‘Might not this warning, as you call it, Wilfrid,’ said Miss Jennings, ‘have been some brief, vivid dream, the impression of which was keen enough, when you awoke, to make you imagine you had viewed what had appeared with open eyes?’
‘No!’ he answered emphatically, ‘what I saw I saw as I see you.’
‘Then it wasn’t a voice?’ I exclaimed.
‘No matter,’ he said, ‘God’s eye is upon the innocent. Surely he will protect my little one. Still—still—’ he seemed to struggle with some thought and paused.
I made up my mind to attempt a bold stroke. ‘Wilf,’ said I, ‘your child must be dearer to you than your wife. Since you are uneasy about the bairn why not abandon a pursuit which, I give you my word, seems to me about as aimless as a chase after the flying shadow of a cloud, and shift your helm for home, where you will be able to have the child by your side and where there will be no need for warnings relating to her to worry you?’
A dangerous light came into his eyes; his strangely cut nostrils enlarged and trembled, half a dozen dark moods went like ripples of shadow over his face. I regarded him steadfastly, but I will own not without a good deal of anxiety, for his bearing at this moment had more of the madman in it than I had ever before witnessed. He breathed deep several times before speaking.
‘You are right,’ he said; ‘my child is dearer to me than my wife, but my honour stands first of all. For God’s sake do not craze me with such suggestions. Look at me!’ he cried, extending his arms, ‘gripped here,’ clasping his left hand, ‘by my child that in its sweet innocence would withhold me from this pursuit; and dragged here,’ and here he clenched his right hand with a menacing shake of it, ‘by a sense of duty that must have its way though it should come to my never setting eyes on my baby again. Charles’—his voice sank—‘at your hands I should have expected something better than such advice as this. If you are weary of the voyage——’
‘No, no,’ I interrupted.
‘Why torment me then,’ he shouted, ‘by representing this pursuit as idle as a chase of shadows? Is it so? Great heaven, man! you yourself read out the entry in Captain Puncheon’s log-book.’
‘Well, well, Wilfrid,’ said I soothingly, ‘I am very sorry to have said anything to annoy you. The fact is I am too prosaic in my views of things to be as helpful as I should like to be in a quest of this sort. Come, shall we go on deck now and see if that chap which I sighted from the topgallant-yard has hove into view yet?’