A Bid for Fortune - Guy Boothby (ready player one ebook TXT) 📗

we had reached the Heads it was all settled, and satisfactorily so. I was standing on the promenade deck, just abaft the main saloon entrance, watching the panorama spread out before me, when I heard a voice I recognised only too well say behind me:

“And so goodbye to you, dear old Sydney. Great things will have happened when I set eyes on you again.”

Little did she know how prophetic were her words. As she spoke I turned and confronted her. For a moment she was overwhelmed with surprise, then, stretching out her hand, she said:

“Really, Mr. Hatteras, this is most wonderful. You are the last person I expected to meet on board the Orizaba.”

“And perhaps,” I replied, “I might with justice say the same of you. It looks as if we are destined to be fellow-travellers.”

She turned to a tall, white-bearded man beside her.

“Papa, I must introduce you to Mr. Hatteras. You will remember I told you how kind Mr. Hatteras was when those larrikins were rude to me in the Domain.”

“I am sincerely obliged to you, Mr. Hatteras,” he said, holding out his hand and shaking mine heartily. “My daughter did tell me, and I called yesterday at your hotel to thank you personally, but you were unfortunately not at home. Are you visiting Europe?”

“Yes; I’m going home for a short visit to see the place where my father was born.”

“Are you then, like myself, an Australian native? I mean, of course, as you know, colonial born?” asked Miss Wetherell with a little laugh. The idea of her calling herself an Australian native in any other sense! The very notion seemed preposterous.

“I was born at sea, a degree and a half south of Mauritius,” I answered; “so I don’t exactly know what you would call me. I hope you have comfortable cabins?”

“Very. We have made two or three voyages in this boat before, and we always take the same places. And now, papa, we must really go and see where poor Miss Thompson is. We are beginning to feel the swell, and she’ll be wanting to go below. Goodbye for the present, Mr. Hatteras.”

I raised my cap and watched her walk away down the deck, balancing herself as if she had been accustomed to a heaving plank all her life. Then I turned to watch the fast receding shore, and to my own thoughts, which were none of the saddest, I can assure you. For it must be confessed here, and why should I deny it? that I was in love from the soles of my deck shoes to the cap upon my head. But as to the chance that I, a humble pearler, would stand with one of Sydney’s wealthiest and most beautiful daughters⁠—why, that’s another matter, and one that, for the present, I was anxious to keep behind me.

Within the week we had left Adelaide behind us, and four days later Albany was also a thing of the past. By the time we had cleared the Lewin we had all settled down to our life aboard ship, the bad sailors were beginning to appear on deck again, and the medium voyagers to make various excuses for their absences from meals. One thing was evident, that Miss Wetherell was the belle of the ship. Everybody paid her attention, from the skipper down to the humblest deck hand. And this being so, I prudently kept out of the way, for I had no desire to be thought to presume on our previous acquaintance. Whether she noticed this I cannot tell, but at any rate her manner to me when we did speak was more cordial than I had any right or reason to expect it would be. Seeing this, there were not wanting people on board who scoffed and sneered at the idea of the Colonial Secretary’s daughter noticing so humble a person as myself, and when it became known what my exact social position was, I promise you these malicious whisperings did not cease.

One evening, two or three days after we had left Colombo behind us, I was standing at the rails on the promenade deck a little abaft the smoking-room entrance, when Miss Wetherell came up and took her place beside me. She looked very dainty and sweet in her evening dress, and I felt, if I had known her better, I should have liked to tell her so.

“Mr. Hatteras,” said she, when we had discussed the weather and the sunset, “I have been thinking lately that you desire to avoid me.”

“Heaven forbid! Miss Wetherell,” I hastened to reply. “What on earth can have put such a notion into your head?”

“All the same, I believe it to be true. Now, why do you do it?”

“I have not admitted that I do it. But, perhaps, if I do seem to deny myself the pleasure of being with you as much as some other people I could mention, it is only because I fail to see what possible enjoyment you can derive from my society.”

“That is a very pretty speech,” she answered, smiling, “but it does not tell me what I want to know.”

“And what is it that you want to know, my dear young lady?”

“I want to know why you are so much changed towards me. At first we got on splendidly⁠—you used to tell me of your life in Torres Straits, of your trading ventures in the Southern Seas, and even of your hopes for the future. Now, however, all that is changed. It is ‘Good morning, Miss Wetherell,’ ‘Good evening, Miss Wetherell,’ and that is all. I must own I don’t like such treatment.”

“I must crave your pardon⁠—but⁠—”

“No, we won’t have any ‘buts.’ If you want to be forgiven, you must come and talk to me as you used to do. You will like the rest of the people I’m sure when you get to know them. They are very kind to me.”

“And you think I shall like them for that reason?”

“No, no. How silly you are! But I do so