"Drink and Lust and explosive half-blood," murmured she. "The blood of Old Devon and of savage Melanesia. I wonder what the end of it all will be."
That end came with appalling suddenness, without warning or preparation. Madame alone in the ship was ready, for she who had for five years lived amid quick storms and unheralded perils was always ready. For three days the yacht had been steaming slowly up towards the Straits of Sunda. Willie in public had been surly and reserved; he had not again fallen upon the apprehensive Marie--too intently busied upon working out her reprieve to relax in favour towards him--and had shown no overt hostility to Madame. Every night he had drunk deeply with John Clifford, and the noise of their joint libations had disturbed Madame Gilbert's rest. The once healthy boy, splendid in his tireless virility, was degenerating fast. From day to day the decline could be seen in the greyness of his face, and in the tremor of his strong thin fingers. The shoes which he insisted upon wearing crippled his free movements. Once conspicuously elastic of tread--he had seemed to move on steel springs--he now slouched and shuffled. Madame never saw Clifford, but she heard his voice nightly in the cabin opposite, and I am sure that she ached to slay him. She longed for Singapore, and for the final expulsion of the Hedge Lawyer, who was responsible for the woes of a once happy Toppys yacht, and of the once happy Tops Island. He was working fast for Willie's destruction, but he did not understand the explosive material with which he worked. In the end he lost--at the moment when it seemed to his narrow intelligence that the white slave had become the white master.
It was after midnight, Madame was abed, and for once the potations of the drinkers did not culminate in a noise which disturbed her sleep. For once Willie had dismissed Clifford at an early hour, and bent himself to carry out his own delayed yet cherished schemes. Something of the cunning of the white man had tempered the desires of the savage; he had deliberately ceased to pursue Marie, and thought to dim the bright polish of Madame's unfailing watchfulness.
Nothing was to be heard that night save the whirr of the high-speed turbines, and nothing to be felt except the quivering vibration of the yacht's frames. Although the cabin opposite was unwontedly quiet, Madame Gilbert did not sleep. The change from noise to silence oppressed her. She was more wakeful and watchful than she had been for some days; she had learned that the unexpected always happens and she was waiting, apprehensively, for the violently unexpected. She did not, as Grant had advised, pass her days and nights in deadly fear--it was no strange experience for her to watch and wait with that faithful companion within grip of her fingers--but both her days and nights were brimful of apprehension and sorrow. She had faintly hoped that the old spirit of Willatopy would revive when the well-beloved seas girt him about, and his feet trod the decks of a ship. She had hoped that the salt of the sea would call irresistibly to the salt in his blood. But the strong, rich drinks of Thursday Island were more potent than any sea salt. Willatopy was gone for ever. There remained a visibly degenerating Lord Topsham.