“He did not tell you the name of the ship?” asked the doctor.
“No.”
“Or the name of the man who was killed?”
“No.”
There was another silence; it seemed as if they were sitting as witnesses to the completion of some curious tunnelling operation, when the party on one side suddenly catches sound of the pick-axe stroke of the party on the other. Step by step the lost Roger Ingleton had been tracked forward to the deck of this West India trading-ship; and backward, step by step, the tutor’s history went, till it almost touched the same point.
“I expect,” said Tom, with a cheerfulness hardly in accord with the spirits of the company generally, “the fellow who was had by the shark was the one, and Armstrong never knew it.”
The profound young man had dropped on the very idea which was present in the minds of each one.
“Wal,” said the American mayor, “it may be so; but the question I’m asking myself is this: If so, it’s singular Mr Armstrong did not mention the coincidence when you got the cablegram.”
“Oh,” said Roger, “at the time I was so cut up to find I’d failed after all, that I didn’t care to talk; and directly after that we met Ratman. He had no chance.”
“I calculate I’d like to ask your tutor one or two pertinent questions,” said the Mayor.