Kitabı oku: «The Cruise of the Snowbird: A Story of Arctic Adventure», sayfa 17
They say that some of the Highlanders of Scotland possess the strange gift, second sight. I know not, but McBain began to feel uneasy the very moment his party had gone, and as the day wore on he became more so.
“Ralph, boy,” he said at last, “let us break up camp at once and follow the boys.”
“I’m ready now!” cried Ralph, alarmed at his captain’s manner.
A meal was hastily served out, and in ten minutes more the start was commenced.
The men marched in silence, partaking in a measure of the gloom of their leader. There was no thought of shooting the game that crossed their pathway. But the trail was easy. They reached the Great Snow Lake, and bore round to the right, and soon entered the dark forest. Here in the gloom the trail was more difficult to follow, and they soon lost it. While they were waiting and doubting, the stillness of the forest was broken by a yell, that not only startled the listeners, but chilled them to the very marrow. Again and again it was repeated, mingled with shouting and the sharp ring of rifles. It was a dread sound; it was as —
“Though men fought upon the earth,
And fiends in upper air.”
“On, men, on!” cried McBain; “our boys are yonder; they are being foully massacred!”
As he spoke he dashed forward in the direction whence the sound proceeded, followed by his brave fellows, and in a few minutes more had cleared the forest and gained the glade where the unequal strife was proceeding. And none too soon. Here were brave young Allan and stately Seth, their backs against a tree, defending themselves, with rifles clubbed, against a cloud of skin-clad savages armed with bows and arrows, but brandishing only spear and tomahawk.
High o’er the din of the strife rang our people’s British cheer. One well-aimed volley, then McBain charged the very centre of the crowd, and blows fell and men fell like wintry rain.
So quick and unexpected had been the onslaught that the savages were beaten back in less time almost than it takes me to describe it – beaten back into the forest and pursued as far as their own encampment. Here they made a stand, and the battle raged for a whole hour; but when did ever savages hold their own very long against the white man?
Let us draw a curtain on the scene that followed – the rout and the pursuit, and the return to the glade where the fight commenced. Stillness once more prevailed as our people re-entered it.
McBain glanced hastily and anxiously around. Where was Rory? Alas! he had not far to look. Yonder he lay, where the fight had raged the fiercest, on his back, quiet and still, with purple upturned face.
It was a painful scene, and down from the sky looked the round rising moon, while daylight slowly faded into gloaming.
As the giant oak is bent before the gale, so bowed was McBain in his grief. He knelt him down beside poor Rory and covered his face with his hands. “My boy! my poor boy!” was all he could say.
Seth had taken but one glance at Rory’s dark swollen face and another at the rising moon. “I guess,” he muttered, “there has been pizened arrows flying around.”
Then he disappeared in the forest.
Chapter Twenty Seven
The Search for an Antidote – Can Rory be Dead? – Seth to the Rescue – Seth as Doctor and Nurse
“I reckon,” said Seth to himself, “that there’ll be just about light enough to find ’em. Good thing now that the moon is full, for they do say that gathered under the full moon their virtue is increased fourfold, and what is more, old Seth believes it. Hullo! it strikes me Rory is in luck. Here they grow as large as life, and twice as natural.”
They were a deal bigger than Seth at all events. Tall and graceful stems with an immensity of leaf, probably a plant belonging to the Solanaceae family.
“I won’t spare you,” continued this curious Yankee trapper.
Nor did he. He quite filled his arms with both stems and leaves, and hastened back to the glade where lay poor Rory, to all appearance dead, and surrounded by his sorrowing friends.
“Clear the course,” cried Seth, “for once in a way, gentlemen; Seth will save the boy if there be a save in him. Carry him along to the lake. Gently with him.”
There was little need of the latter precaution. McBain, hoping against hope, took him up in his arms as tenderly as if he had been a child, and apparently with as much ease, and carried him after Seth to the Great Snow Lake. Here he was laid softly down, and the trapper proceeded in the most masterly manner to bathe and rinse Rory’s terrible wounds. The white milky juice from the fleshy stem of the curious plant was then dropped into them, and they were carefully covered over with bruised leaves.
“There is little else we can do now,” said Seth, “but set us down to watch.”
“And pray,” murmured McBain. Then he said aloud, “I do not doubt your skill, friend Seth, but here I fear there is more to contend with than mortal power can hope to cope with. The poor boy is dead.”
For well-nigh an hour they sat beside him; gloaming had deepened into night, and a fire had been lighted which brought forth Rembrandtine shadows from the woods, and cast its beams far over the broad lake, until they were swallowed up in the darkness. An hour, and yet no signs of returning life – a whole hour, and they still seemed to look on poor Rory as on the face of the dead.
But see! can they be mistaken? Did not his lips move? They did, and now they move again. A sigh is breathed, and presently one faint word is ejaculated.
The word was “Water.”
“He’ll live,” cried Seth; “he’ll live! This is the proudest day for the old trapper in the whole course of his born existence.”
And the cry of Rory for water was indeed the first sign of returning life. A few drops of the juice of that wonderful plant were squeezed into the wounded boy’s mouth, and, ten minutes after, the colour had returned to his face, and he was sleeping as sweetly and soundly as ever he had slept in his life.
McBain squeezed the hand of the honest trapper. In silence he pressed the trapper’s hand. Perhaps he could not have spoken at that moment had he wished to do so, for there was a moisture in his eyes that he had no need to be ashamed of.
While Rory sleeps calmly by the rude log fire, there is other and sadly mournful work to be attended to, for three of the Snowbird’s brave crew lie stark and stiff. So the dead had to be laid out, and the graves dug, where, as soon as sunrise, they would lie side by side with those who had so lately been their foes.
Two more men were wounded, but none so severely as Rory.
There was little sleep for any one in the camp that night, for they were constantly in dread of a renewed attack by the savages. Even the luxury of a fire was a danger, and yet upon this depended Rory’s very existence; but patrols were kept constantly moving through the forest near to prevent surprises.
“Yet I don’t think,” said Seth, “that them bothering blueskins will come around again. We’ve given them such a taste of our steel and our shooting-irons that it ain’t likely they’ll have an appetite for more for some days to come.”
“Shall you hunt them up in the morning,” asked Allan, “and have revenge?”
“No,” said McBain; “no, Allan. The principle is a bad one. People should fight in defence of their homesteads, fight for life and honour, but never to simply show their superiority or for mere revenge.”
Very simple was the service conducted by McBain by the graves of the fallen men. Very simple, and yet, methinks, none the less impressive. A psalm from the metrical version of Israel’s sweetest singer, and a prayer – that was all; then the graves were covered in and left, and there they lie by the side of that Great Snow Lake, with never a stone to mark the spot. Oh! but those three poor fellows will live for many a day and many a year in the memory of their messmates.
The march back to the Snowbird was a mournful one. The skins they had collected did not seem to have the same value now. McBain would not leave them behind, however. Duty must not be neglected, even in the midst of grief.
And Rory? Would he live? Would the blood ever bound again through his veins as of yore? Would he ever again be the bright-smiling, sunny-faced lad he had been? For weeks this was doubted. He lay on his bed, so pallid and worn that every one save Seth thought he was wearing away to the land o’ the leal. Seth would not give him up, though, and many a herb and balsam he gathered for him in the forest, and many a strange fish, cooked by Seth himself, was brought to tempt his appetite.
Seth came on board one day rejoicing.
“I have it now,” he cried; “the old trapper has done it at last. Now, boy Rory, as everybody calls you, you have nothing earthly to do in this wide world but get well. And you’ll eat what I brings, and nice you’ll find them, too.” And Seth proceeded to open a handkerchief and display to the astonished gaze of our heroes a lovely collection of large truffles.
“Why, truffles, I do declare!” exclaimed McBain. “I never imagined, friend Seth, that the geographical disposition of the truffle extended to these wild regions.”
“The trapper don’t speak a word o’ Greek,” said Seth, looking at McBain amusedly; “but them’s the truffles, right enough, and they are bound to send the last remnant o’ that vile blueskin’s pisen out o’ boy Rory’s blood.”
It was a magical stew that Seth concocted that day with those truffles. It even made Rory smile. Something of the old good-humour and happiness began to settle down on the hearts of the people of the Snowbird from that very hour, and when, a day or two after, Rory joined his mess mates at dinner, reclining on a sofa, all doubts for his safety were completely dispelled. Dr Seth, as he insisted upon calling the trapper, was invited to join the party, and not only he, but the three mates, and a pleasant evening, if not a merry one, was passed.
Chapter Twenty Eight
One Last Day on Shore – Bearing up for the East and North – Farewell, Old Seth; Farewell, Plunket
When at last Rory was so far recovered that he could go on deck with safety, he gazed around him with delight. And well he might, for a more wildly beautiful scene it has been the lot of very few travellers to feast their eyes upon.
“Why,” he cried, with the old glad smile in his eyes, “summer has come again while I have been ill. Oh! such beauty! such grandeur! All the trees in leaf and the flowers in bloom, and not a bit of ice to be seen in the bay. Shouldn’t I like to go on shore once more before we start, to cull a flower, or make a sketch.”
“Well, Rory,” said McBain, smiling at his enthusiasm, “that is a wish we can easily gratify if you really think you are strong enough.”
“Strong!” said Rory, “why, I’m strong enough to fell an ox. You’ve no idea how strong I feel; nor how happy at being strong again.”
“Happy and thankful at the same time, I trust,” said McBain.
“Ay,” put in Allan, “and you’ve no idea, Rory, how delighted we all are to have you on deck again, and really with us, you know.”
Rory smiled with pleasure. He felt the genuineness of the words spoken.
They spent that day on shore quietly, and very pleasurably. They sought for no wild adventures, they sought but to saunter about and enjoy the beauties of the landscape; it would be the last ever they would spend in that lovely land, and they meant to leave it in peace. They would neither draw a bead upon a bird, nor fire at a bear, nor lure a fish from the river.
It was not without a certain feeling of sadness they embarked at last, when the day was far spent; and the same feeling stole over them when, next day, they got the anchor up and slowly sailed away a-down the bay with the jibboom pointing east and by north. By mid-day they were opposite the spot where they had anchored all the winter. The new hall which Ap had been so proud of constructing still stood there in all its pristine beauty and pride.
“It does seem a pity,” said Ap, “to leave it to the Indians.”
“Ah! but,” said McBain, who had overheard him, “it would be a greater pity to land and burn it, wouldn’t it, Ap?”
“Yes, look, you see,” was Ap’s reply, his eyes still fondly resting on the building, “I wouldn’t think of that for a moment. Better the Indians than that. Yes, yes.”
When the sun set that day the land was far away on the lee quarter; by morning it had entirely disappeared, and all the adventures they had enjoyed on shore seemed to our heroes like one long wild romantic dream. Ere the second day had come to a close every one on board had quite settled down again to the old yachting roving life, at once so jolly and so free. Watches were kept as before, the dinner-hour was changed to an earlier one, as it usually is at sea and a regular lookout was kept at the bows, as well as a man at the mast-head in the crow’s-nest.
There was need for this, too, for the ice they soon found themselves among was both heavy and dangerous. On this account the Snowbird’s head was changed a few points nearer to the west, and very soon afterwards the sea became more open and clear.
A goodly ten-knot breeze blew steadily for days from the east, and carried them well over to the land that bounds the opposite shores of the Hudson Bay, and the course had once more to be changed for a northerly one, to seek for the straits, and the icebergs again towered around, mountains high, great gomerils of snow, that at times took the wind quite out of their sails. This passage through the straits was at once exciting and dangerous, and for three whole days and nights McBain never slept, and very seldom did he sit more than a few minutes at table.
But open water came at last, and they would probably see no more of the ice until they rounded Cape Farewell, and neared the shores of Iceland. But something had to be done long before then. It must not be forgotten that on the far northern coast of Labrador, in a wild and mountainous lonely land, was the home of honest but eccentric old trapper Seth. McBain had promised to take him back, and a sailor’s promise is, or ought to be at all events, a sacred thing. McBain’s was.
“But, for all that,” said McBain, addressing Seth, “we shall be unfeignedly sorry to part with you; we would far rather you came home with us, and took up your abode at Arrandoon. We’d find you something to do, something to shoot at times, though nothing to compare with the glorious sport we’ve enjoyed in your society.”
“And, thanking you a thousand times,” replied Seth, “but I guess and calculate that at his time of life, civilisation would kind o’ go against the grain of old Seth.”
“And yet,” persisted McBain, “it does seem sad for you to go away back again to that lone wilderness into voluntary exile. What will you do when you fall ill? We all must die, you know.”
“Bless you, sir,” said Seth, “we old trappers don’t mind dying a bit. We’re just like the deer of the forest. We seldom sicken for more than about an hour. We simply falls quietly asleep and wakes no more under the moon.”
So no more was said to Seth in order to dissuade him from his intention of going home, as he called it. But when Seth’s cape was sighted at last, it was quite evident that our heroes had no intention of permitting him to go away empty-handed. They could not pay him for his services in coin. That would have been of little avail for a man in his position.
But a boat-load of stores of every kind was sent on shore with him, and Seth found himself richer by far than ever he had expected to be in his life.
“Hurrah!” cried Seth, when he had reached his clearing and found his cot still standing, “hurrah! the blueskins have been here, I can see their trails all about. What a blessing I buried my waliables. They hain’t been near the place.”
The crew of the Snowbird helped the old man to dig up “his waliables,” and he pronounced them all intact and untouched. They also did all they could to reinstate him in comfort in his cottage.
Then, with three ringing cheers, and many a hearty good-bye and hand-shake, away they went to their yacht, and left poor Seth and Plunket to their loneliness.
Chapter Twenty Nine
The Consultation – Bearing up for Home – The Wanderers’ Return
On the twentieth day of July, eighteen hundred and ever so much, but just one month from the day they had landed the Yankee trapper in the wild country in which he was monarch of all he surveyed, the brave yacht Snowbird, after many never-to-be-forgotten dangers and trials, had reached the latitude of 81 degrees north, and was far to the east of Spitzbergen. It is a month since we have seen her, and how she is lying-to in front of a tremendous bar of ice, through which she has tried, but tried in vain, to force a passage. All that men could do has been done to penetrate farther towards the mysterious regions around the Pole, and now a group of anxious men are assembled deep in consultation in the saloon. The centre figures of this group are McBain and weird old Magnus. The former is standing, with arms folded and lowered brow, gazing calmly down on the table, where is spread out an old and tattered chart, – an old and tattered chart, tapped fiercely by the thin skinny fingers of Magnus, as leaning over the table he gazes up almost wildly at the deep, thoughtful countenance of his commander.
Allan and Ralph are leaning over the backs of chairs, and Rory is leaning on the shoulder of Ralph, but every eye is fixed upon the captain.
Stevenson and the mate of the Trefoil form a portion of the group; they are seated a little way from the others, but are none the less earnest in looks and appearance.
“Behold what we have already borne!” Magnus was saying excitedly, in fierce, fast words. “See what we have already come through in our good yacht; storms have howled around us; tempests have raged; the sea has been churned into foam, blown into whitest smoke, like the surf of the wild Atlantic when the storm spirit shrieks among the crags of Unst, but has she not come bravely through it all? Mighty bergs have tried to clutch her, but she has eluded their slippery grasp, and now, though her planks are scraped by their sides, till, fore and aft, she is as white as the Snowbird you call her, is she not as strong and as dauntless as ever? What is there to come through, that we have not already come through? What is it the yacht has to dare, that she has not already dared? You sent for old Magnus to ask his advice; he gives it. Here in that spot lies the Isle of Alba in a sea of open water. And wealth untold lies there! Eastward – I say eastward still – and eastward, for only by going eastward as heretofore, can you get north. Magnus has spoken.”
“I will weigh all you have said, my good friend Magnus,” was McBain’s reply. He spoke quietly and distinctly, with head a little on one side; “but, before coming to a conclusion of any kind, I should like to hear the opinions of our shipmates. The mate of the unfortunate Trefoil there has had longer experience of these regions than any of us, bar yourself, bold Magnus. What says he? Does he think there is a sea of open water around the Pole?”
“It is my humble belief there is,” said the mate; “and, leaving aside all selfish reasons, I am with you, heart and soul, if you attempt to reach it this season.”
“Spoken like a man,” said McBain; “but do you think that, with ice before us, like what you see, there is a possibility of reaching it in a sailing-ship?”
“You ask me a straightforward question,” said the mate, “and in the same fashion I answer you. I do not believe there is the slightest chance of our doing so. Brave hearts can do a great deal in this world, but, unaided by science, they cannot do everything. Hannibal, when he crossed the Alps, did not melt the rocks with vinegar. Science alone can aid us in reaching the Pole. Sledges we need, balloons are needed, and last, but not least, a ship with steam.”
“I entirely concur with you,” said McBain. “What say you, boys?”
“I think the mate of the Trefoil is right,” said Ralph and Allan.
“’Tis not in mortals to command success,” said Rory; “but I think we’ve done rather more – we’ve deserved it.”
“Well said,” cried Allan.
“Yes, well said,” added McBain; “and, after all, who shall say that we may not return to these seas again. None of us are very old, and wonders never cease. Why, I do declare that bold Magnus here looks fully ten years younger with the good the cruise has done him?”
“Ha! ha! ha!” laughed the weird old man, gathering up that chart that seemed so sacred a thing in his eyes; “and if ever you do, and old man Magnus is still alive, and has one leg left to hop upon, if it’s only a wooden one, he’ll trust to sail with you for the land he loves so well.”
“The land we all love so well,” said McBain; “the seas to which no one ever yet sailed without wishing to revisit them.”
There was a faint double knock at the saloon door as the captain ceased speaking, and Mitchell entered.
“Well, Mr Mitchell, come in, but not so doubtingly; we have done talking, and have come to the unanimous conclusion that the time has arrived for us to bear up.”
“Hurrah! to that,” said Mitchell, striking his left palm with his right fist in a very solid manner indeed.
“And now, sir,” continued Mitchell, “I come to tell you that quite a wall of mist is rolling down upon us from the nor’-east. It is as close and black as factory smoke, and it is now close aboard of us.”
“Any wind?”
“Not much, sir, but what little there is is coming down along with the mist.”
“Then fill the foreyard, Mr Mitchell. Set every stitch she’ll bear, studding-sails if you like, so long as it isn’t too dark and close, and the bergs are anything like visible. I’ll be on deck myself presently.”
“Well, Rory,” said Captain McBain, entering the snuggery that same night, rubbing his hands and beaming with smiles, “so we have borne up at last; how do you like the idea of returning to your native land after all your long journeyings and wild adventures?”
“Indeed, I like it immensely,” replied Rory, “barring the difference that it isn’t my native land I’ll be going to after all, but the land o’ the mountain and the flood. Oh! won’t I be happy to meet Allan’s dear mother and sister again! And even Janet, the dear old soul!”
“Well,” said McBain, taking up Rory’s fiddle and thoughtfully bringing some very discordant notes out of it, “I sincerely hope they will be all alive to meet us: if the meeting be all right I don’t fear for the greeting.” Then brightening up and putting down the instrument, he continued, “I’ve been leaning over the bows for the last hour, and thinking, and I’ve come to the conclusion that we haven’t done so badly by our cruise after all.”
“We haven’t filled up with ivory from the mammoth caves though,” said Ralph, with a sigh.
“Why that plaintive sigh, poor soul?” asked Rory.
“Ah! because, you know,” replied Ralph, pinching Rory’s ear, “we haven’t made wealth untold, and I’ll have to marry my grandmother after all.”
“Oh!” cried McBain, “your somewhat antiquated cousin; I had forgotten all about her.”
“I hadn’t,” said Ralph.
“Never mind,” said Rory, “something may turn up, and even if the worst comes to the worst, I’ll be at the wedding, and play the Dead March in Saul.”
“Ah!” said Ralph, “it is just as well for you that you moved out of my reach, you saucy boy?”
“There are two thousand pounds to a share,” continued McBain, “if we sell our furs and oils only indifferently well.”
“And sure,” said Rory, “even that is better than a stone behind the ear. And look at all the fun we have had, and all the adventures; troth, we’ll have stories to tell all our lives, if we never go to sea any more, and live till we’re as old as the big hill o’ Howth.”
“But I think, you know, boys,” McBain went on, “we have gained a deal more than the simple pecuniary value of what lies in our tanks and lockers. Increased health and strength, for instance.”
“Ah?” added Allan, “strength of mind as well as body, for, positively, before I left Glentroom, I did little else but mope – now, I think I won’t do anything of the kind again. With the little capital I have obtained, I will begin and cultivate my glen – it is worth more than rabbits’ food.”
“Yes,” said McBain, “there is gold in the glen.”
“Speaking figuratively, yes.”
“It only needs perseverance to make it yield it. What a grand thing that perseverance is! I think, boys, we’ve learned a little of its virtue, even in this cruise of ours, though we haven’t done everything we had hoped. But perseverance builds names and fortunes – it builds cities too.”
“It builds continents,” said Rory, looking very wise – for him; “just look what a midge of a creature the coral zoophyte is, but look at the work it is doing every day, the worlds it is throwing up almost, for future millions to inhabit.”
Thus continued our heroes talking till long past midnight; and even after they had retired, one at least did not fall all at once asleep. That one was Allan. He began to believe that his dreams of restoring his dear old roof-tree, Arrandoon Castle, would yet be realised. That a time would soon come when his mother and sister would sit in halls as noble as any his forefathers had occupied, and mingle among a peasantry as happy and content as they were in the good old years of long, long ago. Perseverance would do it; and, happy thought, he would adopt a new badge, and it would neither be a flower, nor a fern, nor a feather, but simply a piece of coral. Then presently he found himself deep down in the green translucent waters of the Indian Ocean, in a cave, in a coral isle, conversing with a mermaid as freely as if it were the most natural thing in all the world; then he awoke, and behold it was broad daylight.
At least it was just as broad daylight as it was likely to be, while the good yacht was still enveloped in the bosom of that dense mist.
The Snowbird evidently did not think herself the best used yacht in the world. They would not give her sail enough to let her fly along as she wanted to, and, more than that, she was constantly being checked by the pieces of ice that struck and hammered at her on both bow and quarter. Sometimes she seemed to lose her temper and stop almost dead still, as much as to say, “I do think such treatment most ungrateful after all I’ve gone through, and, if it continues, I declare I won’t go another step of my toe towards home.”
Ah! but when a week passed away, and when all at once the yacht sailed out from this dark and pitiless mist, and found herself in a blue rippling sea, with a blue and cloudless sky overhead, and never a bit of ice to be seen, then she did regain her temper.
“Well,” she said, “this is nice, this is perfectly jolly; now for a trifle more sail, and won’t I go rolling home!”
Sunlight seemed to bring joy to every heart. Our heroes walked the deck arrayed in their best, walked erect with springy steps and smiling faces. They had laid aside their winter and donned their summer clothing, and summer was in their hearts as well.
But the Snowbird, the once beautiful Snowbird, now all scraped with ice and bare, should she have holiday attire likewise? She was not forgotten, I do assure you. For days and days men were slung in ropes overboard, on all sides of her, scraping, and painting, and polishing; men were hung like herrings aloft, scraping and varnishing there; and soon the decks were scrubbed to a snowy whiteness, and every bit of brass about her shone like burnished gold. She seemed a spick-and-span new Snowbird, and, what is more, she seemed to feel it too, and give herself all the additional airs and graces she could think of.
At long last the seagulls came sailing to meet her, and a day or two thereafter, —
“Land, ho!” was the glad cry from the outlook aloft. Only a long blue mist on the distant horizon, developing itself soon however, into a black line capped with green. Presently the dark line grew bigger, and then it became fringed beneath with a line of snowy white.
Shetland once again; and when it opened out more, and began to fall off to the bow, the primitive cottages could be descried, and the diminutive cattle and the sheep that browsed on its braes.
Even great Oscar, the Saint Bernard, must needs put his paws on the bulwarks, and gaze with a longing sniff towards the land, then jumping on deck go bounding along, barking for very joy; and as the little Skye looked so miserable because he could only have a sniff through the lee scuppers, Rory lifted him on to the capstan, and pointed out the land to him.
Then rough sea-dogs of men pulled off from a little village to greet them, dressed in jackets like the coats of bears. Rough though they looked, the foreyard was hauled aback all the same.
“No,” they said, “they didn’t think the country was at war.” That was all they could say; but they gave the captain a week-old newspaper and fish for all hands, in return for a few cakes of tobacco.
Then away they pulled, and the Snowbird sailed on. Lerwick was reached in good time, and here they cast anchor for five hours; here weird old Magnus bade them all an affectionate adieu, and here our heroes landed to telegraph to their friends.
How anxiously the replies were waited for, and with what trembling hands and beating hearts they opened them when they did arrive, only those can know who have been years absent from their native shores, without hearing from those they hold dear.
The gist of the despatches was as follows: – Number 1 to Allan from Arrandoon. “All alive and well.” Number 2 to Ralph. “Father alive and well, will meet you at Oban. Your cousin, alas! no more. Fortune falls to you.”
“Hurrah!” cried Ralph, “my cousin is dead!”
McBain could not restrain a smile.
“What a strange equivocal way of expressing your grief!” he said.
“Och!” said Rory, “excuse the poor boy; he won’t have to marry his grandmother nevermore.”
Rory’s own telegram was the least satisfactory. It was from his agents. It was all about rents, and they didn’t advise him to return to Ireland “just yet.”
“I’m right glad of that,” said Allan; “you shall stop with me till ‘just yet’ blows over.”
