‘Before God I am innocent,’ he repeated softly and without passion in his tones or posture. ‘It is a devilish plot of Rotch to ruin me. I don’t know why the carpenter Nodder should swear against me. I had no quarrel with the man. But he’d go to the gallows for drink, and in that Rotch found his opportunity since he needed a witness.’
‘You will be able to prove your innocence.’
‘Rotch,’ he continued, still speaking softly and without temper, ‘bored holes in the lazarette; then plugged the lining and hid the auger in my cabin. Nodder swears that I borrowed the auger from him. A lie, Marian—a wicked, horrible lie. Why should I borrow an auger? Why should I, as captain, handle such a tool as that when there is a carpenter in the ship? Rotch brought some of the men aft to listen to the water running into the lazarette. He says that he went below to break out stores and heard it. A hellish lie, Marian. He swears that he plugged the holes to stop the leaks and came up with the men to search my cabin. I was in my cabin when they entered, and on the scoundrel Rotch charging me with attempting to scuttle the barque and imperilling the lives of the crew, I pulled a pistol out of my drawer and would have shot him. They threw themselves upon me, and Rotch called to them to search the cabin, and they found the auger in the place where the villain had hidden it. But this was not all. Rotch swore before the Consul at Rio that he had seen me go into the lazarette, and that he had mentioned the circumstance to Nodder, but that neither suspected what I was doing until Rotch himself went below for some boatswain’s stores, and then he heard the water running in. Marian,’ and here he slightly raised his voice, ‘it is a conspiracy, artfully planned, artfully executed, artfully related, with the accursed accident of the over-insured venture to make it significant as death, and God alone knows how it may go with me.’
A warder paused and looked at us, then passed on.
‘Don’t say that,’ I cried; ‘it breaks my heart to hear you say that. You are innocent. My uncle will employ clever men. They will question and question and prove the wretches liars, and our turn will come.’
‘I blundered by over-insuring, but I blundered more fearfully still when in a moment of confidence I told the villain Rotch what money I had embarked in this voyage, and to what extent I had protected myself.’
‘Tom, whatever happens I am with you. Oh, if it should come to their killing you they shall kill me too, Tom.’
He pressed his hands to his heart and then sobbed twice or thrice. My love, my grief, my misery raged in me; I felt that I had strength to tear down the strong iron grating which separated us, that I might get to him, clasp him to me, give him the comfort of my bosom, the tenderness of my caressing cheek. It worked like madness in my soul to be held apart from him, to see him and not be able to fling my arms around him.
We looked at each other in silence. I was about to speak when a bell rang, and a strong voice called out: ‘Time’s up!’ The prize-fighter was gone. A warder marched quickly along to Tom and touched him on the shoulder, and my uncle called to me: ‘Come, Marian.’ Tom cried: ‘God bless you, dear,’ but my vision was blind with tears, a sudden swooning headache made me stagger, and until I was in the street I was scarcely sensible of more than of being led through the passages and out through the gate by my uncle.