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"With the business that brought you to this country," answered Clubbe, with a sudden gruffness; for he was, like the majority of big men, shy. Barebone looked at him across the table. "Do you know what the business is that brought me to this country?" he asked. And Captain Clubbe looked thoughtfully at the point of his pen.
He had come on board merely to greet his old friends, to hear some news of home, to take up for a moment that old self of bygone days and drop it again. And now, in half a dozen questions and answers, whither was he drifting? Captain Clubbe filled in a word, slowly and very legibly. "But I am not the man, you know," said Barebone, slowly.
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.
On the contrary, it is going splendidly," answered Barebone, gaily; and Captain Clubbe ducked his head down again over the papers of the French custom-house. "It is going splendidly, but " He paused. Half an hour ago he had no thought in his mind of Captain Clubbe or of Farlingford.
She had broken up or rolled into deep water. A number of men were coming up the shingle in silence. Sea Andrew, dragging his feet wearily, approached in advance of them. "Boat's thrown up on the beach," he said to Captain Clubbe. "Stove in by a sea. We've found them." He stood back and the others, coming slowly into the light, deposited their burdens side by side near the fire.
He always approached his flock with diffidence, although they treated him kindly enough, much as they treated such of their own children as were handicapped in the race of life by some malformation or mental incapacity. Colville approached him and they stood side by side until "The Last Hope" was safely moored and chocked. Then it was that the rector introduced the two strangers to Captain Clubbe.
It was perhaps a fellow feeling. I suppose I am a Frenchman after all. Clubbe always says I am one when I am at the wheel and let the ship go off the wind." Miriam was looking along the dyke, peering into the gathering darkness. "One of them is coming toward us now," she said, almost warningly. "Not the Marquis de Gemosac, but the other the Englishman." "Confound him," muttered Barebone.
River Andrew was already in his boat, ready to lend a hand should Captain Clubbe wish to send a rope ashore. But it was obvious that the captain meant to anchor in the stream for the night: so obvious that if any one on shore had mentioned the conclusion his speech would have called for nothing but a contemptuous glance from the steady blue eyes all round him.
He knelt down and held his shaking hands to the flames. Some one handed him a bottle, but he turned first and gave it the Marquis de Gemosac, who was shaking all over like one far gone in a palsy. Sea Andrew and the coast-guard captain were persuading Captain Clubbe to quit the beach, but he only answered them roughly in monosyllables. "My place is here till all are safe," he said. "Let me lie."
But the imagination of even the darksome River Andrew failed to soar successfully under the measuring blue eye, and the total lack of comment of Captain Clubbe. There was, indeed, little to tell, although the strangers had been seen to go to the rectory in quite a friendly way, and had taken a glass of sherry in the rector's study. Mrs.
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