Nobody moved; and the poor fellow raises his
big brown hands slowly to his throat, and with one single tug rips
everything open--collar, shirt, waistcoat--a perfect wreck and ruin of
a man. Father and I got him upstairs somehow, and mother pretty nearly
killed herself nursing him through a brain fever."
The man in tweeds nodded at me significantly.
"Ah! there was nothing that could be done with that brute. She had a
devil in her."
"Where's your brother?" I asked, expecting to hear he was dead. But he
was commanding a smart steamer on the China coast, and never came home
now.
Jermyn fetched a heavy sigh, and the handkerchief being now sufficiently
dry, put it up tenderly to his red and lamentable nose.
"She was a ravening beast," the man in tweeds started again. "Old
Colchester put his foot down and resigned. And would you believe it?
Apse & Sons wrote to ask whether he wouldn't reconsider his decision!
Anything to save the good name of the Apse Family.' Old Colchester went
to the office then and said that he would take charge again but only to
sail her out into the North Sea and scuttle her there.
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