I felt myself blushing for us
both, and I did not care. My address utterly deserted me, and I
made no effort to recover it, to carry the thing off. All I
would do was to mumble such words as Raffles actually put into my
mouth, and that I doubt not with a thoroughly evil grace.
"So you saw my name in the list of passengers and came in search
of me? Good old Bunny; I say, though, I wish you'd share my
cabin. I've got a beauty on the promenade deck, but they
wouldn't promise to keep me by myself. We ought to see about it
before they shove in some alien. In any case we shall have to
get out of this."
For a quartermaster had entered the wheelhouse, and even while we
had been speaking the pilot had taken possession of the bridge;
as we descended, the tender left us with flying handkerchiefs and
shrill good-bys; and as we bowed to Miss Werner on the promenade
deck, there came a deep, slow throbbing underfoot, and our
voyage had begun.
It did not begin pleasantly between Raffles and me. On deck he
had overborne my stubborn perplexity by dint of a forced though
forceful joviality; in his cabin the gloves were off.
"You idiot," he snarled, "you've given me away again!"
"How have I given you away?"
I ignored the separate insult in his last word.
"How? I should have thought any clod could see that I meant us
to meet by chance!"
"After taking both tickets yourself?"
"They knew nothing about that on board; besides, I hadn't decided
when I took the tickets.
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