“Not in the least. This is what happened.” Maddingham turned to Portson. “I asked him where he was bound for and he told me—Antigua.”
“Hi! Wake up, Winchmore. You’re missing something.” Portson nudged Winchmore, who was slanting sideways in his chair.
“Right! All right! I’m awake,” said Winchmore stickily. “I heard every word.”
Maddingham went on. “I told him that this wasn’t his way to Antigua——”
“Antigua. Antigua!” Winchmore finished rubbing his eyes. “‘There was a young bride of Antigua——’”
“Hsh! Hsh!” said Portson and Tegg warningly.
“Why? It’s the proper one. ‘Who said to her spouse, “What a pig you are!”’”
“Ass!” Maddingham growled and continued: “He told me that he’d been knocked out of his reckoning by foul weather and engine-trouble, owing to experimenting with a new type of Diesel engine. He was perfectly frank about it.”
“So he was with me,” said Winchmore. “Just like a real lady. I hope you were a real gentleman, Papa.”
“I asked him what he’d got. He didn’t object. He had some fifty thousand gallon of oil for his new Diesel engine, and the rest was coal. He said he needed the oil to get to Antigua with, he was taking the coal as ballast, and he was coming back, so he told me, with coconuts. When he’d quite finished, I said: ‘What sort of damned idiot do you take me for?’ He said: ‘I haven’t decided yet!’ Then I said he’d better come into port with me, and we’d arrive at a decision. He said that his papers were in perfect order and that my instructions—mine, please!—were not to imperil political relations. I hadn’t received these asinine instructions, so I took the liberty of contradicting him—perfectly politely, as I told them at the Inquiry afterward. He was a small-boned man with a grey beard, in a glengarry, and he picked his teeth a lot. He said: ‘The last time I met you, Mister Maddingham, you were going to Carlsbad, and you told me all about your blood-pressures in the wagon-lit before we tossed for upper berth. Don’t you think you are a little old to buccaneer about the sea this way?’ I couldn’t recall his face—he must have been some fellow that I’d travelled with some time or other. I told him I wasn’t doing this for amusement—it was business. Then I ordered him into port. He said: ‘S’pose I don’t go?’ I said: ‘Then I’ll sink you.’ Isn’t it extraordinary how natural it all seems after a few weeks? If any one had told me when I commissioned Hilarity last summer what I’d be doing this spring I’d—I’d ... God! It is mad, isn’t it?”