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At last we have hit the nail on the head! Secret anxieties. Yes! yes! Plain enough now. A disappointment in love eh, Mrs. Crayford?" "I don't know, Captain Helding; I am quite in the dark. In all else we are like sisters. I sometimes fear there may indeed be some trouble preying secretly on her mind. I sometimes feel a little hurt at her incomprehensible silence."
Crayford yielded, writhing inwardly under the sense of his own helplessness. What in God's name could he do? Could he denounce Wardour to Captain Helding on bare suspicion without so much as the shadow of a proof to justify what he said? The captain would decline to insult one of his officers by even mentioning the monstrous accusation to him.
Neither the one nor the other had the faintest suspicion that she could and did hear every word of the talk that passed between them. "You received my note this morning?" the captain began. "Certainly, Captain Helding, or I should have been on board the ship before this."
Captain Helding resumed: "The plan proposed is, that a detachment of the able-bodied officers and men among us should set forth this very day, and make another effort to reach the nearest inhabited settlements, from which help and provisions may be dispatched to those who remain here. The new direction to be taken, and the various precautions to be adopted, are all drawn out ready.
Frank belongs to the Sea-mew, and Wardour to the Wanderer. See! Captain Helding has done. My husband is coming this way. Let me make sure. Let me speak to him." Lieutenant Crayford returned to his wife. She spoke to him instantly. "William! you have got a new volunteer who joins the Wanderer?" "What! you have been listening to the captain and me?" "I want to know his name?"
Crayford during the lieutenant's absence in the Arctic regions. She is now dancing, with the lieutenant himself for partner, and with Mrs. The conversation between Captain Helding and Mrs. Crayford, in one of the intervals of the dance, turns on Miss Burnham. The captain is greatly interested in Clara. He admires her beauty; but he thinks her manner for a young girl strangely serious and subdued.
"In these enlightened times, Captain Helding, we only believe in dancing tables, and in messages sent from the other world by spirits who can't spell! By comparison with such superstitions as these, even the Second Sight has something in the shape of poetry to recommend it, surely?
The man who had spoken was Richard Wardour. Crayford instantly interfered so vehemently as to astonish all who knew him. "No!" he said. "Not you, Richard! not you!" "Why not?" Wardour asked, sternly. "Why not, indeed?" added Captain Helding. "Wardour is the very man to be useful on a long march. He is in perfect health, and he is the best shot among us. I was on the point of proposing him myself."
"Is Captain Helding here, sir?" he asked, addressing himself to Wardour. Wardour pointed to Crayford. "The lieutenant will tell you," he said. Crayford advanced and questioned the quartermaster. "What do you want with Captain Helding?" he asked. "I have a report to make, sir. There has been an accident on the ice." "To one of your men?" "No, sir. To one of our officers."
"I am going on board myself at once," the captain proceeded, "but I must ask you to keep your boat waiting for half an hour more. You will be all the longer with your wife, you know. I thought of that, Crayford." "I am much obliged to you, Captain Helding.
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