‘But will he be safe at Tristan?’ cried Will.
‘Where would you carry him?’
‘Anywhere but to Tristan,’ answered the lad. ‘Won’t the man, Glass, that he talks of, discover who he is? Everything leaks out, even away down on a mangy rock in the middle of the sea. You’ll blab in a nightmare. They’ll not keep a convict——’
‘Never call him that, Will, or I’ll kill you!’ I shrieked, rounding upon him in one of my old swelling fits of rage, breast heaving, eyes sparkling, cheeks on fire.
‘I meant no insult!’ exclaimed Will. ‘Butler’s as innocent as I. I spoke of him as they’d think of him down in that island if they found out who he was. Or, let him hide there if he chooses. Is such an island as Tristan fit for you to live and die on——’
‘Oh, Mr. Bates,’ I exclaimed, passionately, ‘Will knows what I have sacrificed, what I have suffered, and he talks now as if I did not love Tom!’
‘Come and take the air on top of this deck-house, Miss Johnstone,’ said the mate. ‘We shall disturb Captain Butler if we stand here.’
My temper, however, soon cooled. I loved my cousin too heartily to be long angry with him. He was little more than a boy, too. He believed in Tom’s innocence, and had not meant to pain me. Mr. Bates and I walked with soft tread on the roof of the deck-house that Tom might sleep. Up there we got the full sweep of the breeze and a wide sight of the sea. I watched the magnificent picture of the dying day, the perishing glories in the west, the liquid gloom in the east with a trembling star just above the water-line shining like the white lantern of a lighthouse, and I conversed earnestly with the mate on Tom’s scheme, explained that in any case he and I must go into hiding, and that the safest retreat must be the best, even though it should be a barren, melancholy rock in the middle of the ocean.
‘He was sentenced to fourteen years,’ said I. ‘If he returns before his time is up, and is caught, he will be transported for life.’
‘Yes,’ said the mate, ‘he told me that. And not long since it was a hanging offence.’