"Wait a minute—only a minute more, for God's sake!" Carthew implored the old man. "It won't do any of you any harm to stand by till I've said my say. It won't help you in the least, Captain Dove, to carry Sallie away—and you'll be far safer, believe me, if you leave her here. I've only been waiting my chance to ask her to marry me, and—"
"I've asked her already," interrupted Lord Ingoldsby, in a tone no doubt meant to be most impressive but strongly resembling a squeal. No one, however, paid him any more attention than if he had been the shadow he seemed.
"And if you carry her off just now," Carthew continued hurriedly, encouraged by the benevolent smile with which Captain Dove was regarding him, "you'll have good cause to regret it. For I'll hunt you down till I find you, and then—"
"Now you're talking," the old man commented approvingly, quite undismayed by that threat. "And then we'll make terms, if you come in time and bring enough money with you.
"I'd even have waited here and fixed it all up, but—" He wagged his shameless white head sorrowfully. "It wouldn't be wise," said he. "You've been prejudiced against me—by Farish M'Kissock. It's too late to think of that now. So I must be off, for my own sake.
"But maybe we'll meet again," he concluded with cheerful complacence, "in some safer spot for me. And, if Sallie's still on my hands when you show up—"
"So be it, then," Carthew agreed, seeing clearly that further appeal would be futile, all eagerness to get above-ground again and begin the chase. He could have the whole fishing-fleet of the village armed and afloat within half an hour, and might even yet succeed in boarding the Olive Branch at her anchorage. But, manlike, he had counted without the woman in the case.
"I'm going away of my own free will, Mr. Carthew," said Sallie suddenly, with the same strange expression of face that he had observed when she had looked back at him in the banquet-hall. "And—I don't want you to follow me. You have been far more than generous, but—I couldn't marry you—in any case."
"Don't say that, Sallie," he beseeched, and, "Dove!" cried a very wrathful voice in the distance. "We'll be off without you if you don't come down at once."
The old man's smug, blinking smile instantaneously changed to a furious scowl. He pulled a big, golden-necked bottle from one of his pockets, removed the cork, and, having poured its remaining contents hastily down his throat, tiptoed off down the tunnel with it in one hand, making motions as if to hurl it with accurate aim, leaving Sallie alone there.