‘Wilfrid!’ I exclaimed.
He brought his eyes away from the boat with a start and approached us. ‘Miss Jennings has been overhauling the cabin below,’ said I, ‘and cannot get your wife to answer her.’
‘Have you seen her, Laura?’ he cried in a half-breathless way, stooping his face to hers, with his near-sighted eyes moistening till I looked to see a tear fall.
‘No,’ she answered. ‘She has shut herself up in her cabin. I have knocked at every berth and called to her, but she will not answer me.’
His face changed. He shouted to Captain Crimp, who was leaning with his back against the starboard rail near the gangway, watching us out of the corner of his eyes, and waiting for us to take the next step. He came to us.
‘Kindly show us,’ said Wilfrid, ‘the cabin which the lady occupies.’
‘This way,’ he answered, and forthwith trundled down the companion steps, we at his heels. We found ourselves in what Captain Crimp would doubtless have called a state cabin, a gloomy dirty interior with a board-like rude table that travelled upon stanchions so that it could be thrust up out of the road when room was wanted, whilst on either hand of it was a row of coarse lockers, the covers of which were liberally scored with the marks of knives that had been used for cutting up cake-tobacco. The upper deck was very low pitched, and, as if the heat and the disgusting smell of the cargo did not suffice, there swung from a blackened beam a lighted globular lamp the flame of which burnt into a coil of thick black smoke that filled the atmosphere with a flavour of hot fat. Yet apparently, to judge by the number of berths this rank and grimy old barque was fitted with, she had served as a passenger vessel in her heyday. There were doors conducting to little cabins forward of the living room, and there were four berths abaft contrived much as the ‘Bride’s’ were, that is to say, rendered accessible by a slender alley-way or corridor.
‘The lady’s cabin,’ said Captain Crimp, pointing, ‘is the starn one to port, the airiest of ’em all. It was chosen because it was furdest off from this here smell,’ and he snuffled as he spoke.
Wilfrid, followed by Miss Laura, at once walked to the indicated cabin. I remained standing by the table with Crimp, watching my cousin. He tried the handle of the door, found the key turned or a bolt shot, shook it a little, then, after a pause, knocked lightly.