“I am glad, Harrington,” he said, after a pause, “that you flung bitter words upon him.”
“No,” replied Harrington, mournfully, “do not be glad, for it cannot gladden me. Yet I do not regret what I said to him, nor do I think it were better unsaid. Let him pass. He lies, the saddest wreck I know, stranded on the shores of my pity. Mal-organized, miseducated, the imperfect infant taken from his cradle, and every imperfection developed by the haphazard social culture, and all else undeveloped; you have him at last, what he is—at once the product and the victim of a half-barbarous state of society. Pity him. He might have been better had he lived in a better day and among better men.”
“Well, no doubt,” musingly replied Wentworth. “Like Dr. Johnson’s Scotchmen—caught young, something might have been made of him. In the mean time, blast his eyes!”
They wandered on a few steps together. Suddenly Harrington stood still.
“There’s no use in the Captain watching the Soliman,” he said. “The man is secreted somewhere, and will probably not be taken on board till the vessel is ready to sail. Besides, it may awaken suspicion if anybody should happen to know Eldad’s connection with me, and see him hanging about the brig. Let’s go down to him.”
They turned and went down the wharf.
“What do you think of boarding the Soliman again?” asked Wentworth.
“Better not,” Harrington returned. “Antony is not there. It would only put them on their guard. The sole chance now is the writ of habeas corpus.”
“And how about Mrs. Eastman?” said Wentworth.
“We must disregard her,” Harrington replied. “She will thank us by and by for doing so, especially if we succeed in saving poor Antony. The Soliman does not sail till Tuesday night, so there is plenty of time. We will return presently, see Muriel, and then I will at once procure the writ. If I fail with it, the last thing is to search the Soliman as she is on the point of leaving the wharf, opposition or no opposition.”