And they lowered away—swimmingly for a hundred-and-fifty feet or so, and then the gale—that had been crouching and holding its breath—roared and leaped. And the hope of the house of Jowell was beaten into a red rag against the face of those stupendous precipices of pudding-stone, in less time than it takes to write these lines.
He sobbed out “Mummy!” as the life went out of him, and something plucked at the vitals of a dowdy woman, separated from him by thousands of miles of dry land and bitter water, and she cried out: “My boy!...” And then there was nothing left for those on the cliff-top, but to haul the limp and broken body up again.
XCVIII
Upon the morning that saw the wreck of The Realm in Balaklava Bay, Thompson Jowell traveled up to London, big with the determination that what he had planned should not be carried out. It would be difficult to arrest the hand of his hired Fate, but with tact and promptitude it could be managed. He eased his mind by saying that it could, as the London Express carried him to Paddington at the Providence-defying speed of thirty miles an hour.
Even as he composed his cautiously-worded cablegram a wire from the Admiralty was lying on his office-desk. But he felt happier than he had done for months, and correspondingly virtuous as he chartered a hackney cab and drove to the City—and got out at the paved entrance to the narrow alley of squalid houses in the shade of the Banking House of Lubbock and Son.
It was a moist, foggy November forenoon, and the yellow gas-jets made islands of light in the prevailing murkiness.... Broadsheets papered the gutters, advertising the Latest Intelligence from the Crimea. Fate had arranged that Jowell’s newspaper should not be delivered at his country seat that morning, and that—absorbed in the composition of his message—he should have omitted to buy one at the railway station. It occurred to him that he would buy one now.
He thrust his big hand in his trousers-pocket and wagged his umbrella at a scudding newsboy. The boy darted on, and Jowell condemned him for a young fool. Then a coatless, shivering misery, with wild eyes staring through a tangle of matted hair—padded up on blue and naked feet and thrust a paper under the nose of the Contractor, saying:
“Buy it, sir! It’s the last I have!”
“Give it here!” snorted Jowell, grabbing it and fumbling for a penny. As he dropped the copper in the dirty hand, he knew that he and the sea-green Standish had met again. The ex-clerk laughed huskily as he recognized his old tyrant, and said, in a voice that shook and wobbled with some strange emotion:
“Keep your damned money! I’ll make you a present of the paper! I’ve prayed for a chance like this ever since my wife died!”