"Yes, Sir."
"And the lady is his wife?"
"Yes, Sir. Mr. and Mrs. Walter H. Carmac. Look out, Sir! You must ha forgotten you were leaning against the tiller."
The sailor acted promptly in bringing the Hirondelle back on her course; but, owing to her quickness in answering the helm, she had swung round a couple of points when an involuntary movement, a sort of flinching on Ingersoll's part, caused her to change direction.
Peridot came aft, smiling and debonair. "We're all a bit shaken, Monsieur," he said, noting the increased pallor of Ingersoll's ordinarily rather delicate-looking face. "A tot of cognac, eh? That's what we want. What do you say, Monsieur?"
The bluff English skipper had caught the key word of the sentence, and the Breton's merry eye supplied a full translation.
"Good for you, my hearty!" said he. "Gimme one fair pull at a bottle of decent stuff now, an' I'll load you to the bung with the same once we're ashore."
CHAPTER IV
THE HOME-COMING
Peridot had stipulated that the Hirondelle should start on her homeward run "not a minute later than three o'clock." He had cast off from the wharf at Le Pouldu slightly before that hour; but the wreck of the Stella and its attendant circumstances—not least being the necessity enforced by the change of wind to take the deep-sea course after leaving the reef—cost a good deal of time. As a consequence daylight had almost failed before the bar of the Aven was crossed.
On Pointe d'ar Vechen, within thirty feet of the Port Manech Hotel, stands a tiny lighthouse which sheds a mild beam over the entrance to the estuary. It is essentially a harbor light. A broad white band covers the safe channel extending from Les Verrés to l'Isle Verte, a red sector forbids the former, and a green one indicates the narrow inside passage between reef and mainland.