"Oh, that you, Waters?"
"Yes. Could I see you?"
"Here I am."
Captain Sinclair was a middle-aged man, rather stout, wearing a moustache, and flashing a friendly look out of his brown eyes.
"I don't think I was fairly treated," said Timothy, "when I lost my place in the lighthouse, and I wanted to make some explanations. Besides me, you may have heard the stories all round about the goods they are wasting at the light?"
"Well, I have heard something," said the captain impatiently. "Somebody wrote to me about it, but he wasn't man enough to sign his name. May have been a woman, for all I know."
"If you'd let me come aboard--"
"Oh, you can come aboard; but I won't be here long. I must go into the light, and the steamer is going off--at once. Just row over to the lighthouse, and I'll talk with you there."
Timothy turned away and shrugged his shoulders. He said to himself, "I don't want to go in there. However, I think I saw Trafton and that Fletcher rowin' off. I can stand the old man." He turned to the captain and said in a fawning tone, "All right, cap'n. I want you to have your say about it."
When Captain Sinclair and Timothy entered the kitchen of the lighthouse, to the surprise of Timothy he saw Trafton and Dave Fletcher. They had "rowed off," and had also rowed back. Timothy was so unprepared for their appearance that he would have allowed the opportunity for presenting his cause to slip by unimproved. Dave Fletcher, though, was ready to begin at once, and did so.