“True, Barret, and in good time for tea too. We don’t sail till morning, for the tide does not serve till six o’clock, so that will give us plenty of time to put the finishing touches to our plans, allow your things to arrive, and permit of our making—or, rather, renewing—our acquaintance with Giles Jackman. You remember him, don’t you?”
“Yes, faintly. He was a broad, sturdy, good-humoured, reckless, little boy when I last saw him at old Blatherby’s school.”
“Just so. Your portrait is correct. I saw him last month, after a good many years’ interval, and he is exactly what he was, but considerably exaggerated at every point. He is not, indeed, a little, but a middle sized man now; as good-humoured as ever; much more reckless; sturdier and broader a great deal, with an amount of hair about his lip, chin, and head generally that would suffice to fit out three or four average men. He has been in India—in the Woods and Forests Department, or something of that sort—and has killed tigers, elephants, and such-like by the hundred, they say; but I’ve met him only once or twice, and he don’t speak much about his own doings. He is home on sick-leave just now.”
“Sick-leave! Will he be fit to go with us?” asked Barret, doubtfully.
“Fit!” cried Mabberly. “Ay, much more fit than you are, strong and vigorous though you be, for the voyage home has not only cured him; it has added superabundant health. Voyages always do to sick Anglo-Indians, don’t you know? However ill a man may be in India, all he has to do is to obtain leave of absence and get on board of a ship homeward bound, and straightway health, rushing in upon him like a river, sends him home more than cured. So now our party is made up, yacht victualled, anchor tripped; and—‘all’s well that ends well.’”
“But all is not ended, Bob. Things have only begun, and, as regards myself, they have begun disastrously,” said Barret, who thereupon related the incident of the little old lady being run down.
“My dear fellow,” cried Mabberly, laughing, “excuse me, don’t imagine me indifferent to the sufferings of the poor old thing; but do you really suppose that one who was tough enough, after such a collision, to sit up at all, with or without the support of the railings, and give way to indignant abuse—”
“Not abuse, Bob, indignant looks and sentiments; she was too thorough a lady to think of abuse—”
“Well, well; call it what you please; but you may depend upon it that she is not much hurt, and you will hear nothing more about the matter.”
“That’s it! That’s the very thing that I dread,” returned Barret, anxiously. “To go through life with the possibility that I may be an uncondemned and unhung murderer is terrible to think of. Then I can’t get over the meanness of my running away so suddenly. If any one had said I was capable of such conduct I should have laughed at him. Yet have I lived to do it—contemptibly—in cold blood.”