United States or Burundi ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
His own schooner, which lay near the colliers, had apparently knocked off work pending his arrival. For Sergeant Pilbeam he looked in vain. He waited a minute or two, and then, with a furtive glance right and left, strolled in a careless fashion until he was abreast of one of the colliers.
Miss Pilbeam rose. "No, don't go," she said, hastily. "Do be quiet. I want to think." Captain Bligh waited in respectful silence, heedless of the fateful seconds ticking from the mantelpiece. At the sound of a slow, measured footfall on the cobblestone path outside Miss Pilbeam caught his arm and drew him towards the door. "Go!" she breathed. "No, stop!"
"It's a swindle!" began Voules, when there was a sudden rush and the girl Pilbeam cannoned into the crowd, sending me into old Marshall's chair, and flung herself into the arms of Voules. "Oh, Harold!" she cried. "I thought you were dead. I thought you'd shot yourself." He sort of braced himself together to fling her off, and then he seemed to think better of it and fell into the clinch.
"I was afraid you would lose your breath," explained the skipper, awkwardly. "You are not angry, are you?" He was so genuinely relieved when she said, "No," that Miss Pilbeam, despite her father's wrongs, began to soften a little.
Miss Pilbeam sat in deep thought. "It's the getting aboard that's the trouble," she said, slowly. "You'd have to disguise yourself. It would have to be a good disguise, too, to pass my father, I can tell you." Captain Bligh gave a gloomy assent. "The only thing for you to do, so far as I can see," said the girl, slowly, "is to make yourself up like a coalie.
"We had words," said the skipper. "I don't like policemen fat policemen and while we were talking he happened to lose his balance and go over into some mud that was swept up at the side of the road." "Lost his balance?" gasped the horrified Miss Pilbeam. The skipper was flattered at her concern. "You would have laughed if you had seen him," he said, smiling.
"He's downstairs brushing the mud off," she said, in a low voice. "Who is?" said the skipper. "The fat policeman," said the girl, in a hard voice, as she remembered her father's wrongs. "What's he doing it here for?" demanded the astonished skipper. "Because he lives here." "Lodger?" queried the skipper, more astonished than before. "Father," said Miss Pilbeam.
"Aren't you sorry?" persisted Miss Pilbeam, in a vibrant voice. "Certainly not," said the skipper. "Why, I shouldn't have seen you if I hadn't done it." Miss Pilbeam looked at the clock and pondered. It wanted but five minutes to nine. Five minutes in which to make up a mind that was in a state of strong unrest. "I suppose it is time for me to go," said the skipper, watching her.
"Funny to think of him hunting for me high and low while I am sitting here," said the skipper. Miss Pilbeam agreed with him, and began to laugh to laugh so heartily that he was fain at last to draw his chair close to hers and pat her somewhat anxiously on the back. The treatment sobered her at once, and she drew apart and eyed him coldly.
"Else I shouldn't have come into your yard," was the reply. "It's the first time we have ever put into Woodhatch, and I might have sailed away and never seen you. Where should we have been but for that fat policeman?" Miss Pilbeam as soon as she could get her breath said, "Ah, where indeed!" and for the first time in her life began to feel the need of a chaperon.
Word Of The Day