I paused panting, my face burning like fire, whilst Captain Crimp looked to be slowly dissolving, the perspiration literally streaming from his fingers’ ends on to the deck as though he were a figure of snow gradually wasting.
‘Why couldn’t she have fainted away at first?’ he muttered to me. ‘That’s the worst of women. They’re always so slow a-making up their minds.’
Now that she was in the boat the trouble was at an end; though she recovered consciousness she could not regain the barque’s deck, and there was no power in her screams to hinder the yachtsmen’s oars from sweeping her to the ‘Bride.’ Preserve me! What a picture it all made just then: the wild-haired, wild-eyed, semi-nude figures of the barque’s crew overhanging the rail to view Lady Monson as she lay white and corpse-like in the bottom of the boat; the sober, concerned faces of our own men; Wilfrid’s savage, crazy look as he waited with his eyes fixed upon his yacht for Miss Laura to be handed down before entering the boat himself; the prostrate form of his wife with her head pillowed on Finn’s jacket, her eyes half opened, disclosing the whites only, and imparting the completest imaginable aspect of death to her countenance, with its pale lips and marble brow and cheek bleached into downright ghastliness by contrast of the luxuriant black hair that had fallen in tresses from under her hat. The men who had belonged to the ‘Shark’ stood in a little group near the foremast looking on, but with a commiserating respectful air. One of them stepped up to us as Miss Laura was in the act of descending the side, and addressing Finn whilst he touched his cap, exclaimed, ‘We should be glad, sir, if y’d take us aboard the “Bride.” We’ll heartily tarn to with the rest; you’ll find us all good men.’
‘No!’ roared Wilfrid, whipping round upon him, ‘I want no man that has had anything to do with the “Shark” aboard my vessel.’
The fellow fell back muttering. My cousin turned to Captain Crimp.
‘Sir,’ he cried, ‘I thank you for your friendly offices.’ He produced a pocket-book. ‘You have acted the part of an honest man, sir. I am obliged to you. I trust that this may satisfy all charges for the maintenance of Lady Monson on board your ship.’ He handed him a Bank of England note; Crimp turned the corner down to look at the figure—I believe it was a hundred pounds—and then buried it in his breeches pocket.
‘I’m mighty obliged to you, mighty obliged,’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s a deal more’n the job’s worth. I’d like to see my way to wishing you happiness’—and he was proceeding, but Wilfrid stopped him by dropping over the side, calling to me to make haste.
‘Captain Crimp,’ I said hurriedly, ‘you will please keep your barque hove-to as she is now for the present. There’s to be a duel; you of course know that.’ He nodded. ‘You also heard the promise made to Colonel Hope-Kennedy, that after the duel he is to be at liberty to return to your vessel.’
‘Then I don’t think he will, for the guv’nor means to shoot him,’ said Captain Crimp, ‘and I’ll wager what he guv me that he’ll do it too; and sarve ’im right. Running away with another man’s wife! Ain’t there enough single gals in the world to suit the likes of that there colonel? But I’ll keep hove-to as you ask.’
All this he mumbled in my ear as I put my foot over the side waiting for the wash of the swell to float the boat up before dropping. We then shoved off.