Lord of the Far Island, Victoria Holt [world of reading TXT] 📗

The pale eyes had changed. There was a look about them which was almost fanatical.

The servants tapped their heads significantly when they spoke of Slack. I had heard the whispered comment: "Not all there."

But there was something there, I was sure. Dear Slack. I was glad he was my friend.

The incident of the boat had brought me closer to Slack. Understandably for a week or so after the accident I had no desire to go to sea, certainly not alone. There had been no need for Jago to warn me against that. So I stayed on the Island and I took to going to the dovecotes when Slack was feeding the pigeons.

He would give me a bowl filled with maize and we'd stand together with the birds fluttering round us.

Once he said: "Did 'ee say sugar, Miss Ellen?"

I wondered what he meant for a moment, then I said: "Oh, you mean when the boat started to sink. I didn't have time to consider very much. I thought I saw what looked like a few grains of it on the bottom of the boat where it hadn't, at that time, been touched by the water. And then as the water swelled up there seemed to be some grains floating in it. I was too upset though to think much about it. It just flashed into my mind. You understand. It was a horrible moment, Slack."

His brow was furrowed. "Sugar takes a little time to dissolve in cold water. Now salt would dissolve quicker."

"How could it have been sugar? How could that have got there?"

"Couldn't have got there if it hadn't been put, Miss Ellen."

"Slack, what do you mean!"

"Where be the boat? If we had the boat and her weren't broken up."

"You wouldn't find the sugar now."

"No, but we'd see the hole it come through."

"We know that must have been there."

"But how did it come to be there? That be what I want to know."

"Slack, what are you thinking?"

"What if the hole were put there by someone as filled it with sugar? There's the Demerara kind . . . brown and coarse grained, the kind that takes time to dissolve . . . specially in cold salt water. I've heard it said hereabouts more than once that it would hold a leak for a while if you happened to be not too far out to sea and supposing you had a packet of such with you . . . which is hardly likely." His eyes shone with the intensity of his feelings. "You wouldn't see it when you started out and when it did dissolve you have a hole, don't 'ee, what the sugar was bunging up. And the water could get in, couldn't it, where it couldn't when you started out."

"You're suggesting that someone . . ."

"I don't rightly know what I mean, but terrible things can happen. I do know that. It don't do to forget it. I reckon we don't want to laugh at it and say . . ." He floundered and tapped his head, implying that I might be thinking as others did that he was "not all there."

What he was suggesting seemed absurd. Did he really think that someone had tampered with the boat—my boat, which no one took out but me—knowing that sooner or later I should be at sea in it . . . and almost certainly alone!

It was too farfetched. Who would possibly do such a thing!

Gwennol was jealous because Michael Hydrock had been friendly towards me. Jenifry was angry on her daughter's account. I had always felt uneasy about Jenifry since that first night. I had often laughed at myself about that. Just because her reflection in an old mirror had looked momentarily malevolent I had started to endow her with all sorts of sinister motives. And now of course there was this aspect of my friendship with Michael Hydrock. But no. It was too flimsy. It was not as though Michael had asked me to marry him and I had accepted. I could understand that there would have been acute jealousy then. But it was not so. I liked him and it was quite obvious that he liked me. He was just a very courteous and kindly gentleman who had been helpful and hospitable. Gwennol had no reason to be jealous on my account.

And yet our relationship had changed since she had discovered that I had met him before I came to the Island. She had been prepared to be very friendly before that discovery; now she was cautious as though she were trying to trap me into admissions. I imagined that every time I went out she wondered whether I was going to meet Michael Hydrock. As for Jenifry, she had no doubt set her heart on Michael as a son-in-law and indeed he was undoubtedly the most desirable party in the neighborhood—a man any mother might have been expected to want for her daughter.

So this matter of the sugar was the wildest conjecture and I wished I hadn't mentioned it to Slack.

"You must be careful, Miss Ellen," he said very seriously.

"I shall. I shall examine any boat thoroughly before I attempt to go out in it."

"Mightn't be a boat next time."

"Next time?"

"I don't know what put that in me mouth, Miss Ellen. I want to look after 'ee, you see ... like I looked after Miss Silva."

"How did you look after her?"

He smiled slowly. "She always come to me. She used to get fits, Miss Ellen. Oh, not so she'd lie down and do damage to herself . . . not they sort of fits. Fits of sadness and fits of wildness when she wanted to do things that would hurt herself. Then she'd come and talk to me and the Powers would show me how to soothe her."

"You must have known as much about her as anybody did."

"Reckon so."

"And that night when she went away. ... It was a stormy night and yet she took a