‘No chance,’ Nora echoed, dropping her eyes suddenly, but speaking very decidedly. ‘You must go now, Mr Noel; the second bell’s ringing.’
Harry took her hand once more, and pressed it faintly. ‘Good-bye, Miss Dupuy,’ he said—‘good-bye—for the present. I daresay we shall meet again before long, some day—in Trinidad.’
‘O no!’ Nora cried in a low voice, as he turned to leave her. ‘Don’t do that, Mr Noel; don’t come out to Trinidad. I told you it’d be quite useless.’
Harry laughed one of his most teasing laughs. ‘My father has property in the West Indies, Miss Dupuy,’ he answered in his usual voice of light badinage, paying her out in her own coin; ‘and I shall probably come over some day to see how the niggers are getting on upon it—that was all I meant. Good-bye—good-bye to you.’
But his eyes belied what he said, and Nora knew they did as she saw him look back a last farewell from the deck of the retreating little tender.
‘Any more for the shore—any more for the shore?’ cried the big sailor who rang the bell. ‘No more.—Then shove off, cap’n’—to the skipper of the tug-boat.
In another minute, the great anchor was heaved, and the big screw began to revolve slowly through the sluggish water. Next moment, the ship moved from her moorings and was fairly under weigh. Just as she moved, a boat with a telegraph-boy on board rowed up rapidly to her side, and a voice from the boat shouted aloud in a sailor’s bass: ‘Severn, ahoy!’
‘Ahoy!’ answered the ship’s officer.
‘Passenger aboard by the name of Hawthorn? We’ve got a telegram for him.’
Edward rushed quickly to the ship’s side, and answered in his loudest voice: ‘Yes. Here I am.’