We were silent for a few moments. The girl looked idly round the ship,
and her eyes encountered the figure of the mysterious man. She seemed
to shiver.
"Oh!" she exclaimed under her breath, "what a terrible face that man
has!"
"Where?" said her friend.
"Over there. And how is it he's wearing a silk hat--here?"
His glance followed hers, but my follower had turned abruptly round,
and in a moment was moving quickly to the after-part of the ship. He
passed behind the smoke-stack, and was lost to our view.
"The back of him looks pretty stiff," the young man said. "I wonder if
he's the chap that alarmed the man at the wheel."
I laughed, and at the same time I accidentally dropped Rosa's
jewel-case, which had never left my hand. I picked it up hurriedly.
"You seem attached to that case," the young man said, smiling. "If we
had foundered, should you have let it go, or tried to swim ashore with
it?"
"The question is doubtful," I replied, returning his smile. In
shipwrecks one soon becomes intimate with strangers.
"If I mistake not, it is a jewel-case."
"It is a jewel-case."
He nodded with a moralizing air, as if reflecting upon the sordid love
of property which will make a man carry a jewel-case about with him
when the next moment he might find himself in the sea. At least, that
was my interpretation of the nodding. Then the brother and sister--for
such I afterwards discovered they were--left me to take care of my
jewel-case alone.
Why had I dropped the jewel-case? Was it because I was startled by the
jocular remark which identified the mysterious man with the person who
had disturbed the steersman? That remark was made in mere jest. Yet I
could not help thinking that it contained the truth. Nay, I knew that
it was true; I knew by instinct. And being true, what facts were
logically to be deduced from it? What aim had this mysterious man in
compelling, by his strange influences, the innocent sailor to guide
the ship towards destruction--the ship in which I happened to be a
passenger?... And then there was the railway accident. The stoker had
said that the engine-driver had been dazed--like the steersman. But
no. There are avenues of conjecture from which the mind shrinks. I
could not follow up that train of thought.
Happily, I did not see my enemy again--at least, during that journey.
And my mind was diverted, for the dawn came--the beautiful September
dawn. Never have I greeted the sun with deeper joy, and I fancy that
my sentiments were shared by everyone on board the vessel. As the
light spread over the leaden waters, and the coast of France was
silhouetted against the sky, the passengers seemed to understand that
danger was over, and that we had been through peril, and escaped. Some
threw themselves upon their knees, and prayed with an ecstasy of
thankfulness. Others re-commenced their hymning. Others laughed
rather hysterically, and began to talk at a prodigious rate. A few,
like myself, stood silent and apparently unmoved.