The Captain stepped out well, however, and he and Dick got up just in time to settle a little dispute, in which Bob, Rover, and an ugly-looking man, very like a gipsy and evidently a tramp, were the parties interested.
The man had one end of the bundle of towels grasped in both his hands, while Rover was holding on like grim death to the other; the dog growling, and tugging away so violently between each growl, that the tramp had hard work to keep hold of his prize.
Bob, on his part, had caught up a piece of broken timber, and was advancing to the faithful dog’s aid.
But a boy like Bob, even with the help of such a valiant protector as the retriever, could do little or nothing against a burly, ruffianly giant, six feet high, and broad in proportion.
The arrival of the Captain on the scene with Dick, however, altered the aspect of affairs considerably.
The gipsy tramp, who had sworn to Bob, and at him too, that the bundle was his own, and that he was walking quietly along the shore in search of work, when he was assailed by “that savage dog o’ yourn there,” now said, on the Captain’s telling him curtly to drop the towels, or he would have him locked up, that he had “only picked ’em up on the beach, and didn’t mean no harm by it to nobody, that he didn’t.”
“Then the sooner you are off out of this, the better for you, my friend,” said the Captain, on the man’s letting go the bundle of towels, which Rover at once carried off in triumph and laid at Bob’s feet. “Be off with you, you rascal, at once!” The man took his advice, and slouched away round the castle, soon disappearing from their sight; when, much excited by the unexpected little incident that they now would have to detail to Mrs Gilmour and Nellie, besides being full of Rover’s bravery and sagacity, they took their way home again, for the second time, across the common, the clock of old Saint Thomas’s church in the distance striking as they turned their faces homeward—“One—two—three—four—five—six—seven—eight—Nine!”
“Look sharp, lads, or we’ll be late for the steamer!” cried the old sailor, as they hurried along, setting the example by hastening onwards as fast as his little legs, aided by his ever-present malacca cane, could carry him. “I’m told that the Bembridge Belle will leave the pier at ten o’clock without fail, wind and weather permitting, and it has just struck nine—all through your loitering and skylarking in the water, Master Bob and you Dick, and that long palaver we had afterwards with your friend the towel-thief.”
On reaching the house, where breakfast was all ready awaiting their arrival, the old Captain, while hurrying through the meal, found time to chaff Nellie about this “rival collector,” as he called the prowling tramp when narrating all about the adventure that had detained them; telling her she would have to look to her laurels, and gather up all the odds and ends she could find, on the beach, or else this gentleman, who had displayed such zeal that morning in trying to add to his collection, would certainly outvie hers.
“Now, children,” said Mrs Gilmour, when breakfast and chaff had both come to an end, repeating the Captain’s favourite word of command, “Look sharp!”