With that we parted. Presently after my friend overtook and passed me on a hired steed which seemed to scorn its cavalier; and I was left in the dust of his passage, a prey to whirling thoughts. For I now stood, or seemed to stand, on the immediate threshold of these mysteries. I knew the name of the man Dickson—his name was Carthew; I knew where the money came from that opposed us at the sale—it was part of Carthew’s inheritance; and in my gallery of illustrations to the history of the wreck, one more picture hung, perhaps the most dramatic of the series. It showed me the deck of a warship in that distant part of the great ocean, the officers and seamen looking curiously on: and a man of birth and education, who had been sailing under an alias on a trading brig, and was now rescued from desperate peril, felled like an ox by the bare sound of his own name. I could not fail to be reminded of my own experience at the Occidental telephone. The hero of three styles, Dickson, Goddedaal, or Carthew, must be the owner of a lively—or a loaded—conscience, and the reflection recalled to me the photograph found on board the Flying Scud; just such a man, I reasoned, would be capable of just such starts and crises, and I inclined to think that Goddedaal (of Carthew) was the mainspring of the mystery.
One thing was plain: as long as the Tempest was in reach, I must make the acquaintance of both Sebright and the doctor. To this end, I excused myself with Mr. Fowler, returned to Honolulu, and passed the remainder of the day hanging vainly round the cool verandahs of the hotel. It was near nine o’clock at night before I was rewarded.
“That is the gentleman you were asking for,” said the clerk.
I beheld a man in tweeds, of an incomparable languor of demeanour, and carrying a cane with genteel effort. From the name, I had looked to find a sort of Viking and young ruler of the battle and the tempest; and I was the more disappointed, and not a little alarmed, to come face to face with this impracticable type.
“I believe I have the pleasure of addressing Lieutenant Sebright,” said I, stepping forward.
“Aw, yes,” replied the hero; “but, aw! I dawn’t knaw you, do I!” (He spoke for all the world like Lord Foppington in the old play—a proof of the perennial nature of man’s affectations. But his limping dialect I scorn to continue to reproduce.)
“It was with the intention of making myself known that I have taken this step,” said I, entirely unabashed (for impudence begets in me its like—perhaps my only martial attribute). “We have a common subject of interest, to me very lively; and I believe I may be in a position to be of some service to a friend of yours—to give him, at least, some very welcome information.”
The last clause was a sop to my conscience; I could not pretend, even to myself, either the power or the will to serve Mr. Carthew; but I felt sure he would like to hear the Flying Scud was burned.
“I don’t know—I—I don’t understand you,” stammered my victim. “I don’t have any friends in Honolulu, don’t you know?”
“The friend to whom I refer is English,” I replied. “It is Mr. Carthew, whom you picked up at Midway. My firm has bought the wreck; I am just returned from breaking her up; and—to make my business quite clear to you—I have a communication it is necessary I should make; and have to trouble you for Mr. Carthew’s address.”