“That being the case, I have the pleasure to congratulate you, sir, on your escape from a very unpleasant position, and to apologise on behalf of the Department with which I am connected, for the unfortunate mistake, as well as for all consequences to which it may have led in your case. Sergeant, let the accused be discharged.”
Thus, after undergoing tortures, as to which the same time spent on a rack of the period—say in the time of His Most Christian Majesty, Philip of Spain—would have been a trifling inconvenience, was our unlucky détenu restored to liberty.
After bowing to the genial P.M., who had seen so many discomfitures, disasters, and disorders, that nothing was likely to cause him surprise or disturb his serenity, the friends returned to their club to lunch, as well as to make such arrangements for the morrow as might suffice for clearing out to Melbourne with the least possible delay and public disturbance. Fortunately, another steamer on a different line, just arrived from Callao and the Islands, was due for an early start in the morning. Mr. Blount resolved, after dining at the club, to spend the night on board of her so as to have no bother about getting ready before daylight, at which time the skipper promised departure. Frampton Tregonwell, the friend in need, would bear him company and help to keep up his spirits so rudely dashed until the time arrived for the partial oblivion of bed, which, indeed, it was long before he found.
Next morning, however, the excitement of a gale took him out of his self-consciousness for a few hours, and the unfamiliar companionship of the passengers aided the cure. He was only partially recovered from a state of shock and annoyance, but could not help being attracted by the men and women; they were of rare and striking types, such as were around him, in all directions.
They were certainly cosmopolitan—grizzled island traders, sea-captains, and mates out of employment at present. Adventurers of every kind, sort, and degree, with their wives and families of all shades of colour and complexion. Speaking all languages indifferently ill, Spanish and Portuguese, French, German and Italian, and, of course, English more or less undefiled. The men were fine specimens physically, bold, frank, hardy-looking, such as might be expected to reply with knife and revolver to adverse argument. Handsome dark women and girls, with flashing eyes and unrivalled teeth, who seemed perfectly at home, and regarded the wildest weather with curiosity rather than with apprehension. Sydney seemed familiar to many as their port of arrival and departure, which, having reached, they were more free to find passage to the ends of the earth.
Such a happy-go-lucky unconventional crowd of passengers, it had rarely been Mr. Blount’s lot to encounter, far-travelled though he was. The captain, mates and ship’s crew were, in their way, equally removed from ordinary personages. One could imagine the captain—a spare, saturnine American—a pirate, suddenly converted by a missionary bishop—bearing his captives of the lower hold, previously doomed to torture and spoliation, to a free port, there to be released, unharmed, with all their goods and chattels scrupulously returned. Here was an opportunity altogether unparalleled, presented to “an observer of human nature.”
But it was like many other gifts of the gods, presented to the dealer in the souls and bodies of his fellow creatures (intellectually regarded), at the precise time and place, when, from circumstances, he could make no use of the situation. A banquet of the gods, and not the ghost of an appetite wherewith to savour it!
In his present mood, had Helen of Troy, accompanied by Paris and Achilles, with Briseis as “lady help,” been one of the strangely assorted crowd (there were half a dozen modern Greeks on board, miners returning from an inspection of an alleged “mountain of tin”)—even then he would not have listened with interest to their respectful cross-examination of the “goddess moulded” as to her adventures since the fall of Troy, or her well-grounded apprehension of her probable fate under adverse feminine rule.
All romance, sympathy, curiosity even were dead within him for the present. Fate had counter-checked him too often. He expected nothing, hoped nothing, but feared everything—until his arrival at the homestead on the Upper Sturt, when he could see Imogen, pale, perhaps, and more fragile than when last she turned her impatient horse’s head homeward—but infinitely lovely and dearer than all, as having proved her loyalty to him, from their first meeting by the waters of the Great River, in despite of doubt, calumny, and unjust accusation.