Dyke wrote with the best attempt at cheerfulness that can be made by a sick man who is heavily bruised in spirit. He was ill--he had to confess it--and as soon as the ship reached Brisbane they would put him into a hospital. He said he knew he would get well again directly, but, oh, how he wished that he had his little Emmie there to console him.
Of course he had not meant that she was to go to him; but she sent off a cable message and started next day. At Marseilles she overtook and caught a steamer of the Orient Line. Many people on the vessel noticed her and several talked with her--that old maid who used to sit out on deck knitting, always knitting, looking up with a pensive smile sometimes while her fingers continued to move the needles busily.
At Brisbane she found him strong and well, entirely recovered, but in the very act of departing for New Guinea, whither he was being sent again on government work. Delay was impossible. They had thirty minutes together in an hotel drawing-room.
Half-an-hour. It was enough--if there could be no more. It was worth all the trouble. She came back to England at once, by a steamer of the P. & O. Line--sitting on deck, knitting, the old maid to whom people spoke because of her loneliness and her gentle smile.
The two books _New Guinea Revisited_ and _A Further Investigation_ give the three years narrative of Dyke’s exploratory work in the mountains, with his study of the various native races, and his adventures among the lesser islands. These matters, as his father said, belong to history; and there is also historical record of his having been at home, or very near home, in the year 1908. It was in this year that the lingering quarrel between him and Saint-Bertin, the French explorer, found its culmination in a duel “_à outrance_,” which took place somewhere on the outskirts of Paris. Saint-Bertin was the challenger and in regard to the combat itself there were many stories afloat in both countries; the accepted English version being that four shots were exchanged and that Dyke fired his two straight into the air, although he had received a scrape on the thigh from the enemy’s first round. The Frenchmen were undecided whether to take this as a further insult or a _beau geste_, until, as it was alleged, Dyke said the whole thing was damned nonsense and he would continue to shoot at the sky all the afternoon, since, however much he disliked Monsieur de Saint-Bertin personally, he refused to risk injuring France by incapacitating one of her bravest sons. If indeed he said anything of the sort, one may suppose that he did so in his grandest manner, with a Spanish bow or two and with all sincerity of spirit. For, whatever accusations might be justly levelled against Anthony Dyke for arrogance or overbearingness, no one could charge him with a lack of magnanimity. At any rate his late foe was satisfied by his demeanour--a satisfaction proved by Saint-Bertin’s dedicating his next book to Dyke.