'The Daring! Is she wrecked?' Katie takes the paper into her trembling hands, but cannot read a word for the throbbing of her brows and the dizziness of her eyes.
Her husband goes on: 'Yes; she went to pieces in the gale, and every soul on board would have gone down with her had not a merchant-ship passed by the merest chance. Twenty-three men are lost. At least they went away in the Daring's large cutter; but no boat could have lived out the storm.'
'How dreadful!' Katie starts at the sound of her own voice, it is so deep and hoarse.
'Dreadful indeed! What makes the matter worse is, that in all human probability every man might have been saved and the ship also, had not an atrociously wrong act been perpetrated.'
Katie hears a rustle of paper; she knows by instinct what is coming, but she dares not lift her head.
The Admiral goes on in an agitated tone: 'Some one has tampered with my papers, has even dared to meddle with my orders. I directed the Leo to be sent out at once to the scene of the wreck; but from malignity or some other motive, the name Leoni was substituted.'
'Wouldn't that ship do as well, Herbert?'
'Certainly not. She would never reach the Short Reefs in such a gale. I fully suspect she's foundered at sea or gone on the rocks herself. I'll find out who did it! If I thought Reeves, or any one else at his instigation, had been guilty, I'd, I'd'——
There is no saying how the sentence might have ended. Katie has risen from her seat, and stands before her husband trembling.
'I did it, Herbert! I altered your order!'