Carstairs listened spellbound.
The hunchback gave a piteous moan and looked up in Darwen's face with a singular, dog-like, appealing look. He stooped and struck him again in the face. "You're a fool, I tell you, a useless fool."
With a sudden bound the thing leaped on to the railing and over into the sea.
Carstairs sprang to the side, Darwen was looking over like an eager boy. "By Jove!" he said, "the poor devil can't swim a stroke." He vaulted lightly on to the top of the broad handrail and stood for one second balancing with the graceful ease of the practised gymnast, then he dived after him. "Stop the ship, Carstairs," he said, as he went. A sailor on the poop threw a life belt overboard, and raised the alarm. The ship was turned about, and went round in a circle three times, but nothing was to be seen of either of them, so she turned to her course again.
Carstairs leaned long over the side, gazing into the dark water swirling past. A great big "Why?" confronted him. "Why? Why? Why?" he asked himself, and the answer was locked away, with many another mystery, deep down in the depth of the water at his feet.
For the rest of the night he paced the deck. Next day he gave all the information he could to the authorities: the other passenger, they said, must have been a stowaway, Carstairs thought so too. He took the train to Calais, and returned as quickly as possible to break the news to Darwen's mother.
She had been up all night and was very haggard. "Where's Charlie?" she asked, as soon as she saw him.
"He's had an accident——"
"He's dead!" she screamed, seizing him by the hand and looking into his eyes. "Dead! Dead! I knew it."
"I'm afraid he is."