Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 5).djvu/142

 showed no disposition to chat. Though he lay in the most easy lounging posture imaginable, I observed a restless, singular expression in his face, accentuated yet by the looks he incessantly directed out to sea, or glances at the deck forward, or around at the helm, so far as he might move his head without shifting his attitude. It was as though his mind were in labour with some scheme. A man might so look whilst working out the complicated plot of a play, or adjusting by the exertion of his memory the intricacies of a novel piece of mechanism.

On a sudden he started up and went below.

A few minutes after he had left the deck, Captain North came up from his cabin, and for some while we paced the planks together. There was a pleasant hush upon the ship; the silence was as refreshing as a fold of coolness lifting off the sea. A spun-yarn winch was clinking on the forecastle; from alongside rose the music of fretted waters.

I was talking to the captain on some detail of the ship's furniture, when Major Hood came running up the companion steps, his face as white as his waistcoat, his head uncovered, every muscle of his countenance rigid, as with horror.

"Good God, captain!" cried he, standing in the companion, "what do you think has happened?" Before we could fetch a breath he cried: "Someone's stolen the diamond!"

I glanced at the helmsman who stood at the radiant circle of wheel staring with open mouth and eyebrows arched into his hair. The captain, stepping close to Major Hood, said in a low, steady voice:—

"What's this you tell me, sir?"

"The diamond's gone!" exclaimed the Major, fixing his shining eyes upon me, whilst I observed that his fingers convulsively stroked his thumbs as though he were rolling up pellets of bread or paper.

"Do you tell me the diamond's been taken from the place you hid it in?" said Captain North, still speaking softly, but with deliberation.

"The diamond never was hidden,' replied the Major, who continued to stare at me. "It was in a portmanteau. That's no hiding-place!"

Captain North fell back a step. "Never was hidden!" he exclaimed. "Didn't you bring two native workmen aboard for no other purpose than to hide it?"

"It never was hidden," said the Major, now turning his eyes upon the captain. "I chose it should be believed it was undiscoverably concealed in some part of my cabin, that I might safely and conveniently keep it in my baggage, where no thief would dream of looking for it. Who has it?" he cried with a sudden fierceness, making a step full of passion out of the companion-way; and he looked under knitted brows towards the ship's forecastle.

Captain North watched him idly for a moment or two, and then with an abrupt swing of his whole figure, eloquent of defiant resolution, he stared the Major in the face, and said in a quiet, level voice:—

"I shan't be able to help you. If it's gone, it's gone. A diamond's not a bale of