"Let us hope, on our own accounts, that we shall go back, my dear," said Mr. Stocker. "After all, we're not the worst off by any means," he added, lowering his voice. "Mr. Byfield, for instance—think what he's lost. All that great vessel gone to the bottom of the sea."
"Well, he ought to have had more sense than to go tearing over the ocean, and bumping into things in the dark the way he did," snapped Mrs. Stocker.
"I don't know whether you noticed, ma'am," said Daniel Meggison genially, as he turned to Mrs. Ewart-Crane, "that about a fortnight ago, in one of the Sunday papers, there was an account of a shipwrecked crew—provisions exhausted—who decided to draw lots as to which of them should be killed to provide sustenance for the remainder. It fell to the cook——"
"I do not read the Sunday papers, sir," said Mrs. Ewart-Crane, turning her back upon him.
"That's a pity," he retorted, nothing abashed. "They seemed to find the cook somewhat reluctant, but finally overcame his scruples, and were just deciding how best to dispose his person among the crew—to divide him up, in fact, ma'am—when there was a cry from one of the number that a vessel was in sight. So the cook escaped. Highly interesting narrative, ma'am."
"Even in the small compass of this boat, sir, you will find that it is more convenient to draw the line, if I may use the expression, between class and class," said Mr. Jordan Tant icily. "Because a lady is compelled to sit upon the same seat with you in a boat on the open sea is no reason why you should force your conversation upon her. It isn't done, sir."
"Confound your impudence!" exclaimed Daniel Meggison, starting to his feet. But Aubrey promptly pulled him down again, and he retired, muttering, into the depths of his large frock-coat, the collar of which he had turned up about his ears.
A mist had settled down again over the sea. They pulled on and on steadily, with no definite purpose in their minds as to what was to happen to them. But presently, amid a silence that had fallen upon them all (for even Daniel Meggison had given up conversation as hopeless under the circumstances), Gilbert leaned forward and spoke to Simon Quarle.
"I can hear the sound of waves breaking on rocks," he said. "I thought I heard it just now; but now I'm certain."
They rested upon their oars, and listened; the sound was unmistakable. Everyone sat up, and began to offer suggestions as to where they were, and what the land was likely to be; the three rowers settled again to their work. And now the sound grew louder and louder, until presently, jutting up out of the mist, was a grey shadow that was certainly land—a grey shadow that presently resolved itself into a sloping shore, with white crested waves breaking upon it. They pulled cautiously, looking for an opening; Daniel Meggison was with difficulty restrained from leaping to his feet and shouting.