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For Captain Clubbe had not laid aside in his travels a certain East Anglian distrust of the unknown. He had, of course, noted the presence of the strangers when he landed at Farlingford quay, but his large, immobile face had betrayed no peculiar interest. There had been plenty to tell him all that was known of Monsieur de Gemosac and Dormer Colville, and a good deal that was only surmised.
"Old man is down below," he said, giving Barebone a hand. From the forecastle came sundry grunts, and half a dozen heads were jerked sideways at him. Captain Clubbe was in the cabin, where the remains of breakfast had been pushed to one end of the table to make room for pens and ink. The Captain was laboriously filling in the countless documents required by the French custom-house.
Loo had not written to Dormer Colville. Captain Clubbe was trading between Alexandria and Bristol. "The Last Hope" was not to be expected in England before April. To communicate with Colville would be to turn that past dream, not wholly pleasant, into a grim reality. Loo therefore put off from day to day the evil moment. By nature and by training he was a man of action.
Clacy was asked to do she could perform with a rough efficiency. But she always undertook it with reluctance. It was not, she took care to mention, what she was accustomed to, but she would do it to oblige. It was on a Wednesday that Dormer Colville met Captain Clubbe face to face in the street, and was forced to curb his friendly smile and half-formed nod of salutation.
Few knew of it in Farlingford, though many must have suspected the true explanation of the prolonged stay of the two strangers at the "Black Sailor." Captain Clubbe and Septimus Marvin, Dormer Colville and Monsieur de Gemosac shared this knowledge, and awaited, impatiently enough, an answer which could assuredly be only in the affirmative.
But now she turned away. "Farlingford is best, at all events," he said, with an odd conviction. "I am only the grandson of old Seth Clubbe, of Maiden's Grave. I am a Farlingford sailor, and that is all. I am mate of 'The Last Hope' at your service." "You are more than that." He made a step nearer to her, looking down at her white face, averted from him.
It being a Wednesday, Clubbe must have known all that there was to know, and more, of Monsieur de Gemosac and Dormer Colville; for Mrs. Clacy, it will be remembered, obliged Mrs. Clubbe on Tuesdays. Nothing, however, in the mask-like face, large and square, of the ship-captain indicated that he knew aught of his new acquaintances, or desired to know more.
"We are all here, the Marquis, Barebone, and I. Clubbe took us on board one dark night in the Gironde and brought us home." "Are you hurt?" asked Turner, curtly. "Oh, no. But Clubbe's collar-bone is broken and his leg is crushed. We had to leave four on board; not room for them in the boat. That fool Barebone has gone back for them. He promised them he would. The sea out there is awful!"
But he took care to leave Loo Barebone as free as possible. "I am, in a way, a compulsory pilot," he explained, airily, to his companion. "The ship is yours, and you probably know more about the shoals than I do. You must have felt that a hundred times when you were at sea with that solemn old sailor, Captain Clubbe.
"What do YOU say?" he asked, in English, and he must have known that Captain Clubbe understood French better than he was ready to admit. Clubbe passed his hand slowly across his cheek and chin, not in order to gain time, or because he had not an answer ready, but because he came of a slow-speaking race.
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