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Stryker's boat, that she might profit by his instructions. While they were out, a small incident occurred, which amused the spectators not a little. Mrs. Creighton had risen, to look at a fish playing about Mr.
Stryker's ambition is all fashionable." "Stryker is not much of an Izaak Walton, certainly," remarked Ellsworth. "He calls it murder, to catch a trout with a common rod and a natural fly. He will scarcely be the man to bring in the sea-serpent; he would go after it though, in a moment, if a regular European sportsman were to propose it to him."
To be sure, he was autocrat in his own ship, and Kirkwood's standing aboard was nil; but then there was just enough yellow in the complexion of Stryker's soul to incline him to sidestep trouble whenever feasible. And besides, he entertained dark suspicions of his guest suspicions he scarce dared voice even to his inmost heart. The morning meal, therefore, passed off in constrained silence.
"He must have taken them out again.... I got them on board the Alethea, where your father was conferring with Mulready and Captain Stryker." "The Alethea!" "Yes." "You took them from those men? you!... But didn't my father ?" "I had to persuade him," said Kirkwood simply. "But there were three of them against you!" "Mulready wasn't ah feeling very well, and Stryker's a coward.
I presume they're below ?" "Passengers!" A hush fell upon the group, during which Kirkwood sought Stryker's eye in pitiful pleading; and Stryker looked round him blankly. "Where's Miss Calendar?" the young man demanded sharply. "I must see her at once!" The keen and deep-set eyes of the skipper clouded as they returned to Kirkwood's perturbed countenance.
Advancing to the rail, the captain whistled in one of the river-boats; then, while the waterman waited, faced his passenger. "Now, yer r'yal 'ighness, wot can I do for you afore you goes ashore?" "I think you must have forgotten," said Kirkwood quietly. "I hate to trouble you, but there's that matter of four pounds." Stryker's face was expressive only of mystified vacuity. "Four quid?
But now the American was to be taught discrimination, to learn that if Stryker's nature was like a snake's for low cunning and deviousness, Hobbs' soul was the soul of a viper. Almost imperceptibly he had advanced upon Kirkwood; almost insensibly his right hand had moved toward his chest; now, with a movement marvelously deft, it had slipped in and out of his breast pocket.
The anchor-watch was not in sight; he may have been keeping well forward by Stryker's instructions, or he may have crept off for forty winks. Whatever the reason for his absence from the post of duty, Kirkwood was relieved not to have him to deal with; and drawing himself gently in over the rail, made the painter fast, and stepped noiselessly over toward the lighted oblong of the companionway.
"Wot're you talking about?" he demanded brusquely. "I must see Miss Calendar, or Calendar himself, or Mulready." Kirkwood paused, and, getting no reply, grew restive under Stryker's inscrutable regard. "That's why I came aboard," he amended, blind to the absurdity of the statement; "to see er Calendar." "Well ... I'm damned!" Stryker managed to infuse into his tone a deal of suspicious contempt.
Spurred onward by a storm of curses, Stryker's voice chanting infuriated cacophony with Calendar's, Kirkwood leapt up the companionway even as the second tremendous kick threatened to shatter the panels.
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