“If ever he wants lawyer’s counsel or a gaoler’s bribe,” Sard said, “remember that I will pay for both as long as I’m alive.”
Mr. Waycock considered him with just the flicker of a smile.
“Very good, then, Mr. Waycock,” Sard added, “I’ll come in the morning at nine.” He went out into the street. “Captain Cary dead,” he muttered, “the Pathfinder gone and Miss Kingsborough found. Well, that ends that.”
He found himself at the bronze of the Bajel Verde on the beach. He gripped it with his hand, suddenly overwhelmed with grief. His captain, the old extra-master:
“John Craig Cary, of the ship Petrella,
Thunder-ship and stand-front-under fella,”
was now a new hand, at sea in death, with perhaps no one to teach him the ropes. The Pathfinder, who had found so many paths, where no paths showed, would now find no more. She would be jammed on the reef in the glare, while the rollers would surge over her, climbing her stern, rising, rising, rising, then thundering down, blue, then green, then blinding, all day long, all night long, till she broke.
“I’ve had enough of the sea,” he said. “It takes a man like Cary to master the sea. Then the day after he goes, the sea smashes all that ever he made, as though it had never been.”
Everything there reminded him of Captain Cary. The bronze on which his hand lay marked the very place where the Heroic Six had made their stand at the Green Boat. He had seen them there. He had been with Captain Cary in the cross-trees of the Venturer, watching the Heroic Six hiding, creeping out and firing until their cartridges were all gone. He remembered Captain Cary stamping and cursing when the boat patrols put out.
“There, boy,” he had said, “now they will be destroyed. Their retreat’s cut off. But fly down on deck, boy, and pitch the coils of the buntlines over the sides, so that, if any of them does reach the ship, he’ll be able to get on board.”