Again the adversary had withdrawn his blade. Again that baffling sense of nothing to contend with.
When, late, Hastings returned to his quarters, he heard, in the still watches of the night, a woman laughing faintly.
Already in the far interior of China the cold fingers of winter were reaching toward the south, and the northeast monsoon had settled on the sea. But where now innumerable steamships are to be met,—tramps, their iron flanks streaked with rust; trim liners of Japan, the almost untranslatable Maru coupled with their names; dingy coasters, slattern traders, and men of war from half the navies of the world, a hundred years ago there were only the slow junks and the white-sailed ships of the Occident, with now and then a high-sided, square-sterned Dutchman.
The next evening Hastings came on deck and, standing by the taffrail, gazed long toward Hainan and the sunset. No boat was in sight. Save for a small island that lay a point abaft the beam, the Winnemere was running before the wind through an unbroken expanse of water. Hearing steps, he turned.
It was Widmer. “A fine evening,” he remarked in his singularly restrained voice.
“It is, indeed.”
Silence followed. Since the seven survivors of the Helen of Troy had come tumbling over the bulwarks of the Winnemere there had been many such silent moments. Always the words exchanged by the two captains were like those tentative thrusts with which the fencer tries the mettle of his opponent.
“It is a pleasure to be able to bring home the crew of the Helen of Troy,” Widmer said, slowly, covertly watching the other’s face. “I remember when you left us in Macassar Strait. The Winnemere was always a slow craft in light winds. Your men like to tell the story of that race.”
Hastings, red of face, made no reply.
“Yes, there was much talk of that race. You beat us on the run up from the Horn another time—that story, too, became well known. Remarkably well known.”