Clubbe passed his hand slowly across his cheek and chin, not in order to gain time, or because he had not an answer ready, but because he came of a slow-speaking race. His answer had been made ready weeks before while he sat on the weather-beaten seat set against the wall of “The Black Sailor” at Farlingford.
“Tide’s turned,” he answered, simply. “You’d better get your oilskins on again and go.”
“Yes,” said Loo, with a queer laugh. “I fancy I shall want my oilskins.”
The boat which had been sent from Royan, at the order of the pilot, who went ashore there, had followed “The Last Hope” up the river, and was now lying under the English ship’s stern awaiting her two passengers and the turn of the tide.
Dormer Colville glanced at the cabin clock.
“Then,” he said, briskly, “let us be going. It will be late enough as it is before we reach my cousin’s house.”
He turned and translated his remark for the benefit of the Marquis and Juliette, remembering that they must needs fail to understand a colloquy in the muttered and clipped English of the east coast. He was nervously anxious, it would appear, to tide over a difficult moment; to give Loo Barebone breathing space, and yet to avoid unnecessary question and answer. He had not lived forty adventurous years in the world without learning that it is the word too much which wrecks the majority of human schemes.
Their preparations had been made beforehand in readiness for the return of the tide, without the help of which the voyage back to Royan against a contrary wind must necessarily be long and wearisome.
There was nothing to wait for. Captain Clubbe was not the man to prolong a farewell or waste his words in wishes for the future, knowing how vain such must always be. Loo was dazed still by the crash of the storm and the tension of the effort to bring his boat safely through it.
The rest had not fully penetrated to his inmost mind yet. There had been only time to act, and none to think, and when the necessity to act was past, when he found himself crouching down under the weather gunwale of the French fishing-boat without even the necessity of laying hand on sheet or tiller, when, at last, he had time to think, he found that the ability to do so was no longer his. For Fortune, when she lifts up or casts down, usually numbs the understanding at the first turn of her wheel, sending her victim staggering on his way a mere machine, astonishingly alive to the necessity of the immediate moment, careful of the next step, but capable of looking neither forward nor backward with an understanding eye.