But a yachting cruise was another matter, and I say I should have accepted Wilfred’s proposal without an instant’s reflection, even if I had had to be on board by noon next day, but for the extraordinary _motive_ of the trip. It was very plain that he had no clear perception of his own programme. He talked as though everything that happened would correspond with his anticipations. He seemed cocksure, for instance, of overhauling the ‘Shark’ in mid-ocean, when in reality the possibility of such an encounter was so infinitesimally small that no man in his senses would dream of seriously entering it as an item in his catalogue of chances. Then, supposing him to miss the ‘Shark,’ he was equally cocksure of arriving at Table-Bay before her. The ‘Bride’ might be the swifter vessel, but the course was six thousand miles and more; the run might occupy two and perhaps three, ay, and even four months, and, though I did not make much of the ‘Shark’s’ five days’ start, yet, even if the ‘Bride’ outsailed her by four feet to one, so much of the unexpected must enter as conditions of so long a run and so great a period of time--calms, headwinds, disaster, strong favourable breezes for the chased, sneaking and baffling draughts of air for the pursuer--that it was mere madness to reckon with confidence upon the ‘Bride’s’ arrival at Cape Town before the ‘Shark.’ So that, as there was no certainty at all about it, what was to follow if my cousin found that the runaways had sailed from Cape Town without leaving the faintest hint behind them as to their destination! Moreover, how could one be sure that the Colonel and Lady Monson would not change their minds and make for American or Mediterranean ports? Their determination to put the whole world between them and England was not very intelligible, seeing that our globe is a big one, and that scoundrels need not travel far to be lost to the eye. If Lady Monson discovered that she had left behind her the remarkable letter which Wilfrid had given to me to read, then it would be strange if she and the Colonel did not change their programme, unless, indeed, they supposed that Wilfrid would never dream of following them upon the high seas.