‘For what purpose?’ he exclaimed gloomily. ‘I could hear Finn’s voice; I could follow what the men were doing. If every squall we are likely to meet is to bring me from my bed, I may as well order a hammock to be slung for me on deck.’
‘What is the matter, Wilfrid?’ said I, earnestly and soothingly. ‘Something, I fear, has happened to vex and bother you.’
He passed his hand over his eyes, and looking down said, ‘I have had a warning.’
‘A what?’ I exclaimed.
‘A warning,’ he answered, fetching a deep sigh and making as if to rise, retaining, however, his posture of profound melancholy, whilst he sent a slow, wandering look around, finally fastening his eyes upon me.
‘From whom came this warning, Wilfrid?’ said I cheerfully. ‘Muffin? Egad, you’ll be getting a warning from him soon, I reckon. I found the chap on his knees just now, sweating with fear and praying like clockwork. I gave him a kick, and I wonder the howl that he raised did not bring you running out of your cabin.’ I jabbered this off in a reckless, laughing way, though I watched him narrowly, too, all the time I was speaking.
‘Nothing shall hinder me, Charles,’ he exclaimed, closing his right fist and letting it lie in a menacing way upon the table. ‘I have made up my mind to tear the creature who still remains my wife from the side of the man she has left me for; and before God’—he rolled his eyes up and raised his clenched hand—‘my vow is this: that I will hunt them from port to port, through ocean after ocean, until I meet with them! When that shall be I know not; but this I do know—that my time will come and I can wait. But I must be on the move. Nothing could render life tolerable to me now but the sense of action, the animation and hope of pursuit.’
‘But the warning——?’ said I.
‘Oh, to be vexed by ghostly exhortations—it is enough to craze one!’ he exclaimed. ‘Heaven knows, resolution grows weak enough in me as it is to any thought of my little one that visits me. Oh no,’ he cried, with a sarcastic shake of the head and a singular smile, ‘do not believe that thoughts of my baby girl would cause me to falter even for one breathless instant on this course that I have made up my mind to pursue. But to think of the helpless lamb as alone——’
‘My dear fellow,’ I interrupted, ‘the child could not possibly be in tenderer hands.’