‘The “Shark,”’ said I, ‘has five days’ start of us. Give her a hundred miles a day, for the mere sake of argument; she should be, at that, well in the heart of the Bay.’
‘By Heaven! within arm’s length of us, when you put it so!’ cried Wilfrid, extending his hand in a wild, darting, irrelevant gesture, and closing his fingers with a snap as though upon some phantom throat he had seen and thought to clutch.
‘Five hundred miles,’ exclaimed Finn, apparently giving no heed to the baronet’s action. ‘Well, sir, as a bit of supposing, there’s no harm in it. It might be more. I should allow less. There’s been no weight of wind down Channel. What’s happened then to blow her along? But there’s no telling. Anyhow,’ said he, picking up his cap and rising, ‘there’s nothing in five hundred miles, no, nor in a thousand, to make us anxious with such a race-course as lies afore us. ’Tain’t as if we’d got to catch the craft before she’d made Madeira.’ He paused, looking a little irresolute, and then said, addressing Wilfrid, ‘I don’t know if there’s anything more your honour would like to ask of me?’
‘No, not for the moment,’ answered my cousin dully, with the air of a man languid with a sudden sense of weariness or exhaustion following some internal fiery perturbation; ‘it is just this, Finn. Mr. Monson served in the Royal Navy for a few years, and I was anxious that he should be at once made acquainted with your views, so that he and you could combine your experiences. You have chased in your time, Charles, no doubt!’
‘Not very often, and then always something that was in sight,’ I answered with a slight glance at Finn, whose gaze instantly fell whilst he exclaimed:
‘Well, sir, any suggestion you can make I’ll be mighty thankful to receive. But it’ll be all plain sailing, I don’t doubt; it’ll be all plain sailing,’ he repeated, rumbling out the words in a stifled hurricane note, and, giving us a bow, he went up the steps.
Wilfrid gazed at me vacantly when I proposed a cigar on deck.
‘What do you think of Finn?’ he asked.
‘He seems as honest a man and as practical a seaman as needs be. But he has had command of this yacht since you bought her?’
He nodded. ‘Well then, of course, you know all about him. He has clearly been a merchant Jack in his day, and has all necessary experience, I dare say, to qualify him for this charge. But I say, Wilfrid, let us go on deck, my dear fellow. Miss Jennings, I am sure, will not object to the scent of a cigar in the open air.’