"Never mind! You'll do it next time," which made some of my shipmates who were standing round with shining eyes say, "Aye, aye, sir," and then one of them (it was good old O'Sullivan) shouted:

"By the stars of heaven, that's thrue, my lord! And if anybody's after saying that the Commanther was turned back this time by anything less than the almighty power of Nature in her wrath, you may say there's forty-eight of us here to tell him he lies."

"I believe it," said the chairman, and then there were further congratulations, with messages from members of my committee, but never a word from my dear one.

Thinking the chairman might hesitate to speak of a private matter until we were alone, I took him down to my state-room. But he had nothing to say there, either, except about articles to be written, reports to be compiled, and invitations to be accepted.

Several hours passed like this. We were again out at sea, and my longing to know what had happened was consuming me, but I dared not ask from fear of a bad answer.

Before the night was out, however, I had gone to work in a roundabout way. Taking O'Sullivan into my confidence, I told him it had not been my parents that I had been anxious about (God forgive me!), but somebody else whom he had seen and spoken to.

"Do you mean Mal ... I should say Lady ..."

"Yes."

"By the holy saints, the way I was thinking that when I brought you the letter at Port Said, and saw the clouds of heaven still hanging on you."

I found that the good fellow had a similar trouble of his own (not yet having heard from his mother), so he fell readily into my plan, which was that of cross-questioning the chairman about my dear one, and I about his, and then meeting secretly and imparting what we had learned.

Anybody may laugh who likes at the thought of two big lumbering fellows afraid to face the truth (scouting round and round it), but it grips me by the throat to this day to see myself taking our chairman into a quiet corner of the smoke-room and saying:

"Poor old O'Sullivan! He hasn't heard from his old mother yet. She was sick when he sailed, and wouldn't have parted with him to go with anybody except myself. You haven't heard of her, have you?"

And then to think of O'Sullivan doing the same for me, with:

"The poor Commanther! Look at him there. Faith, he's keeping a good heart, isn't he? But it's just destroyed he is for want of news of a great friend that was in trouble. It was a girl ... a lady, I mane.

You haven't heard the whisper of a word, sir ... eh?"

Our chairman had heard nothing. And when (bracing myself at last) I asked point-blank if anything had been sent to him as from me, and he answered "No," I might have been relieved, but I wasn't. Though I did not know then that my darling had burnt my letter, I began to feel that she was the last person in the world to use it, being (God bless her!) of the mettle that makes a woman want to fight her own battles without asking help of any one.

This quite crushed down my heart, for, seeing that she had sent no reply to my cables, I could not find any escape from the conclusion that she was where no word could come from her--she was dead!

Lord God, how I suffered when this phantom got into my mind! I used to walk up and down the promenade deck late into the night, trying and condemning myself as if I had been my own judge and jury.

"She is dead. I have killed her," I thought.

Thank God, the phantom was soon laid by the gladdest sight I ever saw on earth or ever expect to see, and it wouldn't be necessary to speak of it now but for the glorious confidence it brought me.

It was the same with me as with a ship-broken man whom Providence comes to relieve in his last extremity, and I could fix the place of mine as certainly as if I had marked it on a chart. We had called at Gibraltar (where O'Sullivan had received a letter from his mother, saying she was splendid) and were running along the coast of Portugal.

It was a dirty black night, with intervals of rain, I remember. While my shipmates were making cheerful times of it in the smoke-room (O'Sullivan with heart at ease singing the "Minsthrel Boy" to a chorus of noisy cheers) I was walking up and down the deck with my little stock of courage nearly gone, for turn which way I would it was dark, dark, dark, when just as we picked up the lights of Finisterre something said to me, as plainly as words could speak:

"What in the name of thunder are you thinking about? Do you mean to say that you were turned back in the 88th latitude, and have been hurried home without the loss of a moment, only to find everything over at the end of your journey? No, no, no! Your poor, dear, heroic little woman is alive! She may be in danger, and beset by all the powers of the devil, but that's just why you have been brought home to save her, and you _will_ save her, as surely as the sun will rise to-morrow morning."

There are thoughts which, like great notes in music, grip you by the soul and lift you into a world which you don't naturally belong to. This was one of them.

Never after that did I feel one moment's real anxiety. I was my own man once more; and though I continued to walk the deck while our good ship sped along in the night, it was only because there was a kind of wild harmony between the mighty voice of the rolling billows of the Bay and the unheard anthem of boundless hope that was singing in my breast.

I recollect that during my walk a hymn was always haunting me. It was the same that we used to sing in the shuddering darkness of that perpetual night, when we stood (fifty downhearted men) under the shelter of our snow camp, with a ninety mile blizzard shrieking above us:

"_Lead, kindly Light, amid th' encircling gloom, Lead Thou me on_."

But the light was within me now, and I knew as certainly as that the good ship was under my feet that I was being carried home at the call of the Spirit to rescue my stricken darling.

God keep her on her solitary way! England! England! England! Less than a week and I should be there!

That was early hours on Saturday morning--the very Saturday when my poor little woman, after she had been turned away by those prating philanthropists, was being sheltered by the prostitute.

Let him explain it who can. I cannot.

M.C.

[END OF MARTIN CONRAD'S MEMORANDUM]

ONE HUNDRED AND THIRD CHAPTER

I must have been sitting a full hour or more on the end of my bed--stunned, stupefied, unable to think--when Miriam, back from the synagogue, came stealthily upstairs to say that a messenger had come for me about six o'clock the night before.

"He said his name was Oliver, and father saw him, and that's how he came to know. 'Tell her that her child is ill, and she is to come immediately,' he said."

I was hardly conscious of what happened next--hardly aware of passing through the streets to Ilford. I had a sense of houses flying by as they seem to do from an express train; of my knees trembling; of my throat tightening; and of my whole soul crying out to God to save the life of my child until I could get to her.

When I reached the house of the Olivers the worst of my fears were relieved. Mrs. Oliver was sitting before the fire with baby on her lap.

At sight of me the woman began to mumble out something about my delay, and how she could not be held responsible if anything happened; but caring nothing about responsibility, hers or mine, I took baby from her without more words.

My child was in a state of deep drowsiness, and when I tried to rouse her I could not do so. I gathered that this condition had lasted twenty-four hours, during which she had taken no nourishment, with the result that she was now very thin.

I knew nothing of children's ailments but a motherly instinct must have come to my aid, for I called for a bath, and bathed baby, and she awoke, and then took a little food.

But again she dropped back into the drowsy condition, and Mrs. Oliver, who was alarmed, called in some of the neighbours to look at her.

Apparently the mission of the good women was to comfort Mrs. Oliver, not me, but they said, "Sleep never did no harm to nobody," and I found a certain consolation in that.

Hours passed. I was barely sensible of anything that happened beyond the narrow circle of my own lap, but at one moment I heard the squirling of a brass band that was going up the street, with the shuffling of an irregular procession.

"It's the strike," said Mrs. Oliver, running to the window. "There's Ted, carrying a banner."

A little later I heard the confused noises of a strike meeting, which was being held on the Green. It was like the croaking of a frog-pond, with now and then a strident voice (the bricklayer's) crying "Buckle your belts tighter, and starve rather than give in, boys." Still later I heard the procession going away, singing with a slashing sound that was like driving wind and pelting rain:

"_The land, the land, the blessed, blessed land, Gawd gave the land to the people_."

But nothing awakened baby, and towards three in the afternoon (the idea that she was really ill having taken complete possession of me) I asked where I could find the nearest doctor, and being told, I went off in search of him.