"But if this is the Ninefold—what about the 'cold and venomous waters, consuming iron and breaking the rarest vessels.'" The speaker dipped his hand over the side and brought it up all shining but not dripping, and touched his lips with it, and went on, smiling: "Besides, if you and I are alive, where are our golden boughs, and if we're dead, where are our oboli? We ought to have 'em! It wouldn't be good form not!"
"Why, you're Braythwayte of Ours! How is it I didn't know you? Why did I suppose—" Franky broke off, for Braythwayte's very recent exit from the stage of life had been performed after a highly coloured fashion, when the Germans had showered heavy shells of high explosive upon the little Belgian town. "That fellow sculling," he said to cover the slight embarrassment. "Somehow I fancy I've seen him before."
"Ah! Now I recollect." Braythwayte was answering the thought of the previous moment. "I did get crumped up pretty badly. Should have come off lots worse hadn't it been for Cruse. He threw himself in front of me when the shell dropped so near us." He spoke of the Sergeant-Major of his Company who had been killed at the same moment. "Don't you recognise him? Cruse is the man who's sculling. I caught a glimpse of his face just now—it can be nobody but Cruse."
"Beggin' yer pard'n, Sorr." The soft South Irish brogue sounded more apologetic than contradictory. The thick, sturdy figure of the speaker, uncertainly descried in the clear obscurity, leaned anxiously over from the opposite seat. "'Tis Father Walsh—may Those Above reward him for an ould, bould gentleman!—that kem crawlin' out on his four bones to the Advanced threnches at a place they did be callin' La Bossy or suchlike—to give Holy Absolution to meself and Hanlon an' two other boys av' the Loyal Irish Rifles that wor' in a bad way. Wouldn't I swear to his skin on a gate, or the bend of his beak anywhere"—the voice hesitated—"barrin' for the mimmory I have that Thim Wans was afther pluggin' him through the head—and himself just layin' the Blessed Sacrament on me tongue!"
"Beg pardon." A woman's voice joined in the conversation. "Sorry to interrupt, but I know him, really. It isn't the Surgeon-Major—or Father Anybody!" Franky recognised in the clear obscurity the flowing white head-dress and grey Red-Cross badged cape of an Army Nursing Sister, as she went on: "It's just our Civil Surgical Specialist—who died of double pneumonia (septic) at the Harfleur Military Hospital. Had a touch of influenza—and would get out of bed to operate on one of the Sisters—a sudden case of appendix trouble with typhoid thrown in. Oh, yes! the operation was successful, but the Sister didn't recover. Still, the C.S.S. gave his life for hers all the same!"
"Good egg, him! But are you quite sure there's no mistake with regard to our friend there?" Franky nodded towards the tall, black-hooded, black-mantled figure plying the oar, upright in the stern. "Because just now I caught a glimpse of his face, and I could have sworn it was my grandfather—by a long sight the finest man I've ever come across! He dived over the yacht's side and saved my life when I was drowning. It was the Cowes Season of 1894. I was a cheeky nipper of eight—and he was seventy-one. And the chill and the excitement brought on a stroke or something. He was dead in his cabin-berth next morning, when his man went in with the mail."
"Oh, you funnies!" This with a clear little trill of laughter in the voice of a small girl—Franky could see her bright eyes dancing as she peeped at him from her niche between the Army Nurse and the small, black-habited elderly figure of a Sister of Charity in a deep starched guimpe and wide-flanged cornette. "As if it could be anybody but my Dada—who pulled the soldiers out of the train that was all smashed up and burning! When me and Mummy——"
"Taisez vous donc, Raymonde!" whispered the nun reprovingly. "It is not convenable that petites demoiselles should interrupt their elders thus. Remember where you are, and in what Presence!"
"Please don't scold her!" coaxed Franky, the devout lover of children. The nun smiled, meeting his entreating eyes. He smiled back and went on: "Right or wrong—we seem all agreed that our friend in the stern is a near relation—or a close acquaintance of nearly every one of us. In every case a supreme benefactor——"
"Surely, monsieur!" she gave back in a hushed tone. "But surely, monsieur! The Helper—the Benefactor of us all!"