Blade’s wife was with Mrs Spinks and Marion. Mrs Blade was almost beside herself, the girl tearfully beseeching her mother to abandon the vigil.
Mrs Spinks was screaming:
“Leave me alone! I’m staying here to see theDo-me come home. I won’t go. I tell you I won’t go down. My Bill’s outthere, and I won’t go home.”
The woman’s appearance shocked Blade. His wife and Marion could do nothing to pacify her, and his own efforts were of no avail. He hurried back for Constable Telfer. They were obliged to use force. All the way down the path to the road Mrs Spinks continued to scream. She screamed until the doctor came to her house and administered morphia.
Chapter Three
Flotsam
THE PREDICTIONS of the local weather experts were wrong. On the following morning the sun rose in a clear sky and a light southerly already was having effect on the ugly white-capped rollers. Day was breaking when Joe called his partner to the breakfast he had prepared on a primus stove.
“Weather’s cleared, Jack, me lad,” he announced. “We can get away any time.”
An hour later theMarlin was running up and over thewater mountains , both men standing in the shelter of the glass-fronted structure protecting the wheel and steersman, the cockpit and cabin entrance. The wind was cold. The sea had the appearance of having been washed, for the valleys were dark blue, the mountain crests light blue, and the breakers brilliantly white. Astern, beetling cliffs bore the everlasting attacks of the foaming breakers. Above the cliffs were green caps of grass. Beyondrose dense timber, and farther back the distant blue-black highlands.
Wilton had interviewed the police at Eden-some forty miles south of Bermagui-for possible news of theDo-me. There was no news from ship or shore station, no discovery of any wreckage. In his heart this morning hope was almost dead: in Joe’s heart hope was a corpse.