The Lust of Hate by Guy Boothby — Read

LONG before daylight I was awake, thinking of our unenviable position, and wishing for the ladies' sakes that I could do something to improve it. But, as far as I could see, I had done everything that was possible by mortal man. Somehow, though I valued their eggs above gold, I had no fancy for the sea birds themselves. What I wanted most was a contrivance with which to capture some of the fish in the bay. A line I could easily make by unravelling the painter of the lifeboat; the hook, however, beat me. A hair-pin would have done admirably; but, unfortunately, Miss Maybourne's hair covered her shoulders just as she had run up from her cabin on hearing the first alarm. An ordinary pin would have been invaluable; but among the three of us we could not muster even one. Just as daylight broke, however, I solved my difficulty in the simplest fashion possible, and could have kicked myself round the island, if it had been possible, for my stupidity in not having thought of it sooner. In my tie I wore a long gold pin, with an escutcheon top, which had been given me in Australia years before. The remembrance of it no sooner came into my mind than I had whipped it out of the tie, and had bent the point into a fair-sized hook. This done, I rose from my couch between the rocks, and having replenished the fire, which still showed a red glow, hastened down the hillside to where the boat lay upon the sands. From the painter I extracted sufficient strands to make a line some thirty feet long, and to this I attached my hook. I very much doubt if a fish were ever honoured before with so grand a hook.

Just as the sun's first rays were shooting up beyond the placid sea line, and the sea and heavens were fast changing from a pure pearl grey to every known colour of the rainbow, I pushed the boat into the water, and rowed out for half a mile or so. Then, having baited my hook with mussel, I threw it overboard, and seating myself, line in hand, in the stern, awaited results. I looked at the island, showing so clear and rugged in the bright morning light, and thought of Miss Maybourne and the sick child. If the truth must be confessed, I believe I was happier then, even in such straits and upon so inhospitable a shore, than I had ever been before. When I thought of Bartrand, as I had last seen him, lying stretched out in the snow in that quiet street, and remembered my struggle with Nikola in Golden Square, my walk through sleeping London to Surbiton, and my journey to Southampton, it all seemed like some horrible dream, the effects of which I was at last beginning to rid myself. It was hard to believe that I had really gone through it all; that I, the man now fishing so quietly in this boat, in whom Miss Maybourne believed so much, was in reality Gilbert Pennethorne, the perpetrator of one of the mysterious murders which had entirely baffled the ingenuity of the London police. I could not help wondering what she would say if anyone should tell her the true history of the man in whom she placed such implicit confidence. Would she credit it or not?