Miss Temple stood at the rail, leaning upon her arms, apparently watching the water sliding past. She sprang erect when I pronounced her name.
‘I was beginning to fear you would never come on deck again,’ she exclaimed as she looked at me with a passionate eagerness of inquiry. ‘How long you have been! What could he have found to say to detain you all this while?’
‘Softly!’ I said, with a glance at old Lush, who was patrolling the forward end of the poop athwartships with his hands deep buried in his breeches’ pockets, and with a sulky air in the round of his back and the droop of his head. ‘I have heard some strange things. If you are not tired, take my arm, and we will walk a little. We are less likely to be overheard in the open air than if we conversed in the silence of the cabin.’
‘You do not look miserable,’ she exclaimed. ‘I expected to see you emerge with a pale face and alarmed eyes. Now, please tell me everything.’
There was something almost of a caress in her manner of taking my arm, as though she could not suppress some little exhibition of pleasure in having me at her side again. Also she seemed to find relief in the expression on my face. She had been full of dark forebodings, and my light smiling manner instantly soothed her.
I at once started to tell her everything that had passed between Captain Braine and myself. I contrived to recite the skipper’s yarn as though I fully believed it, always taking care to sober my voice down to little more than a whisper as we alternately approached the fellow at the wheel and the carpenter at the other end in our pendulum walk. Her fine eyes glowed with astonishment; never did her beauty show with so much perfection to the animation of the wonder, the incredulity, the excitement raised by the narrative I gave her.
‘So that is his secret?’ she exclaimed, drawing a breath like a sigh as I concluded, halting at the rail to gaze at her with a smile. ‘I presume now, Mr. Dugdale, that you are satisfied he is mad?’
‘Perfectly satisfied.’
‘You do not believe a word of his story?’
‘Not a syllable of it.’