‘I fear it will prove a long voyage,’ said she, with the sparkle of the starlight in her eyes.
‘You will be glad to return?’
‘Not without my sister.’
‘But shall you be willing, Miss Jennings, supposing us to arrive at Cape Town without falling in with the “Shark,” to persevere in this very singular and unpromising sea quest?’
‘I will remain with Wilfrid certainly,’ she answered quietly. ‘My duty is to help him in this search, and where he goes I shall go.’
‘But he will be acting cruelly to carry you on from the Cape unless able to certainly tell where to find the fugitives, fixing the date too for that matter.’
‘I see you will leave us at the Cape, Mr. Monson,’ she exclaimed with an accent that could only come from the movement of the lips in a smile.
‘Not unless I prevail upon you to accompany me home,’ said I.
She shook her head lightly, but made no answer. Perhaps it was her silence that rendered me sensible of the unpremeditated significance of my speech. ‘Well,’ said I, lighting a second cigar, ‘whilst you feel it your duty to stick to my cousin I shall feel it mine to stick to you. Not likely I should leave you alone with him. No.’
At that instant the harsh, surly voice of old Jacob Crimp hailed the skipper, who still stood aft talking with Wilfrid. All was in darkness forward; it was hard upon two bells; the canvas rose as elusive to the eye in its wanness as a dim light in windy gloom far out at sea, and the shadow of it plunged a dye as opaque as blindness into the obscurity from the mainmast to the forecastle rail, where the stars were sliding up and down like a dance of fire-flies to the quiet lift and fall of the close-hauled yacht upon the invisible folds brimming to her port bow.