‘I’ll make myself responsible,’ I exclaimed; ‘the trouble is to have him watched with the delicacy that shall defy the detection of his most suspicious humour should he put his head out of his berth or quit it—which he is not likely to do yet. Of course an eye would have to be kept upon him from without. Name me two or three of your trustiest seamen.’
‘Why sir, there’s Cutbill, a first-class man; and there’s two others, Jonathan Furlong and William Grindling, that you may put your fullest confidence in.’
‘Then,’ said I, ‘I propose that these men should take a spell of keeping a lookout turn and turn about. The stewards would have been fit persons, but they are wanting in muscle. Let the man who keeps watch in the cabin so post himself that he may command the passage where Sir Wilfrid’s berth is. You or Crimp, according as your watch comes round, will see that the fellow below, whoever he may be, keeps awake. Pray attend to this, Finn. I am satisfied that it is a necessary measure.’
‘I shall have to tell old Jacob the truth, sir, and the men likewise,’ said he, ‘and also acquaint the stewards with what’s wrong, otherwise they’ll be for turning the sailor that’s sent below out of the cabin.’
‘By all means,’ said I. ‘I’ll stand your lookout whilst you are making the necessary arrangements. But see that you provide your men with some ready and quite reasonable excuse for being in the cabin should Sir Wilfrid chance to come out during the night and find one of his seamen sitting at the table.’
‘Ay, ay, sir; that’s to be managed with a little thinking,’ answered Finn, and forthwith he marched towards the forecastle into the darkness there.
‘It is fortunate,’ I said to Miss Jennings, ‘that I am Wilfrid’s cousin. If I were simply a guest on board I question if Finn would do what I want.’
We fell to pacing the deck. Even as we walked the light breeze weakened yet, till here and there you’d catch sight of the gleam of a star in some short fold of black swell running with a burnished brow. The dew to the fluttering of the canvas aloft fell to the deck with the pattering sound of raindrops.
‘Oh,’ groaned I to Miss Laura, ‘for a pair of paddle-wheels!’
We stepped to the open skylight to observe if aught were stirring below, but gladly recoiled from the gush of hot air there rising with a fiery breath stale with the smell of the dinner table spite of the sweetness put into it by the flowers. Heavens, how my very heart sickened to the slopping sounds of water alongside lifting stagnantly and sulkily, melting out into black ungleaming oil! We seated ourselves under the fanning spread of mainsail, talking of Wilfrid, of his wife, of features of the voyage, until little by little I found myself slowly sliding into a sentimental mood. My companion’s sweet face, glimmering tender and placid to the starlight, came very near into courting me into a confession of love. The helmsman was hidden from us, we seemed to be floating alone upon the mighty shadow that stretched around. A sense of inexpressible remoteness was inspired by the trembling of the luminaries and the sharp shooting of the silver meteors as though all the life of this vast hushed universe of gloom were up there, and we had come to a pause upon the very verge of creation, with no other vitality in the misty confines save what the beating of our two hearts put into them.