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All the village gossips naturally connected the arrival of the two gentlemen from London with the expected return of "The Last Hope." Captain Clubbe was known to have commercial relations with France. It was currently reported that he could speak the language.
Did he ever say anything to you about his former life his childhood his recollections of France?" "He was not a man to say much," answered Clubbe, himself no man to repeat much. Colville had been trying for some time to study the sailor's face, quietly through his cigar smoke. "Look here, Captain," he said, after a pause. "Let us understand each other.
At this time, Clubbe remembered, Louis XVIII was firmly established on the throne of France, the Restoration known as the Second having been brought about by the Allied Powers with a high hand after the Hundred Days and the final downfall of Napoleon.
He does not seem very anxious to seek his fortune in France." "No," answered Clubbe, lifting his stony face to the sky and studying the little clouds that hovered overhead awaiting the moon. "No you are right." Then he turned with a jerk of the head and left them.
"Something wrong somewhere?" he suggested, in a conversational way. "By daylight we were ramping up channel with three French men-of-war after us," was Captain Clubbe's comprehensive reply. "As chance had it, the channel squadron hove in sight round the Foreland, and the Frenchmen turned and left us." Clubbe marked a pause in his narrative by a glass of claret taken at one draught like beer.
If a man have the ill luck to lose his ship, he may well go through the rest of his life without hearing the mention of her name. It was understood in Farlingford that Loo Barebone had resigned his post on "The Last Hope" in order to claim a heritage in France. He had returned home, and was living quietly at Maidens Grave Farm with Mrs. Clubbe.
And the habit of the body at length becomes the nature of the mind. "Who has been telling you that?" he asked. "Dormer Colville. He told me one thing first and then the other. Only he and you and I know of it." "Then he must have told one lie," said Clubbe, reflectively. "One that we know of. And what he says is of no value either way; for he doesn't know. No one knows.
"It is not the end," answered Colville, cheerfully, "It is only the end of a chapter. Le roi est mort vive le roi!" He pointed with his stick, as he spoke, to the schooner creeping in between the dykes. "The Last Hope" had been expected for some days. It was known in Farlingford that she was foul, and that Captain Clubbe had decided to put her on the slip-way at the end of the next voyage.
At last Barebone turned, and there was no sign of fear or misgiving in his face. He looked at Clubbe, and at no one else, as if the Captain and he were alone in the cabin where they had passed so many years together in fair weather, to bring out that which is evil in a man, and foul, to evolve the good.
And he he laughed that was all. Mon Dieu! he was brave. I never knew that any one could be so brave!" She broke off suddenly, with her finger to her lips; for some one had opened the cabin door. Captain Clubbe came in, filling the whole cabin with his bulk, and on his heels followed Loo Barebone, his face and hair still wet and dripping.
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