A few minutes later the two lads were leaning together over the rail watching the departing boat, and chatting together as if they were old schoolfellows who had met again after a long separation, Rodd delighted with his companion, and disposed to feel disappointed in himself lest the refined, polished young officer—one, evidently, of the haute noblesse—should look down upon him as a rough, rather boorish young Englishman.
Somehow that evening, with its rapid change from glowing sunset light to purple violet darkness, seemed wonderfully quick in coming, and as the brig’s well-manned boat grazed against the schooner’s stern and Rodd turned in climbing up the side to hang by his left hand and extend his right, the feeling of inferiority melted away in the young Frenchman’s warm grasp, as the latter said—
“I suppose we shall be sailing very slowly till we reach the shore, and I want to see more of you. I shall come and fetch you first thing in the morning. Don’t say anything; you must come. Au revoir!”
The brig’s boat pushed off as soon as Rodd had swung himself on deck, and as it glided away into the soft darkness with the regularly handled oars dipping up from the surface of the sea what seemed to be like so much lambent liquid gold, suggesting to Rodd as he gazed after his new friend that the stars might have been melting all day in the torrid sun, and that this was their pale golden light floating upon the sea, a hand was laid upon his shoulder.
Chapter Thirty.
The Doctor paints Pictures.
“Back again, then, Rodd!”
“Oh yes, uncle. Did you think me long?”