by saying the young lady was his cousin, and he could take care of her without being interfered with.
“Do you trust him, Johnny Ludlow?” asked Jack, as we came away.
“I don’t trust him on the whole; not a bit of it. But he seems to speak truth in saying she is with friends.”
And, as the days went on, bringing no tidings of Verena, Sir Dace Fontaine grew angry as a raging tiger.
When a ship is going out of dock, she is more coquettish than a beauty in her teens. Not in herself, but in her movements. Advertised to sail to-day, you will be told she’ll not start until to-morrow; and when to-morrow comes the departure will be put off until the next day, perhaps to the next week.
Thus it was with the Rose of Delhi. From some uncompromising exigencies, whether connected with the cargo, the crew, the brokers, or any other of the unknown mysteries pertaining to ships, the day that was to have witnessed her departure—Thursday—did not witness it. The brokers, Freeman and Co., let it transpire on board that she would go out of dock the next morning. About mid-day Captain Tanerton presented himself at their office in Eastcheap.
“I shall not sail to-morrow—with your permission,” said he to Mr. James Freeman.