"There was no turnin' back about Mr. Carmac, Sir. He wasn't built that way, bein' a sure enough American. Though I've never known anybody more devoted to his wife than he was, he ought to have let a younger man take her across to your boat. Not as I mean to argy that anyone could have held up against that sea. Lord love a duck! it was a oner an' no mistake! But there, what has to be will be. Poor Mr. Carmac was fated to hand in his checks on the coast of Finistère, an' we others weren't, and that's all there is to it; though I'd be flyin' in the face of Providence if I didn't say in the same breath that if four of the pluckiest and best hadn't been aboard this 'ere craft, none of our little lot would ever have seen daylight again."
Tollemache joined them. He had just exchanged a word with Yvonne, who had evidently placed her guest in a bunk, because the gleam of an oil lantern came through the open hatch, and, like the good yachtswoman she was, she had passed out the side lights trimmed and ready for use.
"Well, Ingersoll," he said cheerily, "how are you feeling now?"
"Rather tired," was the unexpected answer.
"I'm not surprised at that. You've had a pretty strenuous time."
"Of course you, Lorry, have had the day of your life!"
"Y-yes. I wouldn't go through it again, though, for a small fortune; that is, with Yvonne on board. It was nip and tuck when we were jammed up against the reef."
"It didn't take you long, Sir, for all that, to jump in after Mrs. Carmac," said Popple.
"Oh, is that the lady's name? What a weird specimen one of your sailormen must be! I asked him the name of the yacht's owner, and he didn't know it."
"If it's the beauty I saw you talkin' to, the swine didn't know his own name when he kem aboard at Southampton," snorted Popple indignantly. "Sink me! I've never seen a man so loaded. Took me for his long-lost uncle. Me, mind you! If I hadn't been rather short-handed, I'd have run him ashore to find an uncle in a policeman."
"He is sober enough now," laughed Tollemache. "I had some difficulty in persuading him to take a sip of brandy. He said he was a teetotaler."
"That fellow there, leaning against the mast."
"Of all the swabs! Look here, Sir, you come with me an' listen!"