When he saw where the crowd was stationed he caught his breath.
“No,” he said aloud to himself, “no, it can’t be Merton’s.”
And when he joined the townspeople they saw that his sunburnt, rugged face was grey as ashes.
“Mates,” he said, “what is it?”
“Merton’s is broke--Merton’s is broke!” they answered, clearing a way for him to read the notice for himself. In Somarsh Captain Bontnor was considered quite a scholar. As such he might, perhaps, have deciphered the clerkly handwriting in a shorter time than he now required, but on the east coast a reputation is not easily shaken.
They waited for the verdict in silence. After five minutes he turned round and his face gave some of them a shock. His kindly blue eyes had a painfully puzzled, incompetent look, which had often come across them in Barcelona and in London. But in Somarsh only Eve was familiar with it.
“Yes, mates,” he said, falling back into his old seafaring vernacular, forgetful of his best suit, “yes, shipmates, as far as I rightly understand it, the bank’s broken. And--and there’s some of us that’s ruined men.”
He stood for a moment looking straight in front of him--looking very old and not quite fit for life’s battle. Then he moved away.
“I’ll just go and tell my niece,” he said.
They watched him stump away--sturdy, unbroken, upright--still a man.