Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 1, 2025
And he continued to attend to his business with that watchful care which made the Mahanaddy one of the safest boats afloat. Presently Mark Ruthine left the bridge and went to his cabin to pack. As he descended he paused, and retracing his steps forward he went and touched Jem Agar on the arm. "It's all right," he said. "I'll go with you." Agar nodded.
One fine morning in June the Mahanaddy steamed with stately deliberation into the calm water inside Plymouth breakwater. Many writers love to dwell with pathetic insistence on incidents of a departure; but there is also pathos perhaps deeper and truer because more subtle in the arrival of the homeward-board ship. Who can tell?
She was all for Manly Fenn and dead against the old playmate, whom she intuitively described as "that stupid." In the mean time all the ship knew it. In some ways the two culprits were singularly innocent. It is possible that they did not know that the world is never content unless it is elbow-deep in its neighbour's pie that their affairs were the talk of the Mahanaddy.
Agar was surprised to see Dora turn her back upon her as if she had been something loathsome to look upon, and walk away. When the heart speaks, Glory itself is an illusion. The Mahanaddy had just turned her blunt prow out westward from the harbour of Port Said, sniffing her native north wind, with a gentle rising movement to that old Mediterranean eastward-tending swell.
Hers was the loveliness of the violet, which is apt to pall in this modern day to aggravate, and to suggest wanton waste. For feminine loveliness is on the wane marred, like many other good things, by over-education. Norah Hood was a typical country parson's daughter, who knew the right and did it, ignored the wrong and refused to believe in it. The captain was busy with his Mahanaddy.
Finally, the devil as the captain bluffly affirmed brought it to pass that he, Manly Fenn, should take passage in the Mahanaddy on the voyage of which we have to do. It was very sudden, and many thorough things are so. It happened somewhere in the Red Sea, and Mrs. Stellasis was probably the first to sniff danger in the breeze.
But many watched him half interestedly, and perhaps a few divined the great calm impatience beneath the suppressed quiet of his manner. "That man Jem Agar is dangerous," the Doctor had said to the Captain more than once, and Mark Ruthine was not often egregiously mistaken in such matters. "Um!" replied the Captain of the Mahanaddy. "There is an uncanny calm."
Give us ah! give us but Yesterday! In the old days, when the Mahanaddy was making her reputation, she had her tragedy. And Dr. Mark Ruthine has not forgotten it, nor forgiven himself yet. Doctors, like the rest of us, are apt to make a hideous mistake or two which resemble the stream anchors of a big steamer warping out into the Hooghly. We leave them behind, but we do not let go of them.
"Good business good business," exclaimed the General, who seemed somewhat unnecessarily excited. "Old Mark Ruthine too!" he went on. "You look as fit as ever. Still turning your thousands out of the British public eh!" "Yes," said Ruthine, "thank you." "Just run ashore for half an hour, I suppose?" continued Seymour Michael, looking hurriedly out towards the Mahanaddy.
Neither man answered him, but they turned also and looked, standing one on each side of him. Then at last Jem Agar spoke, breaking a silence which had been brooding since the Mahanaddy came out of the Canal. "I want to know," he said, "exactly how things stand with my people at home." He continued to look out over the bay towards the Mahanaddy, but Mark Ruthine was looking at Seymour Michael.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking