The Shadow of the Wolf

ABOUT half-past eight on a fine, sunny June morning a small yacht crept
out of Sennen Cove, near the Land's End, and headed for the open sea. On
the shelving beach of the Cove two women and a man, evidently visitors
(or "foreigners," to use the local term), stood watching her departure
with valedictory waving of cap or handkerchief; and the boatman who had
put the crew on board, aided by two of his comrades, was hauling his boat
up above the tide-mark.

A light northerly breeze filled the yacht's sails and drew her gradually
seaward. The figures of her crew dwindled to the size of a doll's, shrank
with the increasing distance to the magnitude of insects, and at last,
losing all individuality, became mere specks merged in the form of the
fabric that bore them. At this point the visitors turned their faces
inland and walked away up the beach, and the boatman, having opined that
"she be fetchin' a tidy offing," dismissed the yacht from his mind and
reverted to the consideration of a heap of netting and some invalid
lobster-pots.

On board the receding craft two men sat in the little cockpit. They
formed the entire crew, for the Sandhopper was only a ship's lifeboat,
timber and decked, of light draught, and, in the matter of spars and
canvas, what the art critics would call "reticent."

Both men, despite the fineness of the weather, wore yellow oilskins and
sou'westers, and that was about all they had in common. In other respects
they made a curious contrast: the one small, slender, sharp-featured,
dark almost to swarthiness, and restless and quick in his movements; the
other large, massive, red-faced, blue-eyed, with the rounded outlines
suggestive of ponderous strength--a great ox of a man, heavy, stolid,
but much less unwieldy than he looked.

The conversation incidental to getting the yacht under way had ceased,
and silence had fallen on the occupants of the cockpit. The big man
grasped the tiller and looked sulky, which was probably his usual aspect,
and the small man watched him furtively. The land was nearly two miles
distant when the latter broke the silence with a remark very similar to
that of the boatman on the beach.

"You're not going to take the shore on board, Purcell. Where are we
supposed to be going to?"

"I am going outside the Longships," was the stolid answer.

"So I see," rejoined the other. "It's hardly the shortest course for
Penzance, though."

"I like to keep an offing on this coast," said Purcell; and once more the
conversation languished.

Presently the smaller man spoke again, this time in a more cheerful and
friendly tone.

"Joan Haygarth has come on wonderfully the last few months; getting quite
a fine-looking girl. Don't you think so?"

"Yes," answered Purcell, "and so does Phil Rodney."

"You're right," agreed the other. "But she isn't a patch on her sister,
though, and never will be. I was looking at Maggie as we came down the
beach this morning and thinking what a handsome girl she is. Don't you
agree with me?"

Purcell stooped to look under the boom, and answered without turning his
head:

"Yes, she's all right."

"All right!" exclaimed the other. "Is that the way – "

"Look here, Varney," interrupted Purcell, "I don't want to discuss my
wife's looks with you or any other man. She'll do for me, or I shouldn't
have married her."

A deep coppery flush stole into Varney's cheeks. But he had brought the
rather brutal snub on himself, and apparently had the fairness to
recognize the fact, for he mumbled an apology and relapsed into silence.

When he next spoke he did so with a manner diffident and uneasy, as
though approaching a disagreeable or difficult subject.

"There's a little matter, Dan, that I've been wanting to speak to you
about when we got a chance of a private talk." He glanced a little
anxiously at his stolid companion, who grunted, and then, without
removing his gaze from the horizon ahead, replied: "You've a pretty fair
chance now, seeing that we shall be bottled up together for another five
or six hours. And it's private enough, unless you bawl loud enough to be
heard at the Longships."

It was not a gracious invitation. But that Varney had hardly expected;
and if he resented the rebuff he showed no signs of annoyance, for
reasons which appeared when he opened his subject.

"What I wanted to say," he resumed, "was this. We're both doing pretty
well now on the square. You must be positively piling up the shekels, and
I can earn a decent living, which is all I want. Why shouldn't we drop
this flash note business?"