“Ay, it did,” said the captain. “Ye seemed to know him!”
Christian turned and looked his companion full in the face. “I have met him twice,” he said quietly. “He was in England for some years, I believe; a political refugee, he called himself.”
By sea and land Captain Lebrun had learnt to devote an exclusive attention to his own affairs, allowing other men to manage theirs, well or ill, according to their fancy. He knew that Christian Vellacott wished to tell him no more, and he was content that it should be so, but he had noticed a circumstance which, from the young journalist's position, was probably invisible. He turned to give an order to the man at the wheel, and then walked slowly and with some difficulty (for Captain Lebrun suffered, in a quiet way, agonies from rheumatism) back towards his passenger.
“Seemed to me,” he said reflectively, as he looked upwards to see if the foretopsail was shivering, “as if he had something in his hand when a' fell.”
Christian followed the Captain's gaze. The sails were now filling well, and there was an exhilarating sound of straining cordage in the air while the vessel glided on. The young journalist was not an impressionable man, but he felt all these things. The sense of open freedom, the gentle rise and fall of the vessel, the whirring breeze, and the distant line of high land up the Rance towards Dinant—all these were surely worth hearing, feeling, and seeing; assuredly, they added to the joy of living.
“Something in his hand,” he repeated gravely; “what was it?”
Captain Lebrun turned sideways towards the steersman, and made a little gesture with his left hand. A wrinkle had appeared in one corner of the foretopsail. Then he looked round the horizon with a sailor's far-seeing gaze, before replying.
“Seemed to me,” he mumbled, without taking his pipe from his lips, “that it was a revolver.”
Then the two men smoked in silence for some time. The little vessel moved steadily out towards the blue water, passing a lighthouse built upon a solitary rock, and later a lightship, with its clean red hull gleaming in the sunlight as it rose and fell lazily. So close were they to the latter that the man watching on deck waved his hand in salutation.
Still Vellacott had vouchsafed no reply to Captain Lebrun's strange statement. He sat on the low rail, swinging one leg monotonously, while the square little sailor stood at his side with that patient maritime reflectiveness which is being slowly killed by the quicker ways of steam.