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He drew again at his cigar, and then, with an unwonted movement, leaned forward and mechanically pushed the box toward Millner. "Help yourself," he said. Millner, as mechanically, took one of the virginally cinctured cigars, and began to undo its wrappings.
It was characteristic, equally, of Millner, that he should at once mark the narrowness of the shoulders sustaining this ingenuous head; a narrowness, as he now observed, imperfectly concealed by the wide fur collar of young Spence's expensive and badly cut coat.
They were but two against seven Chinamen. They must stay on board, if the coolies wished it; and if they were to stay it was a matter of their own personal safety that the "Bertha Millner" should be properly navigated. "I'll captain her," concluded Moran, sullenly, at the end of their talk. "You must act as mate, Mr. Wilbur.
Millner, accustomed on such occasions to exist merely as a function, sat waiting for the click of the spring that should set him in action; but the pressure not being applied, he finally hazarded: "Are we to go on with the Investigator, sir?" Mr. Spence, who had been pacing up and down between the desk and the fireplace, threw himself into his usual seat at Millner's elbow.
The track toward Lime Point could mean but one thing. The wind was freshening from the nor'west, the ebb tide rushing out to meet the ocean like a mill-race, at every moment the Golden Gate opened out wider, and within two minutes after the time of the last tack the "Bertha Millner" heeled to a great gust that had come booming in between the heads, straight from the open Pacific.
And then, like the rolling up of a scroll, the squall passed, the sun returned, the sky burned back to blue, the ruggedness was smoothed from the ocean, and the warmth of the tropics closed around the "Bertha Millner," once more rolling easily on the swell of the ocean. Of the "Lady Letty" and the drunken beach-combing Captain not a trace remained. Kitchell had gone down with his prize.
Meanwhile Charlie had brought the "Bertha Millner" up to within hailing distance of the bark, and had hove her to. Kitchell ordered Wilbur to return to the schooner and bring over a couple of axes. "We'll have to knock holes all through the house, and break in the skylights and let the gas escape before we can do anything.
Spence slowly moistened his lips with his tongue, and removing his pince-nez, took a long hard look at Millner. "I don't understand. What other guarantee have I got?" "That I mean what I say?" Millner glanced past the banker's figure at his rich densely coloured background of Spanish leather and mahogany. He remembered that it was from this very threshold that he had first seen Mr. Spence's son.
It's an awful responsibility, isn't it, to tamper with anybody's faith in anything?" THE twenty minutes prolonged themselves to forty, the forty to fifty, and the fifty to an hour; and still Millner waited for Mr. Spence's summons. During the two years of his secretaryship the young man had learned the significance of such postponements. Mr.
"You knew," said Draper, in a tone of quiet affirmation. Millner righted himself, and grasped the arms of his chair as if that too were reeling. "About this blackguardly charge?" Draper was studying him intently. "What does it matter if it's blackguardly?" "Matter ?" Millner stammered. "It's that, of course, in any case. But the point is whether it's true or not."
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