But she blushed bonnily all the same.
“She is just a little stowaway we found in the storeroom two days after sailing, more than four years ago.”
“Well, well, well, and you love the sea, dear?”
“Oh yes, dearly; I am a fisherman’s daughter, you know, and Barclay and myself—that is Barclay holding on to a backstay—were always—always together in boats among the rocks, and—so——” She hung her head.
“And so you thought you shouldn’t be parted?”
. . . . . .
Captain M‘Lean stopped on board for two whole hours, and all that time Antonio kept talking, and managed to give this kindly skipper an epitome of his marvellous adventures.
But Captain M‘Lean’s kindness was not merely of the verbal species.
He despatched a boat to his ship for fresh stores of almost every sort that would likely be of service, nor would he hear of payment or barter.
“You would do the same by me, I know,” he said, “and God only knows how soon we ourselves may need assistance.”