The House Under the Sea (Musaicum Adventure Classics). Pemberton Max

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      "Shall we go, or stay?"

      "Go," she said, so low that it was little more than a whisper, "but, oh, for God's sake, Jasper Begg, come back to me again."

      I nodded my head and turned the talk. The man Denton, the one with the yellow beard (rated as Kess Denton on the island), was back at my side almost before she had finished. The old lady began to talk about "curling-spikes" and "blue Saint Peters," and how much the anchor weighed, and all that sort of blarney which she thought ship-shape and suited to a poor sailor-man's understanding. I told her a story of a shark that swallowed a missionary and his hymn-book, and always swam round our ship at service times afterwards—and that kept her thinking a bit. As for little Dolly Venn, he couldn't keep his eyes off Miss Ruth—and I didn't wonder, for mine went that way pretty often. Aye, she had changed, too, in those twelve months that had passed since last I saw her, the prettiest bride that ever held out a finger for a ring in the big church at Nice. Her cheeks were all fallen away and flushed with a colour which was cruelly unhealthy to see. The big blue eyes, which I used to see full of laughter and a young girl's life, were ringed round with black, and pitiful when they looked at you. The hair parted above the forehead, as it always was, and brought down in curls above her little ears, didn't seem to me so full of golden threads as it used to be. But it was good to hear her plucky talk, there at the dinner-table, when she chattered away like some sweet-singing bird, and Dolly couldn't turn away his eyes, and the yellow boy stood, sour and savage, behind her chair, and threw out hints for me to sheer off which might have moved the Bass Rock. Not that he need have troubled himself, for I had made up my mind already what to do; and no sooner was the food stowed away than I up and spoke about the need of getting on again, and such like. And with that I said "Good-bye" to Mistress Ruth and "Good-bye" to the old woman, and had a shot left in my locker for the yellow boy, which I don't doubt pleased him mightily.

      "Good luck to you," says I; "if you'd a wisp of your hair, I'd put it in my locket and think of you sometimes. When you want anything from London you just shout across the sea and we'll be hearing you. Deadman's Horn is nothing to you," said I; "you'd scare a ship out of the sea, if you wasn't gentle to her."

      Mind you, I said all this as much to put him off as anything else, for I'd been careful enough to blab no word about the Southern Cross being Miss Ruth's very own ship, nor about her orders that we should call at Ken's Island; and I knew that when a man's angry at what you say to him he doesn't think much of two and two making four, but as often as not makes them eight or ten. May-be, said I, he'll make it out that I'm on a tramp bound for 'Frisco and have touched here on the way—and certainly he won't look for my coming back again once he sees our smoke on the sky-line. Nor was I wrong. My mistress was to tell me that much before twelve hours had passed.

      And so it was that I said "Good-bye" to her, she standing at the garden-gate with a brave smile upon her pretty face, and the yellow man behind her like a savage dog that is afraid to bite, but has all the mind to. At the valley's head I turned about, and she was still there, looking up wistfully to the hills we trod. Thrice I waved my hand to her, and thrice she answered, and then together, the lad and I, we entered the dark wood and saw her no more.

      "Your best leg forward, lad," said I to him, "and mum's the word. There's work to do on the ship, and work ashore for a woman's sake. Are you game for that, Dolly—are you game, my boy?"

      Well, he didn't answer me. Some one up in the black gorge above fired a rifle just as I spoke; and the bullet came singing down like a bird on the wing. Not a soul could I see, not a sound could I hear when the rolling echoes had passed away. It was just the silence of the thicket and of the great precipices which headed it—a silence which might freeze a man's heart because the danger which threatened him was hidden.

      "Crouch low to the rocks, lad, and go easy," cried I, when my wits came back again; "that's a tongue it doesn't do to quarrel with. The dirty skunks—to fire on unarmed men! But we'll return it, Dolly; as I live I'll fire a dozen for every one they send us."

      "Return it, sir," says he; "but aren't you going aboard?"

      "Aye," says I, "and coming back again like drift on an open sea. Now let me see you skip across that bridge, and no mistake about it."

      He darted across the chasm's bridge like a chamois. I followed him quick and clumsy. If my heart was in my mouth—well, let that pass. Not for my own sake did I fear mortal man that day, but for the sake of a woman whose very life I believed to be in danger.