Page:Mehalah 1920.djvu/90

80 about her shoulders, her face the hue of death, her lips bloodless, her eyes distended with terror, gazing on the medal of Paracelsus, which she held in her hand, the seawater dripping from the wet riband wound about her fingers. "Mother! Mother! He is drowned. I have seen him. He came and returned me this." Then she fell senseless on the floor, with the medal held to her heart.

CHAPTER VIII WHERE IS HE? If there had been excitement on the Hard at Mersea on the preceding day when the schooner anchored off it, therewas more this morning. The war-vessel had departed no one knew whither, and nobody cared. The bay was full of whiting; the waters were alive with them, and the gulls were flickering over the surface, watching, seeing, plunging. The fishermen were getting their boats afloat, and all appliances ready for making harvest of that fish which is most delicious when fresh from the water, most flat when out of it a few hours. Down the side of the Pandora tumbled Mrs. De Witt, her nose sharper than usual, but her cap more flabby. She wore a soldier's jacket, bought secondhand at Colchester. Her face was of a warm complexion, tinctured with rum and wrath. She charged into the midst of the fishermen, asking in a loud imperative tone for her son.

To think that after the lesson delivered him last week, the boy should have played truant again! The world was coming to a pretty pass. The last trumpet might sound for aught Mrs. De Witt cared, and involve mankind in ruin, for mankind was past "worriting" about.

George had defied her, and the nautical population of the "City" had aided and abetted him in his revolt.

"This is what comes of galiwanting," said Mrs. De Witt; "first he galiwants Mehalah, and then Phœbe. No good ever came of it. I'd pass a law, were I king, against it, but that smuggling in love would go on as free under it as