Stirling gave a whoop of delight when he read his sailing orders, and considerably astonished his landlady by executing a dance round the room. Perhaps such an exhibition was pardonable in a high-spirited youth of nineteen, but Mrs. Grimmer surveyed her paying guest with evident concern and unrestrained curiosity.
"It's all right, Mrs. Grimmer," he explained. "I'm off to Holland for a few days."
"Not in that little boat of yours, sir?"
"No, by steamer. I'll have to leave here before twelve. Now I must pack my bag. You might ask Dick to take a note round to Mr. Smith for me."
The note was simply to the effect that the writer had made arrangements to accompany the owner of the Diomeda to Delfzyl, and would meet him at the station at 12.15.
This written and dispatched, Gordon Stirling proceeded to cram a variety of clothing into a serviceable leather bag, regardless of how they were stowed so long as the bag could be closed.
Stirling was very fortunately situated. He held an appointment at Lowestoft under the Inland Revenue; he had just started his annual leave and was meditating a trip on the Broads. To that end he had drawn a small sum from the savings bank, to which was added the greater part of his last month's salary, and thus he found himself with a little over twenty pounds in his pocket and fourteen days in which to spend it. Here was a chance of having a holiday on the Continent, with the prospects of getting hold of some exciting news and recouping all his expenses. Truly he was in luck's way.
"Glad you managed it," was Octavius Smith's greeting as the two met at the railway station. "Look alive and get your ticket. Single to Harwich only, mind."
Octavius Valerian Smith was a striking contrast to his companion, for Stirling was a short, thick-set fellow with a perpetual beam on his rounded features, whereas the owner of the Diomeda was over six feet in height and as slender as the proverbial barber's pole. It would be difficult to describe his complexion. Exposure to the salt-laden breezes of the North Sea had tanned his features to a brick-red colour. In spite of his approximation to Euclid's definition of a line he was muscular and sinewy, and as hard as nails. Possessed of small private means, he augmented his income by writing, and made a fairly good thing out of it. Few of the hundreds of love-sick maidens who read the romantic stories appearing in various women's journals under the name of "Reginald Beaucaire" would recognize their favourite author in the person of the taciturn-featured O. V. Smith.
Yet even in the flood tide of literary success there are irritating counter-eddies—periods of pecuniary embarrassment. The owner of the Diomeda, always careless with his money while he possessed any, had a few days before found himself in low water.