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But he would not be strong enough to travel for some days yet, and Spurling could not be in very excellent condition for such a journey to be thrown into an out-house and left there for a fortnight, with back bent double and arms and legs bound, is not the best kind of training. Before doing anything rash he would talk to Peggy, and find out how much she knew about it.
Spurling did not answer him, but he saw him crouch his shoulders as if to avoid a lash, and heard his mutter, like the echo of his own voice, "Or death." The canoe was travelling heavily, for Spurling had stopped paddling. Granger was about to expostulate with him when, watching him more attentively, he discovered that his eyes were fixed upon the bend.
"It's a go," was Stevens's verdict. Somebody knocked on the door. "Come in!" called Spurling. To their great surprise, in came Mr. Whittington. Removing his Panama, he took the chair Spurling offered him. An unlighted cigar was gripped between his short, stubby fingers. There were dark circles under his steel-gray eyes, and his jaw had, if possible, more of a bulldog set than ever.
At last by the constant reiteration of the thing which he desired, he began to take it for granted that his prayer was answered. Spurling was not dead; he was alive, and he was going to ask his forgiveness for the evil which he had thought against him. He put together the words which he would say to him when they met, and the gestures he would use to make his words convincing.
Forester's Manton alongside my Joe Spurling in the top tray of the case, my single gun and my double rifle in the lower, and see the magazine well filled the Diamond gunpowder, you know, from Mr. Brough's. You'll put up what Mr. Forester will want, for a week, you know he does not know the country yet, Tim; and, hark you, what wine have I at Tom Draw's?" "No but a case of claret."
"Harken to the lecture on lobsters by Professor James Spurling!" announced Lane in stentorian tones. The next group of traps was some distance off, so Jim had a chance to talk without interruption. "In the spring a lobster that is growing begins to find his shell too tight, so he has to get out of it.
If not, what a revenge he would take when he should confront him, and inform him that he had murdered a woman, and not a man! He knew Spurling; for him the public ignominy of being hanged would be as nothing compared with such private knowledge it would thrust him into Hell in this life. Ah, but that could not be; God would not allow it!
In those far regions men are not particular how or what they eat; of necessity they abandon the refinements of civilisation as needless and cumbrous. To-day, however, partly to protract his stay and so give Spurling time, partly to assert his waning gentility, the memory of which in its heyday Strangeways shared, he attempted to be lavish, to set a table, and to entertain.
"Druce," he said, speaking tremblingly, "it is terrible how far two men can drift apart in the passage of three short years." "Then why did you leave me?" asked Spurling sulkily, not yet reassured of his safety, nor recovered from his rough usage. "I left you because I feared that I might do the deed for which you are now in flight." Spurling sat up astonished.
A flood of fury swept away his judgment. "You beggar!" he shouted. "You dollar-squeezer! I'll teach you to talk to me, you !" He flung himself on Spurling with clenched fists. So sudden and unexpected was the onslaught that there was but one thing for Jim to do, and he did it, expeditiously and accurately. Percy went over backward and fell like a log.
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