What she saw was a young man only a little above the middle height, stalwart and handsome, with quick eyes gray as the winter sea, and a straight, clean-cut mouth, that closed with a look of indomitable courage and determination.
“And yet, madam,” the lieutenant went on, leaving his subordinates to help Parson Langney, who was portly, and less agile than his daughter, up on to the deck, “they should not have brought you. For, in truth, we are in no state to receive a lady on board. There has been ugly work to do with those rascally smugglers.”
“I come not as a fine lady, sir,” retorted Joan, promptly; “but as a nurse for a sick man. There is no state needed by a woman when she comes but to do her duty.”
“Well said, madam; but I thank God your care will not be needed. The poor fellow who was shot by those ruffians has taken a turn for the better, and if the gentleman, whom I take to be your father, can but perform a simple operation for him——”
“My father, sir, is a most skilled surgeon, and can perform any operation,” answered Joan, interrupting him proudly.
Her look was so full of fire, the carriage of her head, in its graceful hood, so superb, as she uttered the ingenuous words, that Lieutenant Tregenna smiled a little as he saluted her and turned to the parson, who, panting and in some disorder, had at length reached the deck.
The young man introduced himself, and they saluted each other, the parson with some difficulty, since the continual motion of the vessel was somewhat trying to his landsman’s legs. Then they went below, and in a few minutes the young man returned alone.
Joan had been accommodated with a seat by the tiller, and protected from wind and water by a tarpaulin, out of which her bonny face peeped white in the moonlight.
“You have no work for me, sir?” she asked, as the lieutenant came up.
“None, madam; and even less for your good father than we feared might be the case. He has found the bullet, and ’twill be an easy matter to extract it, so he says; and after that, ’tis a mere matter of a few days’ quiet to set the poor fellow on his legs again. So the rascals escaped murder this time; not that one crime more or less would sit hard on the conscience of such villains!”