Page 339 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

CHAPTER V. MAURICE

FRERE’S GOOD ANGEL.

t this happy conclusion to his labours, Frere went down
Ato comfort the girl for whose sake he had suffered Rex
to escape the gallows. On his way he was met by a man who
touched his hat, and asked to speak with him an instant.
This man was past middle age, owned a red brandy-beaten
face, and had in his gait and manner that nameless some-
thing that denotes the seaman.
‘Well, Blunt,’ says Frere, pausing with the impatient air of
a man who expects to hear bad news, ‘what is it now?’
‘Only to tell you that it is all right, sir,’ says Blunt. ‘She’s
come aboard again this morning.’
‘Come aboard again!’ ejaculated Frere. ‘Why, I didn’t
know that she had been ashore. Where did she go?’ He spoke
with an air of confident authority, and Blunt—no longer the
bluff tyrant of old— seemed to quail before him. The trial
of the mutineers of the Malabar had ruined Phineas Blunt.
Make what excuses he might, there was no concealing the
fact that Pine found him drunk in his cabin when he ought
to have been attending to his duties on deck, and the ‘au-
thorities’ could not, or would not, pass over such a heinous
breach of discipline. Captain Blunt—who, of course, had
his own version of the story—thus deprived of the honour

For the Term of His Natural Life