Yet under all the terror
was a bedrock confidence that there was, there must be somehow in
the essence of things, an eternal rightness which would keep me
safe from Captain Magnus. And as I looked across at Dugald Shaw
and met for an instant his steady watchful eyes, I managed a swift
little smile--a rather wan smile, I dare say, but still a smile.
Cuthbert Vane caught, so to speak, the tail of it, and was
electrified. I saw his lips form at Mr. Shaw's ear the words,
_Wonderful little sport, by jove_! For some time after our capture
by the pirates Cuthbert's state had been one of settled
incredulity. Even when they tied his hands he had continued to
contemplate the invaders as illusions. It was, this remarkable
episode, altogether a thing without precedent--and what was that
but another name for the impossible? And then slowly, by painful
degrees--you saw them reflected in his candid face--it grew upon
him that it was precisely the impossible, the unprecedented, that
was happening.
A curious stiffening came over Cuthbert Vane. For the first time
in my knowledge of him he showed the consciousness--instead of only
the sub-consciousness--of the difference between Norman blood and
the ordinary sanguine fluid. His shoulders squared; he lost his
habitual easy lounge and sat erect and tall. Something stern and
aquiline showed through the smooth beauty of his face, so that you
thought of effigies of crusading knights stretched on their ancient
tombs in High Staunton church.
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