‘Ay, but that game’s pretty near played out too,’ answered Hold meditatively. ‘Why, you yourself, Captain Grincher, lost your schooner that the man-o’-war captured off the Solomons, and were tried at Sydney for what the government fellows called kidnapping. No; give me Chinese waters, and a handy crew aboard a bit of a fast-sailing lorcha to’——
‘Gentlemen, gentlemen!’ broke in the American, now in a good temper; ‘allow me to say it air a pity to see men of your talents a-huddling of ’em into corners wheer they’ll fail of their just reward. Now, listen, ef I could but get together a few spirited citizens and, mind ye, the handful of coin necessary for preliminary expenses, this child could point the place where lies, in fourteen fathom water, the treasure-ship Happy Land that left San Francisco, bound for New York, in the fall of ’49, and never was heard of more. She had the value, in dust and bars, of’——
But the precise amount of the golden freight which, on board the Happy Land, awaited the bold explorers who should reach that sunken vessel, is not destined to be set down in these pages, for the coloured steward at this juncture appeared holding a letter between his dusky finger and thumb. ‘For Cap’en Hold,’ said the mulatto; and Hold, recognising the handwriting, jumped to his feet in a trice, and snatched rather than received the envelope which the dark Ganymede of Plugger’s held out to him; and tearing it open, read as follows: ‘Come, and come at once. There is no time to lose. Something has occurred—something which makes your presence necessary. Come by noonday train. I will be at the park gate to the north soon after ten o’clock. Meet me there.’ The letter was signed ‘Ruth Willis.’
Hold’s mind was instantly made up. ‘I must heave anchor in a hurry,’ he said, as he thrust back the letter into his pocket. ‘So good-bye, Grincher; and good-bye, Barks!’ and without further delay, he withdrew to prepare for the journey to Carbery. To pay his reckoning, to push some needful articles into a bag, and to consign his sea-chest to the custody of the authorities of Plugger’s, well used to similar trusts, took but half an hour; and when the mid-day train started for the west of England it carried with it a second-class passenger, whose only luggage was a black bag, and who could easily have been mistaken for a man-o’-war’s man bound for Plymouth, there to rejoin one of those Hornets or Monkeys which have superseded the Arethusas and Hermiones of the past.
Arrived at the station most convenient for his purpose, Hold trudged sturdily on until he reached his old quarters at The Traveller’s Rest, where he installed his bag in one of those single-bedded rooms which were always at the service of so solvent a customer as Mr Hold, who, while inland and among shore-going folks, dropped his titular distinction of captain. After supper, the fresh arrival at The Rest sallied forth, and making his way to Carbery, waited, pacing softly to and fro, under the shelter of the park wall.
CHAPTER XVIII.—UNDER THE PARK WALL.
All through that August day which witnessed the hurried journey of Mr Richard Hold, master mariner, from the river-side bowers of Plugger’s to the silvan shades of The Traveller’s Rest, Sir Sykes Denzil’s ward was in a state of feverish agitation, which it was hard for even her to conceal from those about her. We may fairly own that women surpass us in the social diplomacy which they study from the cradle almost, and that their powers of suppressing what they feel—not seldom from a noble motive—are greater than ours. All of us must have wondered, as we read the marvellous narratives of such prisoners as Trenck and Latude, at the patient ingenuity that could contrive rope-ladders out of the flax thread of shirts, files out of scraps of rusty iron, tools from any fragment of metal that came to hand. None the less should we be astonished at the power of dissembling evinced by the captives on the watch for the propitious moment to break prison.
What Ruth dreaded above all other things was what a woman always does dread, the scrutiny of her own sex. That men are credulous, careless, prone to give credit to the shallowest excuse, readily hoodwinked, and easy to pacify, has been an article of faith with Eve’s daughters since prehistoric times. The real spy to be feared, the real censor before whom to tremble, is decidedly feminine, in the estimation of women who have anything to hide. Ruth therefore devoted her whole attention to keeping up a brave outside before the eyes of her guardian’s daughters, Blanche and Lucy, two as honestly unsuspicious girls as could be met with in all Devonshire.
But as all a priori reasoning is tainted with the fatal flaw of bad logic, Ruth forgot Jasper Denzil, still shut up in the house on account of his recent accident, and whose crooked mind had not much to do save to employ itself in fathoming the crooked ways of others. Now a man, if circumstances coerce him to limit his powers of observation to the narrow sphere of domesticity, is capable of becoming a spy more formidable than women would readily admit. If he sees less, he reasons more cogently as to what he does see, and he has the further advantage of being an unsuspected scout from whom no danger is anticipated.
Jasper Denzil had excellent reasons for the profound mistrust with which he regarded the Indian orphan. The very presence beneath his father’s roof of such a one as Ruth was in itself a standing puzzle and challenge to his curiosity. That she was Hold’s sister, the sister of a coarse-mannered adventurer of humble birth, was what the captain could not bring himself to believe. For Ruth seemed innately a lady. Either she must have had the advantages of gentle nurture and education, or as an actress in the never-ending social drama she displayed consummate skill. But whatever might have been her birth (and there were times when he was tempted to fancy that in her he saw that young sister of his own, long dead, the date of whose decease was supposed to coincide with that of the sad mood which had become habitual to Sir Sykes), Jasper with just cause regarded her as a most artful person.