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"Did the Marquis de Gemosac and Dormer Colville tell you everything, or only a little?" "I don't suppose they told me everything," was the reply. "Why should they? I am only a seafaring man." "But they told you enough," persisted Barebone, "for you to draw your own conclusions as to my business over here." "Yes," answered Clubbe, with a glance across the table. "Is it going badly?" "No.
He turned and lifted his face to the breeze which blew from the sea over flat stretches of sand and seaweed the crispest, most invigorating air in the world except that which blows on the Baltic shores. "I prefer Farlingford. I am half a Clubbe and the other half! Heaven knows what that is! The offshoot of some forgotten seedling blown away from France by a great storm.
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.
Captain Clubbe had taught him that most difficult art to select with patience and a perfect judgment the right moment. The "Petite Jeanne" was rustling through the glassy water northward toward Farlingford. At a word from the Captain the man who had been heaving the lead came aft to the ship's bell and struck ten quick strokes. He waited and repeated the warning, but no one answered.
The Troglodites that are called Magaueres, carye for theyr armour and weapon, a rounde buckler of a rawe oxe hide, and a clubbe shodde with yron. Other haue bowes, and Iauelines. As for graues or places of buriall, they passe not.
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.
"And no one can ever prove anything contrary to that. No one except myself knows of of this doubt which you have stumbled upon. De Gemosac, Parson Marvin, Clubbe all of them are convinced that your father was the Dauphin." "And Miss Liston?" "Miriam Liston she also, of course. And I believe she knew it long before I told her." Barebone turned and looked at him squarely in the eyes.
"Frenchman was picked up at sea fifty-five years ago this July," he narrated, bluntly, "by the 'Martha and Mary' brig of this port. I was apprentice at the time. Frenchman was a boy with fair hair and a womanish face. Bit of a cry-baby I used to think him, but being a boy myself I was perhaps hard on him. He was with his well, his mother." Captain Clubbe paused.
"Have you ever noticed how an English ship comes into a foreign harbour and takes her berth at her moorings? There is nothing more characteristic of the nation. And one captain is like another. No doubt you have seen Clubbe do it a hundred times. He comes in, all sail set, and steers straight for the berth he has chosen.
Then, instinctively, she dropped on one knee, and before he had understood, or could stop her, had raised his hand to her lips. "Tide's a-turning, sir," said a voice at the open doorway of the cabin, and Captain Clubbe turned his impassive face toward Dormer Colville, who looked oddly white beneath the light of the lamp.
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