“When it was too late.”
The Captain seemed, even in that presence, on the verge of losing his temper. “What could they do, Excellency? They are Italian cats: they cannot swim in icy water. The Princess’s condition demanded my attention. I deny that we have failed, or, at least, that we have bungled.”
“We shall see,” Rollmar said curtly, and dismissed him.
Very early next morning a boat floated out on the lake with two men in it, the Chancellor and Captain von Ompertz. The glassy water gave back the two faces which peered over the gunwale, as different as two physiognomies could well be: one with sharp, cruel, saturnine features, and a skin like creased parchment; the other full, ruddy, weather-beaten, its pleasant jovial expression just held in check by the grim business of the moment. The eyes of both men were keenly scanning the bottom of the lake, clearly visible through several fathoms of water; but the object they sought nowhere met their scrutiny. Over every foot of water which could possibly have been the theatre of the hoped-for tragedy the boat glided; to and fro, turning and backing and zig-zagging, with the keen, ruthless face bent over the bow like a devilish figurehead, its malignant eyes eager for the sight of a grey face staring up from the white floor beneath them. Rollmar’s anxiety was proved by the patient care with which every place, likely and unlikely, was examined; but all without result. At length he broke sharply what to his companion had been an uncomfortable silence.
“Row back to the boat-house. It is as I thought. You have bungled.”
The accusation could not, judged by the result, be very well denied, but the free-lance was not the man to let judgment go by default.
“From no lack of zeal, Excellency,” he protested as he set himself to the sculls.
“Zeal!” There was an infinity of contempt and annoyance in the word. “Better lack zeal than sense.”
Captain von Ompertz looked redder than the exertion of rowing would account for. “I do not see, Excellency,” he argued sturdily, “where we failed in sense.”
He was failing therein now, for wisdom will not argue with a disappointed, angry man.