Bayre murmured his readiness, while Southerley expressed his vociferously. And with a smile and a pretty word of thanks she fled back over the ropes and the spars, the barrels and the fishing-nets, in the direction of the shops.
Southerley was put out that it should have been his companion who received the beauty’s commission. Bayre laughed at him and went to the side of the pier to watch the approaching boat.
It was now near enough for him to discern the face of the hard-featured, elderly man who pulled the oars; and as he looked, as he marked the long, straight chin, the straight upper lip, and the rather long grey hair which showed under the man’s peaked cap, he recognised a certain likeness to his own family, and more especially to his late father, which convinced him that he was in the presence of his uncle, Bartlett Bayre.
With a face full of interest he hung over the side of the pier, watching the boat and its rugged-looking occupant in his oilskins until the old man was only a few feet from the stone wall of the pier.
Then, leaning over, he hailed him with a smile.
“Ho! Do you know me, Uncle Bartlett?”
The man stopped on his oars, looked up quickly, and stared at the young man with the watery blue eyes of age.
Bartlett Bayre was still smiling, still holding his hand out in sign of amity and goodwill. To his surprise, almost to his consternation, there came over the older man’s face, as he looked upwards, an expression of horror and alarm impossible to mistake. His weather-beaten face grew livid, and the pipe, a common clay, suddenly fell from his lips as if it had been bitten in two.
For the space of a few seconds he sat rigid, as if petrified with dismay. The next moment he had turned the boat round with one rapid movement of his right oar, and was rowing out to sea with all his might.