“Yes, I remember that,” said the pilot, balancing his silver pencil-case on his finger. “I hadn’t my little coxswain with me then, had I, skipper?”
“Hadn’t you? Oh! no—of course you hadn’t”—and the skipper laughed. “He was only born that night, was he? Dear, dear, how time flies! So he is eight years old to-day! Here’s to him!” And the skipper raised his glass, and so did the doctor, saying to me, “It’s the little chap you noticed in my boat—my little coxswain.”
I drank my glass also to the little fellow’s health, and then the captain said:
“Tell the doctor, Gladman, how you came to take him.”
“What is his name?” I said. “I saw a curly-headed little fellow in the stern of your boat, and also that you had four men besides. That is a good large crew, isn’t it, simply to pull you out to a ship and back?”
“It isn’t a man too much, either, doctor, and when you have seen our Breaksea in a storm of wind and rain you’ll agree with me. Besides, that gig is all I have to take me to my patients across the bay, up the harbour to the town. Of course there is a path to the town round the cliffs from the lighthouse, where I live.”
“You saw it as we passed, doctor. Gladman is lighthouse-keeper, among other things,” put in the skipper.
“But,” went on the pilot, smiling at the interpolation, “it is a long way round, and I haven’t time for long ways round. We get all our provisions, too, by the boat, and my wife goes to church and pays her calls in it. She is a first-rate sailor, isn’t she, skipper? And as for that monkey, Jack—my little coxswain—he’s a far better pilot than I am.”
“Is he now?” said the captain. “Tell the doctor how you came to take him,” he said, with a sailor’s love of a good yarn.