A few hours afterwards, I was leaning over the taffrail waving good-bye to my friend as he stood near the wheel of the little tender that bore him and some half-dozen others to the shore. There had been a deep sadness in his eyes at parting; and the foreboding of the night before changed now to a chill conviction that Paul Raynor and I should meet no more.
‘So your friend has just now landed already, eh?’ said the voice of Mr van Poontjes, a gentleman with whom I had not exchanged a dozen words during the voyage, but who now, planting himself heavily on the deck-chair next mine, gave evidence of his intention to put a full stop to my enjoyment of the book which I was struggling to finish before delivering it to its owner that evening.
‘Yes,’ I replied wearily, wondering a little whether this worthy but slightly repulsive individual was going to stay long, and mentally laying plans of escape to meet the contingency.
‘Well, now,’ he continued, ‘I dessay you consider your Mister Raynor a jolly fine feller, eh?’
Suppressing the instantaneous impulse to take the little boer by the collar and shake him, I answered: ‘Mr Raynor is a friend of mine, as you are aware; and as I am not in the habit of discussing my friends with strangers, perhaps you will leave me to my book!’
‘Strangers, eh! Stranger to you, per’aps, yes! but not stranger to Mister—what do you call ’im?—Raynor! Eh, I could tell you something’——
‘Now, look you here, Mr van Poontjes,’ I burst out; ‘you have courageously waited to speak like this until Mr Raynor is no longer here to answer you. But I happen to have heard that gentleman inform you with his own lips that he had never set eyes on you until the day you met on board this ship; and therefore to say that you are not a stranger to Mr Raynor is equivalent to the assertion that Mr Raynor has told a lie. You had better not dare to repeat that statement either to me or to any other passenger on board.—Now, good-morning; and take care that mischievous tongue of yours doesn’t get you into trouble yet!’
As the little crowd that these angry words had brought about us moved away, a few clustering inquisitively round the little Dutchman, my reading was once more postponed by Jack Abinger, the second officer, a man with whom Raynor and I had struck up something of a friendship. ‘Hullo, Rodd,’ he said, strolling up to where I sat, ‘what’s all the row about? I saw you from my cabin standing in the recognised attitude of the avenger, apparently slating Mynheer van Poontjes as if he were a pickpocket.’ After listening to my story of what had occurred, he said: ‘Ah, a clear case of mistaken identity! But, I say, talking of Paul Raynor, it was a pity, as far as he was concerned, that we couldn’t have got to Plymouth a day or two earlier.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked surprisedly.