CHAPTER XVI
COUNCIL OF WAR—CAPTAIN EVANS’S DECISION—I GO TO THE ROOMS AND CONFIDE IN MY SISTER
When the band of brothers in the saloon on board the Amaranth heard all, or rather so much as we thought fit delicately to tell them, they turned—collectively and individually—pale.
“Then there’s an end of it,” chattered Teddy. “It was a fool’s journey from the beginning, and the sooner we all go home again the better.”
“The sooner you go, sir,” retorted Brentin, “the easier we shall all breathe. Is there any other palpitating gentleman desires to climb down?”
“One moment, first,” said Hines; “before we decide to break up, can’t we consider whether there may not be a way of either stopping your friend Bailey Thompson en route, or at least rendering him powerless when he arrives? The fact is,” he diffidently continued, “I have lost a good deal of money here, and don’t altogether care about leaving it without an effort of some kind to get it back, to say nothing of the lark of the thing, which I take it has been one of its chief recommendations from the first.”
To say nothing, too, of the fact—as I knew—that before leaving Folkestone he had sent out a circular to the parents of his boys to announce the addition of a swimming-bath and a gymnasium to his establishment, the non-erection of which would surely cause him to look more foolish than a schoolmaster cares about. And what would the boys say who had cheered him loudly at the end of last term, when, in a neat speech, he had announced his generous intention?
“Spoken like ay white man!” cried Brentin. “Why, whoever supposed that in an enterprise of this magnitude there would not arise danger and difficulties? They are only just beginning, gentlemen; if any of you, therefore, still desire to shirk, he has only to say the word. Conveyance to the shore is immediately at his service; he can this moment go and pack his grip and be way off home. We shall be well rid of him.”
There was a pause, and then Forsyth said:
“Aren’t you going, Parsons?”