on to the topmast shrouds and with his free hand pointing to the north. Osmond stepped forward and hailed him.
“Foretop there! What is it?”
“A steamer, sir. Seems to be headin’ straight on to us.”
Osmond ran below, and having fetched Redford’s binocular from the berth, climbed the main rigging to just below the cross-tree. There, securing himself with one arm passed round a shroud, he scanned the northern horizon intently for a minute or two and then descended slowly with a grave, set face. From his loftier station he had been able to make out the vessel’s hull; and the character of the approaching ship had left him in little doubt as to her mission. His comrade met him with an anxious, inquiring face as he jumped down from the rail.
“Small man-o’-war,” he reported in response to the unspoken question; “barquentine-rigged, buff funnel, white hull. Looks like a gun-boat.”
“Ha!” she exclaimed. “That will be the Widgeon. She was lying off Accra.”
The two looked at one another in silence for a while as they look who have heard bad tidings. At length Osmond said, grimly: “Well, this is the end of it, Betty. She has been sent out to search for you. It will be ‘good-bye’ in less than an hour.”
“Not ‘good-bye,’ Jim,” she urged. “You will come, too, won’t you?”
“No,” he replied; “I can’t leave the old man in this muddle.”
“But you’ll have to leave him sooner or later.”
“Yes; but I must give him the chance to get another mate, or at least to ship one or two native hands.”
“Oh, let him muddle on as he did before. My father will be wild to see you when he hears of all that has happened. Don’t forget, Jim, that you saved my life.”
“I saved my own,” said he, “and you chanced to benefit. But I couldn’t come with you in any case, Betty. You are forgetting that I have to keep out of sight. There may be men up at head-quarters who know me. There may be even on this gun-boat.”
She gazed at him despairingly and her eyes filled. “Oh, Jim,” she moaned, “how dreadful it is. Of course I must go. But I feel that we shall never see one another again.”
“It will be better if we don’t,” said he.
“Oh, don’t say that!” she pleaded. “Think of what we have been to one another and what we could still be for ever and ever if only you could forget what is past and done with. Think of what perfect chums we have been and how fond we are of one another. For we are, Jim. I love you with my whole heart and I know that you are just as devoted to me. It is a tragedy that we should have to part.”
“It is,” he agreed, gloomily, “and the tragedy is of my making.”
“It isn’t,” she dissented, indignantly; and then, softly and coaxingly, she continued: “But we won’t lose sight of each other altogether, Jim, will we? You will write to me as soon as you get ashore. Promise me that you will.”
“Much better not,” he replied; but with so little decision that she persisted until, in the end, and much against his judgment, he yielded and gave the required promise.
“That makes it a little easier,” she said, with a sigh. “It leaves me something to look forward to.”
She took the glasses from him and searched the rim of the horizon, over which the masts of the approaching ship had begun to appear.
“I suppose I ought to report to the old man,” said Osmond, and he was just turning towards the companion when Captain Hartup’s head emerged slowly and was in due course followed by the remainder of his person. His left arm was now emancipated from the sling and in his right hand he carried a sextant.
“Gun-boat in sight, sir,” said Osmond. “Seems to be coming our way.”
The captain nodded, and stepping to the taffrail, applied his eye to the eyepiece of the sextant.
“It has gone seven bells,” said he. “Isn’t it about time you got ready to take the latitude—you and the other officer?” he added, with a sour grin.
In the agitating circumstances, Osmond had nearly forgotten the daily ceremony—a source of perennial joy to the crew. He now ran below and presently returned with the two sextants, one of which he handed to ‘the other officer.’
“For the last time, little comrade,” he whispered.
“And we’ll work the reckoning together. Norie’s Navigation will be a sacred book to me after this.”
She took the instrument from him and advanced with him to the bulwark. But if the truth must be told, her observation was a mere matter of form, and twice before the skipper called “eight bells” she had furtively to wipe a tear from the eyepiece. But she went below to the cuddy and resolutely worked out the latitude (from the reading on Osmond’s sextant), and when the brief calculation was finished, she silently picked up the scrap of paper on which Osmond had worked out the reckoning and laid hers in its place. He took it up without a word and slipped it into his pocket.
“They are queer keepsakes,” she said in a half-whisper as the door of the captain’s cabin opened, “but they will tell us exactly when and where we parted. Who knows when and where we shall meet again—if we ever do?”
“If we ever do,” he repeated in the same tone; and then, as the captain came out and looked at them inquiringly, he reported the latitude that they had found, and followed him up the companion-steps.
When they arrived on deck they found the crew ranged along the bulwark watching the gun-boat, which was now fully in view, end-on to the brigantine, and approaching rapidly, her bare masts swinging like pendulums as she rolled along over the big swell.
“I suppose we shall make our number, sir,” said Osmond; and as the skipper vouchsafed no reply beyond an unintelligible grunt, he added: “The flag locker is in your cabin, isn’t it?
“Never you mind about the flag locker,” was the sour reply. “Our name is painted legibly on the bows and the counter, and I suppose they’ve got glasses if they want to know who we are.” He took the binocular from Osmond, and after a leisurely inspection of the gun-boat, continued: “Looks like the Widgeon. Coming to pick up a passenger, I reckon. About time, too. I suppose you are both going—if they’ll take you?”
“I am not,” said Osmond. “I am going to stay and see you into port.”
The skipper nodded and emitted an ambiguous grunt, which he amplified with the addition: “Well, you can please yourself,” and resumed his inspection of the approaching stranger.
His forecast turned out to be correct, for the gunboat made no signal, but, sweeping past the Speedwell’s stern at a distance of less than a quarter of a mile, slowed down and brought-to on the port side, when she proceeded to lower a boat; whereupon Captain Hartup ordered a rope ladder to be dropped over the port quarter. These preparations Miss Burleigh watched anxiously and with an assumption of cheerful interest, and when the boat ran alongside, she joined the skipper at the head of the ladder, while Osmond, lurking discreetly in the background, kept a watchful eye on the officer who sat in the stern-sheets until the lessening distance rendered
