Nothing had been heard in the Lobbies, nothing from Scotland Yard. Finally, and more important, Mary Smith herself could tell Dolly nothing, and if _she_ could not, certainly no one else in London could. She was really fond of her cousin, and for his sake she comforted, and, what was more important, restrained the imprudent Sudie. As for Ole Man Benson, beyond a natural regret that such an asset as a son-in-law in the Cabinet was still held over as a contingent and that he could not for the moment close upon the option, he took the matter in a calm and philosophical spirit. CHAPTER XII “Oh Liberty!” says the Bulgarian poet Machinchose in a fine apostrophe, too little known in this country. “Oh Liberty,” etc. Never had George Mulross Demaine known the sweets of that word in the days when he enjoyed its privilege to the full. Now, as the brilliant dawn of that Wednesday awakened him upon the deep he learned the beauty of Freedom. Its meaning saturated his very being as he woke in his miserable cell, refreshed but very weak, and saw shafts of the happy morning sun coming level with the dancing of the sea, and making a rhythmic change of unreal network in the oval patch of light that was cast by the porthole against the filthy rust of the walls. He felt mechanically for his watch and found nothing but bare skin; then (such a teacher is adversity!) he to whom induction was grossly unfamiliar, began to induce away like any child of Nature. The sunlight was level, for the image of the porthole upon the wall was but little lower than the porthole itself:--therefore the sun had but just risen. It was June, therefore if the sun had but just risen the hour was very early: how early he certainly could not have answered if you had asked him a week ago, but adversity, that admirable schoolmistress, was developing the mind of George Mulross as the blossom of a narcissus develops under the first airs of Spring, and he was capable of remembering a sunrise after the ball at the Buteleys’, and another after a big supper at Granges’. He was in bed before half-past five on each occasion. It must therefore be between four and five o’clock. The term “solstice” was unfamiliar to this expectant member of the British Executive, but he seemed to remember that somewhere about this time of year the nights were at their shortest. He was full of a new pride as he made these discoveries. Then two things struck him at once: the first that he was ravenously hungry, the second that all motion of the ship had ceased. He heard no sound of any kind except the gentle lapping of the tiny waves alongside, for it was calm except for the little breeze of morning.