Kitabı oku: «Tom Gerrard», sayfa 8
CHAPTER XVIII
On their way home, Gerrard and Fraser discussed the position, and Kate’s heart beat quicker when her father said, “I think you are right, Gerrard. Ill give up the idea of the Gilbert, and shall try my luck on the Batavia.”
“Very well, it is settled. We can leave by the next steamer for Somerset.”
“I meant to overland it.”
“Don’t think of it. It is over a thousand miles, and you would have to pass through some fearful country, full of poison bush, and would perhaps lose all your horses. Then, too, the blacks are bad, very bad.”
“Some of my men will be sure to come with me; especially Young and Smith.”
“Don’t think of overlanding it,” persisted Gerrard. “It would take you, even with the best of luck, two months to get to the Batavia. Come with me to Somerset. I think we can get all the horses we want there, and then we can go across country—only one hundred and fifty miles—to the Gulf side; if not, I’ll hire one of the pearling luggers to take us round by Cape York.”
So Douglas Fraser yielded, and when they reached the house, he sent word to the claim and battery for all the men to come to him.
“Boys,” he said, as the toil-stained, rough miners filed into the sitting-room, “we’ll have to clear out of the Gully now that the reef has pinched out. Now, Mr Gerrard tells me that there is both good reefing and alluvial country up about the Batavia River; all the creeks carry gold; so I am going there with him, Will any of you come in with me?”
Every one of them gave a ready assent.
“Why, boss,” said Sam Young, “we coves ain’t agoin’ to leave you an’ Miss Kate as long as we can make tucker and wages—or half wages, as fur as that goes. What say, lads?”
“Of course you can’t leave us,” said Kate with a laugh; “you all know what it is to have a woman cook.”
“An’ a lady doctor for them as have jim-jams,” said one of them, looking at Cockney Smith, who shuffled his feet, and stared at something he pretended to see outside.
The matter was soon concluded, and the few following days were spent in crushing the last of the stone from the claim, and having a final clean-up of the battery. And Douglas Fraser could not help a heavy sigh escaping him, as he looked at the now silent machinery, and the cold, fireless boiler, to be in a few years hidden from view by the ever-encroaching forest of brigalow and gum trees.
Knowles, when he heard they were going, came to say good-bye. He looked so dejected that Kate felt a real pity for him; especially now that she knew the story of his life.
“I’ll be as lonely as a bandicoot after you go,” he said frankly, as he twisted his carefully-waxed moustache; “and, by Jove, if I were not bound to stay at Kaburie for Mrs Tallis, I would ask your father to let me make one of his party. I don’t know anything about mining, but I could make myself useful with the horses—sort of a cow-boy, you know.”
“I really do wish you could come with us, Mr Knowles. We shall miss you very much. Father, when he looked at his chess-board yesterday, heaved such a tremendous sigh, and I knew that he was thinking of you, and wondering if he will ever find any such another player.”
“Ah! I shall miss my chess, too. Still, one never knows what may happen, and it is possible that some day you may see me up on the Batavia, looking for a billet on some cattle station. I would go now if I could. But I must stick to Mrs Tallis, at least until she gets another manager.”
“She won’t let you leave Kaburie, Mr Knowles. She likes you too much; she told me so.” The little man’s face suffused with pleasure. “It was very good of her. But I should like her ever so much more if she would give me a better salary.”
“Ask her—she won’t refuse you.”
“Ah! I wouldn’t have the courage; a lady, you see, is different from a man.”
“Write—that is easy enough. Now, promise me. And I can positively assure you that she will only be too glad.” She put her hand on his. “Do promise me.”
“I can refuse you nothing. But I need not write, for I think it very likely that now the sale of Kaburie is ‘off’ with Mr Gerrard, she will come back there to live. I had a telegram from her yesterday, in which she said that she might come back next month.”
“Then, Mr Knowles, you will have to propose to her—that will be ever so much better than asking her for a bigger salary,” and Kate laughed.
The ex-sailor blushed like a girl, then he tugged furiously at his moustache. “By Jove, Miss Fraser, I—I—you don’t know—I—if I were not so old, and not so beastly poor—I was going to ask you to marry me. There, it’s out now, and you’ll think me an ass.”
Kate’s manner changed. What she had feared he would one day say, he had now said, and she felt sorry for him.
“I think that you are such a man that any woman should be proud to hear what you have said to me, Mr Knowles,” she said softly. “I know more about you than you think I do. But I shall never marry. I am going to stick to my father, and grow up into a nice old maid with fluffy white hair.”
“You are not offended with me?”
“Offended! No, indeed. I feel proud that you should think so much of me as to have thought of asking me to be your wife,” and she put out her hand to him. He raised it quickly to his lips, and then saying something incoherent about his wanting to see Cockney Smith’s kangaroo pups, hurriedly left the room.
“That was over soon,” breathed Kate, as she watched his well-set little figure striding across the paddock to Smith’s humpy. “He is a gentleman, if ever there was one in the world.”
“What is the matter, little one?” asked her father, as he entered the room.
“Nothing, dad. I was only looking at Mr Knowles going over to Smith’s humpy to look at the new kangaroo pups.”
Fraseras eyes twinkled. He guessed what had occurred. “I suppose Charlie Broome,” (the bank manager at Boorala) “will be the next, Kate. I had a letter from him this morning, saying he would be here to-morrow. You had one also, I saw.”
“Oh, he is concerned about Cockney Smith’s account,” said Kate serenely; “that is why he is coming, now that he knows we are going away.”
“Exactly,” said Fraser, stroking his beard. “It’s wonderful the interest he takes in Cockney Smith—an extraordinary-ordinary interest.”
“Father, don’t make fun of me—I can’t help it. And his letter to me was so silly that I was ashamed to show it to you—I really was.”
“Oh, well, I don’t want to see it, my child. I’ve read too many love-letters when I was on the Bench—some of them so ‘excessively tender,’ as that old ruffian of a Judge Norbury used to say in Ireland, more than a hundred years ago, that I had to handle them with the greatest care, for fear they would fall into pieces. Now, who else is there that is going to solicit your lily-white hand—which isn’t lily-white, but a distinct leather-brown—before we get away? Lacey, I suppose, will be the next.”
“Not he, dad—the dear, sensible old man! He is wedded to his ‘rag,’ as he calls the Clarion. But, at the same time, I do look forward to seeing him again, and hearing his beautiful rich brogue—especially when he is excited.”
Gerrard came to the door.
“May I come in?” he asked His eyes were alight with subdued merriment, as he displayed an open letter. The mailman from Port Denison had just arrived.
“I have had a letter from my sister, Miss Fraser. She is leaving Sydney with my niece Mary, and coming to Ocho Rios. That is a bit of good luck for me, isn’t it? And I am sure you and she and Mary will become great chums. She tells me that “—he hesitated a moment—“that as her affairs are in such a bad state she would like to come to me. And I am thunderingly glad of it Of course she doesn’t know that Ocho Rios station has gone—in a way; but by the time she gets to Somerset—three months from now—she will find a new house, and we’ll all be as happy as sandboys. Now, Miss Fraser, are you ready for an hour or two’s fishing? You’ll come too, Fraser?”
“Won’t I? Do you think I would miss the last chance of fishing in Fraser’s Creek?” and the big man took down his fishing-rod and basket from a peg on the rough, timbered sides of the sitting-room.
“Fill your pipe, dad, before we start.”
“Fill it for me, Miss,” and Fraser threw a piece of tobacco upon the table, together with his pocket-knife.
“And yours too, Mr Gerrard. I am a great hand at cutting up tobacco; I wish I were a man, and could smoke it. Oh, Mr Gerrard, I’m ‘all of a quiver’ to know that I shall see your little Mary.”
“So am I, ‘quite a quivering,” and then as Gerrard looked at her beautiful face, he remembered his own scarred features, and something between a sigh and a curse came from his lips.
CHAPTER XIX
As Mrs Westonley had told Gerrard in her letter that she and Mary would not leave Marumbah for quite two months and proceed direct to Somerset, where she hoped he would meet them, he decided to lose no more time at Port Denison; and so a week after the abandonment of Fraser’s Gully, he and his friends found themselves on board a steamer bound to the most northern port of the colony, just then coming into prominence as the rendezvous of the pearling fleet, although Thursday Island was also much favoured.
Before leaving Port Denison, he had written to his sister, and told her that he would meet her on her arrival at Somerset. “Jim is off his head with delight,” he added; “in fact we both are, at the prospect of seeing you and Mary so soon. In one way I am glad that it will be barely three months before you get to Ocho Rios, for I want to get a new house put up; the present one isn’t of much account”—this was his modified way of saying that there was no house there at all, it having been reduced to ashes, but he did not wish her to have the faintest inkling of any of his misfortunes, for fear that she would then refuse to add to his troubles and expenses by becoming a charge upon him. “And I have already bought some decent furniture, which I will take round with me in one of the pearlers. I do hope you will like the place, but you will look upon it at its very worst, for there have been heavy bush fires all about the station, which have played the deuce with the country for hundred of miles about. But the annual rains will begin to fall in four months, and then you will see it at its best. I am also going to make a garden, and plant no end of vegetables and flowers and things. There is a lovely little spot on one of the creeks; and Jim and I have been going over a thumping big box of seeds which I bought yesterday. You can consider that garden as made, with rock-melons and watermelons, and ‘punkens’ and other fruit growing in it galore.”
When Elizabeth Westonley read the letter she smiled—the first time almost since her husband’s death. “How nice of your uncle, is it not, Mary? I should miss a garden dreadfully, and it is very thoughtful of him when he has so much work to do with his cattle. And see, he has sent me a draft for one hundred pounds for our expenses up to Somerset.”
“Are we very, very, poor now, Aunt?”
“Very, very poor, Mary,” and she sighed, “But still it might have been much worse for us if the people to whom Marumbah now belongs had not let me keep the furniture. Mr Brooke has bought it, and paid me three hundred and fifty pounds for it. And I am sure he only did it because he was sorry for us; I am certain he does not want it.”
Brooke, indeed, had been very kind to the wife of his dead friend, and had pressed her to accept a loan of money, but this she had gratefully declined.
“How glad Uncle Tom must be that he has money to send you!”
“I am sure he must be. He is always thinking of others; and you and I, Mary, must do all we can for him. I shall be housekeeper and cook and all sorts of things, and you shall be chief housemaid, and help me, and we will try and make the house look nice.”
“Yes, Aunt. And won’t it be lovely to see Jim again! I can just imagine his staring eyes when he sees that I have brought Bunny. You’ll keep it a dead secret, won’t you?”
“Quite secret. I did not even mention Bunny in my letter. Now we must go on sewing these mosquito curtains; your uncle says that in the rainy season the mosquitoes nearly eat one alive, so I am going to make six, as I am sure he has none at Ocho Rios. He says they don’t bite him, as his skin is too tough.”
An hour before the steamer in which Gerrard and the Frasers had taken passage cast off her lines from the jetty, Lacey came on board to say farewell, bringing with him Mrs Woodfall. The kind-hearted woman was almost on the verge of tears as she sat down beside Jim, and folded him to her ample, motherly bosom.
Gerrard presently drew her aside, and put two five pound notes in her hand.
“Indeed I won’t, sir. I like the lad too much! No, sir, not even as a present. But I do hope you won’t mind his writing to us sometimes. And will you mind my saying, Mr Gerrard, that me and my husband are very sorry to hear that your station has been burned, and that you have lost nearly all your cattle. And we have taken a liberty which I hope won’t offend you—it is only a present for Jim, and won’t give you any trouble on board the steamer, and the freight is paid right on to Somerset, and my husband put five hundredweight of best Sydney lucerne hay on board, so you won’t have no trouble in feeding him; and, although I say it myself, there’s not a better bred bull calf in North Queensland.”
“Do you mean to say, Mrs Woodfall, that you have given Jim that Young Duke bull of yours? Why, he’s worth fifty pounds! Oh no, I can’t allow you to be so generous as that.”
“You can’t help it now, Mr Gerrard,” said the good woman triumphantly; “my husband brought him on board last night, and he is now in his stall on the fore-deck as happy as a king, and I hope he will prove his good blood when you once have him at Ocho Rios. Come and look at him,” and she smiled with pride as she led the way out of the saloon.
The animal was comfortably established in a stall on the fore-deck, and beside him was Woodfall feeding him with the “Sydney lucerne.”
“Woodfall, that bull is going ashore right away unless you take fifty pounds for him,” said Gerrard; “he’ll be worth five hundred pounds to me in a couple of years.”
“Can’t take it, Mr Gerrard. He’s a present to Jim, so it’s no use talking. But I would take it as a favour if you’d send me a line, and tell me how he bears the journey.”
“Indeed I will, Woodfall,” replied Gerrard, who was greatly touched by this practical demonstration of their regard for him; for he knew that their excuse of giving the bull to Jim was a shallow one, and that both husband and wife were aware that the animal would prove of the greatest value to him, now that Ocho Rios was practically without cattle. And such sympathy went to his heart. “The world is full of kind people,” he thought. Then he turned to Mrs Woodfall and her husband with a smile. “Come back to the saloon with me. The steamer will leave in half an hour, and we shall not have much time to talk together. And the steward is giving us tea there.”
The big woman’s face flushed with pleasure. “That is kind of you, Mr Gerrard. I can drink a cup of tea, but would be afraid to ask that swell steward for it; he looks like–”
“Like a duke in disguise, eh? But he’ll take a shilling tip from any one, I can assure you.”
“Well, I never! He ought to be ashamed of himself. English fashions are a-coming in, aren’t they, Mr Gerrard? Just fancy any respectable man taking a shilling for doing the work he is paid for! Fifteen pound a month these steamer stewards get, so Mr Lacey tells me. My! But he won’t get no shilling from me.”
“Indeed he shall not, Mrs Woodfall. You are my guest. Now come along, please, as Miss Fraser and the others will be waiting for us.”
“Mr Gerrard, isn’t Miss Fraser a bonny girl—and can’t she ride! I don’t want to be rude, sir, but you will have to have a mistress for Ocho Rios; and she is one of the sweetest girls in the country, and right to your hand, so to speak.”
“Mrs Woodfall, you are surprising me. First you give Jim a bull calf worth hundreds of pounds, and then you try to fill my head with the idea that a young lady whom I have only known for a few weeks–”
“Ah, Mr Gerrard! Trust a woman for knowing things that men don’t see. I saw her looking at you in the saloon—and, well, I know a thing or two.”
“I am sure you do,” said Gerrard laughingly, as they re-entered the saloon, “but I should have to get another face before I ask any one to marry me.”
“Not at all. Why, Mr Gerrard, in a year or so all those red scars will have gone, and you’ll be the nice same nutty brown all over.”
“How are you, Gerrard?” said a little white-haired man in uniform. “I am glad to see you on board the Gambler once more. You’ll share my cabin, of course?”
“Thanks, Captain MacAlister, I shall be delighted,” and then the master of the steamer, after an admiring glance at Kate, and a look of wondering sympathy at the left side of Gerrard’s face, hurried on deck to the bridge.
“Two big bottles of Pommery, steward; never mind the tea. Quick, please,” cried Lacey to the steward; “the skipper has gone on the bridge, and we’ll just have time for a doch and dorrish, Miss Fraser.” The steward soon had the bottles opened.
“Gerrard, me boy, I wish you lashings of luck, and you too, Miss Fraser. Jim, my son, don’t forget to write. Come, Mrs Woodfall; you really must, or I’ll not speak to ye for a month. Here’s to the bright eyes of the ladies! Miss Fraser, don’t be after playing with any more alligators—they’re nasty things for ladies to handle. Now I must be going; there’s the last bell,” and shaking hands all round once more, the genial Irishman left the saloon with the Woodfalls to go on shore, leaving Gerrard and his party to make their way on deck.
The engines throbbed, and the great hull of the steamer slid slowly along the pier, and Gerrard and his friends went to the rail to see the last of Lacey. He, however, for the moment did not see them, as he was hurriedly writing in his pocket-book. Then tearing out the leaf, he looked up, and pushing his way through the crowd to the edge of the pier, was just in time to reach out and place the paper in Gerrard’s hand.
“Don’t read it now,” he cried, as he drew back; “put it in your pocket. Good-bye, and good luck.”
A few minutes later Captain MacAlister asked Gerrard and Fraser to come up on the bridge, and Gerrard unfolded Lacey’s missive and read:
“Just recognised one of your fellow-passengers—tall, stout, good-looking, yellow moustache, jewellery. Look out for him— noted card-sharper, and all-round blackguard. Calls himself Honble Wilburd Merriton, but has heaps of aliases—ex-gaol bird.”
Gerrard showed the note to Fraser, who nodded, and said he had noticed the man.
“I think there is a party of them. See, there they are together at the companion; and, by Jove, I can swear to one of them! I tried him at Araluen for being concerned in gold-stealing, and gave him three years ‘hard.’ That is he with the black moustache and Jewish features—Mr Barney Green.”
CHAPTER XX
Not only the saloon, but the steerage accommodation of the Gambier was taxed to the utmost, and Gerrard and Fraser were not surprised to see that there were quite a hundred diggers on board, for Lacey had told them a few days previously that the Sydney and Melbourne newspapers as well as the Queensland Press had, weeks previously, reported that many prospecting parties were doing well on both sides of Cape York Peninsula.
Some of them the ex-judge quickly recognised as men he had met at Gympie and other Queensland gold-fields, and he was especially pleased to see one man—a tall, broad-shouldered Irishman named Blake, who at that moment was engaged in an altercation with the fore-cabin steward, and causing roars of laughter every few moments from his rough companions.
“That’s a ‘broth av a boy,’ and no mistake,” said Captain MacAlister, coming over to Fraser and Gerrard; “he’s as full of mischief as a monkey, but a great favourite with every one on board, except the unfortunate stewards. He is a lucky digger from Gympie, and came aboard at Brisbane, and has kept the ship in an uproar ever since. He took a four-berth state-room for himself, but only uses it to sleep in—if the devil ever does sleep—and spends all his time among the other diggers in the fore-cabin.”
“I know him,” said Fraser with a smile. “Just listen now—he is taking a rise out of the poor steward.”
The fore-cabin steward, a fat, podgy, little man, was speaking; beside him was Cockney Smith, who kept giving him sympathetic punches in the back to go on.
“I won’t ‘ave it, even if yer are a cabbing passinger. Wot do yer come into the fore-cabbing for, upsettin’ me an’ my men, and a-usin’ langwidge when I can’t open four dozen bottles of beer at onct. I never seed such a crowd! I’m alius willin’ to oblige any man wot is thirsty, and wot wants a drink; but I aint a-goin’ to attend on yer like a slave when I ‘as cleanin’ to do. So there, big as yer are, yer ‘ave it—straight.”
“‘Ear, ‘ear,” said Cockney Smith, who was thoroughly enjoying himself. “Who’s a-goin’ to be bullied by any cove because he is a cabbing passinger?” and he gave Blake an almost imperceptible wink.
Blake outspread his huge hands and rolled up his eyes, in sorrowful indignation. “Me little mahn, I can see that ye and the steward mane to parsecute me, and make me loife a mishery—an’ me doin’ no harm at all, at all. Sure, I’ll not stand it anny more. It’s to the captain I’ll go, and complain av ye both. He’s a MacAlister, he is, an’ I’ll call on him to purtect me from your violent conduct—me sufferin’ from a wake heart, an’ liable to fall dead on yez at anny moment, when yez luk at me like that, wid that ferocioushness in yez eyes. Sure, an’ me own father dhropped dead off the car he was drivin’ whin an ould maid from Belfast gave him two sovereigns in mistake for two shillin’s for takin’ her from Dawson Street to St Stephen’s Green. It was short-sighted she was, but it made me the poor orphan I am this minute.”
Amidst much laughter, the irate steward went off, and left the field to his antagonist, and then Douglas Fraser left the bridge, made his way forward, and clapping the Irishman on the shoulder, said:
“At your old tricks again, Larry.”
Blake stared at him for a moment, and then gave a shout of delight as he seized Fraser’s hand, and in a few seconds other diggers also recognised and crowded about him.
“An’ how’s the wee girl?” was Blake’s first question.
“Come and see for yourself,” and Fraser led the way to the saloon, where they found Kate. She was delighted to see the big digger, and blushed scarlet at his loudly expressed compliments, for there were a number of other passengers near. Leaving her with Blake, Fraser rejoined Gerrard, and together they went to the purser, whom they found in his cabin, and asked to see the passenger list. He was an old accquaintance of Gerrard’s, and readily complied. Running down the names, they failed to see either that of Merriton or Green.
“Who is that big, good-looking man with the yellow moustache, carrying field-glasses, Adlam?” asked Gerrard carelessly.
“Oh,” and the purser shrugged his shoulders. “Here he is,” and he pointed to a name on the list—“‘Captain Forreste.’ He’s one of a party of four, who have a cabin to themselves. They put on no end of frills, and practically boss the saloon. Between ourselves, I have every reason to believe they are a gang of sharpers. I know for a fact that one of them—this fellow here, ‘Mr Bernard Capel’—has a hand-bag literally packed with unopened packs of cards, every one of which no doubt is marked. I happened to be passing their state-room late at night, after all the other passengers were asleep, and when the ship was rolling heavily. The door flew open, and I saw this fellow Capel and the big man Forreste had the bag open on the table, and there must have been at least twenty unopened packs of cards piled up on the table, besides those in the bag. I pretended I didn’t notice, for the moment the door flew open, Capel called Forreste a – idiot for not turning the key. Now, I haven’t been pursering for ten years without learning something, and I can smell a swell-mobsman almost before I see him.”
Fraser nodded. “I daresay you are right, Mr Adlam. When a man travels with a handbag full of packs of cards one naturally would suspect that he was either very eccentric, or was a commercial traveller, with samples of his wares.” His eyes twinkled. “It is a very old dodge that—an apparently unopened pack of cards, every one of which has been systematically marked, and then the wrapper with the revenue stamp is carefully put on again.”
“Just so,” assented the purser. “And the other night, a big digger—one of our saloon passengers—was taken down by Forreste for a hundred and twenty pounds. The great Irish ass, however, thinks that Forreste is no end of a gentleman. The skipper and I gave him a hint, which he wouldn’t take, however. The worst of it is that I must keep my mouth shut about the bag full of packs of cards. Diggers are rough customers, and if these now on board knew that Forreste and his friends were a gang of sharpers, they would handle them very severely, and create a fearful disturbance.”
“What is Mr Bernard Capel like?” asked Fraser.
“Oh, a short, black-moustached chap with curly hair, and a hook nose, wears a lot of jewellery. The lady passengers think that he and Captain Forreste are most charming men.”
“Who are the other two?”
“Pinkerton and Cheyne. They are as well-dressed as the others, but don’t push themselves much—the other two are the bosses of the gang.”
Fraser thought a moment or two. Then he spoke.
“I think I ought to tell you, Mr Adlam. I know the man who calls himself Capel. His real name is Barney Green, and he is a bad lot—gold thief and coiner. And I advise you to take good care of your safe. I daresay these four gentlemen have a very interesting collection of safe keys.”
Adlam laughed. “Ah, our Company has learnt something by experience. There, you see, is the safe which is supposed to contain all the money committed to my care; but there is nothing in it but loose cash; the safe that does hold all the money is here,” and he tapped the varnished cedar panels of his bunk; “no one, even if he knew the secret, could get at it without disturbing me. When the strong room of the Andes was broken into five years ago, between Melbourne and Colombo, and six hundred-weight of gold bars stolen, I set my wits to work, and devised this idea of mine. Only the captain, chief officer, chief engineer, and myself, and, of course, the Company’s general manager at Sydney, know of it; even my own bedroom steward has no idea that there is a second safe, although he turns out my cabin twice a week for a general cleaning. If he did discover the fact, I should have to shunt him at once, as he is quite a new hand in the service.”
“Well, you have given the secret away to us, Adlam,” said Gerrard, with a laugh, “and I have had some bad luck of late.”
The purser laughed in unison, and then turning the key of his door, rose, went to his bunk, and touched a concealed spring in the heavy panelling at the back. It at once slid down noiselessly, and revealed the safe, about the sides of which were a number of electric wires and bells.
“The current is turned off now,” he explained, as he again touched the panelling, which ascended as quickly and softly as it had fallen; “but if any one did try to prize up the panelling, there would be a devil of a row; not only the six bells in this cabin but those in the captain’s and chief mate’s room would begin to ring, and keep ringing, and they and the chief engineer would know something was wrong. We have tried it several times when in dock, after clearing every one out of the ship but ourselves, and it works splendidly—kicks up a fearful din. Now, last voyage, independent of ten thousand ounces of gold in the strong room, I had seventeen thousand pounds in notes and sovereigns in that safe; this trip there is only about one thousand two hundred pounds, mostly passengers’ money, and a packet of five thousand new unsigned one pound notes for the bank just opened at Cooktown. Now, I hope with four such gentry as we have on board that you and Mr Fraser will be careful; better give me your cash.”
“Thank you, I will,” said Fraser; “I have seven hundred pounds in notes.”
“And I about three hundred pounds,” said Gerrard.
“Well, go and get them now if you will,” said the obliging purser.
This was done, and then the two friends, as they were returning to the bridge, met Kate.
“I have honours conferred on me, father. Captain MacAlister is having afternoon tea in his cabin, and you, Mr Gerrard, and Jim are invited; I am to be hostess. In another hour I shall be the best hated woman on board.”
