CHAPTER V
But no sooner has the door closed on the retreating pair than Netta Sheridan, reclining languid and half-dozed on the settee, astonishes the surgeon and Merritt by suddenly springing to her feet and exclaiming:
"Oh, save her! Save us!"
Merritt, fatuous youth, once more executes his india-rubber grin, subsiding instantaneously again into seriousness, and murmurs faintly, "Gosh!"
"Oh, help me!" cries the girl again--"listen to me--I must speak!"
"Buck up--I mean pray don't be alarmed," exhorts the assistant-paymaster with a well-meaning effort to say the right thing; "you're quite all right, you know. It's all over now, you're perfectly safe!"
"Don't speak to her like that," Dale admonishes him, with a nudge of his elbow, "you're only frightening her. Miss Sheridan, there is really no cause for you to disturb yourself. Your cousin has only gone with your brother into the captain's cabin to tell him about what has occurred. She will be back in a few minutes. Please sit down again and rest."
"Oh, you don't understand--you won't understand! Listen, I beg you listen to me. I cannot bear it any longer. I thought I should be able to do it, but I can't, oh, I can't!"
"Why, what is the matter," soothingly questions the doctor. "What is it that you can't do?"
The girl answers him in a quick rush of excited speech:
"It is my brother Patrick who is at the bottom of it all. Ah, the terrible man he is, indeed! _He_ thought of it, and he _made_ us do it. I was always against it, but what chance had I? Norah he persuaded--but you mustn't blame her. And, oh, don't tell her I told you--and don't let _him_ know it! I am afraid of him, I always have been. If he tells me to do a thing I have to do it; it has always been like that. I am afraid to go against him. Oh, stop him quickly, before it is too late!"
"Ah," says Merritt, shaking his head wisely. "that hot brandy! I _knew_ it was too much for her!"
"Dry up, you ass," says Dale; and turning again to the distracted girl asks in the tone of one who wishes to humour an unbalanced patient:
"But you haven't told us yet what is wrong?"
Surely it is nothing but the delirious ravings of a mind thrown quite out of gear by suffering to which the poor girl gives vent.
"We're not shipwrecked people at all, we're only--only pretending. We have not been torpedoed--we were not in any steamer to _be_ torpedoed; we were brought to sea by a motor launch, with the boat you found us in towing behind. We knew to half an hour what time you would be passing. Oh, I always said it was a hateful scheme--_wrong_, too! Is Patrick coming? Don't let him hear me--don't let him know I have been talking to you. I'm terrified of him!"
"What _do_ you mean?" cries the puzzled surgeon.
"Patrick planned it all," goes on the girl, now thoroughly wound up and seemingly not noticing the interruption. "It was his idea entirely. He arranged everything, even to making us dress--as you saw us. It is a plot--a plot to blow up your ship!"
"Christmas!" ejaculates Merritt, his mouth wide open in astonishment.
"But it _is_ so, I tell you," cries the girl, turning round upon the incredulous youth. "You don't know what Patrick is, or how he hates the English! We all do. _Any_ ship would have done, but we got to know about yours, we knew just when you would be sailing. It is all planned out. Norah is to do it. she has the bomb, because Patrick thought she would have a better chance of putting it somewhere while he would be talking with the captain and making up a story about the shipwreck. It is to go off two hours after it is set. Oh, we knew you would find some means of putting us on shore--though Patrick and Norah both said they were ready to take their chance of that! Oh, I cannot stand it any longer! I cannot allow it to be done! Quickly! Patrick is with your captain at this very moment. Find Norah and stop her!"
The torrent of wild words that has fallen from the girl's lips suddenly ceases and leaves her exhausted and collapsed. She reels, and would fall fainting but for Dale catching her in his strong arms and lowering her gently to the settee.
"Well, I'm blest!" exclaims the assistant paymaster. "Rum yarn that! Why, the poor girl must have gone completely off her rocker!"
"And so would you," Dale remarks, "if you had been shipwrecked and tossed about in an open boat all day like she has! Her nerves are a little overstrained, that's all. She will forget all about this in a few days, most likely. Bear a hand, and we'll carry her into my cabin and let her lie down quietly for a while till the destroyer comes. It's too stuffy in here, enough to upset anybody!"
"Yes, it is pretty frowsty. No wonder, with such a fire blazing. And on the top of the hot brandy, too!" So saying, Merritt helps the doctor to support the unconscious girl, and between them they bear off their burden to the cooler atmosphere of the surgeon's cabin.
Needless to say, Dale gives no more credence to the poor girl's ravings than Merritt. He knows, from his professional experience, how an overstrung imagination can invent the most circumstantial story and garnish it with a wealth of petty details to give it an air of truth, insomuch that one would be almost inclined to believe it, were it not for the fact that the story thus elaborated is usually wildly improbable to start with. Strange indeed are the tricks that the mind can play, under the influence of suggestion, even auto-suggestion.
Dale can remember, from his own experience, a dozen cases no less curious than this. There is nothing wonderful or unusual about it, to his trained mind. And as he has a practical task in front of him, he quickly dismisses all thoughts concerning the vapourings of the poor girl's disordered brain.
##