"What's right?"
"What the lieutenant was telling you. He's fallen on his feet this time.
I've been to see."
"You've been to Mr. Dent's tent already?"
The prefix was a mark which it would have been against Ralph's instincts to overstep with an inferior. It was incongruous enough to curve the corners of the steward's mouth.
"It ain't a tent," said he, chuckling. "It's one of the best huts I've seen on the diggings."
"It is, is it?"
"Once I'd found Rotten Gully, which isn't so very far from this, it was easy enough to find the only claim it could be."
"So it's as good as all that!"
"To look at," said Jewson, "on a moonlight night. But they'd their own light burning inside; you hadn't to get very near to hear their voices.
They were sitting up yarning, same as you and the lieutenant. Only on tea," added the steward, in the absence of further encouragement.
"Poor devils!" remarked Devenish, raising his pannikin.
"You can't call 'em poor now, sir," declared the steward. "All's fair in love and war, and I had a look in on 'em like a mouse: they've proper crockery left 'em by the outgoing tenant, and a proper table to set it on."
"Anything else?" inquired Ralph, sarcastically.
Jewson leaned forward and lowered his voice as though they were being spied upon in their turn.
"Half a saucerful of gold-dust out of the hole!"
"Already!" exclaimed Devenish, dropping reserve in his astonishment.
"In the very first day's washing! They never began until to-day. That's what's keeping them up all night," added Jewson. "They've started looking ahead, you see. Let me fill up your pannikin, Captain Devenish.
You don't get half a chance with Mr. Rackham, sir!"
Ralph Devenish was one who carried his liquor in a manner worthy of his blood. His worst friend had seldom seen him fuddled. He was so much the less proof against the deeper and more damning effects. His tongue did not slur a syllable that followed, but it ran away with him all the faster for that. It muttered degrading confidences; it snarled unscrupulous revenge; it revealed a man so different from the Ralph Devenish known of other men that it was as though the drink had gone to his heart instead of to his head.
"I will marry her! I swear I will! We were all but engaged before, and I'll marry her yet. He never shall. I'll see him in hell first--I'll send him there myself! An infernal snob out of the merchant service, and his infernal father's son all over! What's the matter with you, Jewson?
What are you grinning at?"
"Only at the idea of you committing a crime, sir. A captain in the Grenadier Guards! Ho, ho, ho!" And the steward showed his horrible teeth again; but there was no mirth in the little black penetrating eyes that were fast to Ralph's.
"But I would!" he swore. "I mean to marry her, by hook or crook."
"You really do?" said Jewson, turning grave.
"Fair or foul!" cried Ralph, recklessly.
"It's all one in love and war," repeated the steward, with a shrug. "But if you mean what you say I'll tell you what to do."
"You will, will you? Well, let's have it."
"I should do as you were thinking of doing earlier in the evening. I should go home by the first ship, and marry her quick!"
"What! Leave him digging his fortune and writing her all about it every mail?"
Devenish had already vowed that he would never do that. He repeated the vow with an oath.
"But you don't know that she's getting any letters," remarked Jewson, calmly.
Ralph gave him a sharp look. "What do you mean by that?"
"Only that he may not be writing to her; he didn't in the beginning, you see; that letter I posted was his first."
"How do you know?"
"His mate told me so."
"You did post it, Jewson?"
The steward chuckled as he shook his head.
"That's tellings," said he, slyly. "You can think I didn't, or you can think I did. He deserved to have it posted, didn't he? He deserves so well of me and you, don't he? All's fair in them two things, you know; if it's the one thing with you, it's the other with me; it's bloody war between me and the second mate, and will be whether you stay or not!"
Devenish was revolted in spite of his worst self. But he was also relieved, and his conscience deadened as quickly as it had come to life again. If the letter had not been posted, it was through no fault of his, and even now he knew nothing about it. And if Jewson, for his own reasons, chose to stay behind on the diggings, in order to thwart the man who so richly deserved thwarting, neither had he, Ralph, anything on earth to do with that. Yet his nature shrank from such an ally, even as he began to appreciate the creature's value, and he frowned as he filled the Turk's head for the twentieth time that night. His hand was as steady as his speech. It was his better nature that was under eclipse.
Meanwhile, the steward took the opportunity of surreptitiously replenishing Ralph's pannikin, and still more surreptitiously emptying his own upon the ground.
"So you propose to hold a watching brief on my behalf?" said Ralph at last, and forced a smile at the idea.
"I propose to keep an eye on him for you, if that's what you mean,"
replied the steward.
"But Sergeant Rackham's going to do that as it is. He says he'll be level with our friend in a month."
"A month!" echoed Jewson, scornfully. "He'll be a made man in a month, if he goes on as he's begun. He's tumbled on a jeweler's shop, or I'm much mistaken."
"Well, you can't take it from him, can you?"
"Perhaps not."
"You mean you can!" exclaimed Devenish, irritated by the confident subtlety of the man's manner.
"Oh, no, I don't."
Devenish tilted the pannikin and set it down with a clatter.
"Then what do you mean? Out with it, Jewson. I'm sick of beating about the bush!"
"So am I," said the steward, dryly.