THE WRECK
There were brave hearts, too, on board the vessel now seemingly doomed
to utter destruction. Each of her two masts carried canvas, and when the
cable parted a ready command had evidently sent the crew racing to cast
loose both sails from their lashings. But the very trimness and tautness
of everything on board proved the yacht's final undoing. Knives were
brought into play, and the foresail was hoisted within a few seconds.
The yacht answered her helm promptly. There seemed to be a real chance
that she might haul into the wind and clear the black fangs of Les
Verrés, in which case she would either run into the small estuary at
Brigneau, or at the worst beach herself on the strip of sand there.
At that moment the occupants of the Hirondelle saw her name, the Stella,
and they were on the point of breaking into a frantic cheer of relief
when the unlucky craft crashed into a submerged rock, swung broadside
on, and was saved from turning turtle only by another rock which stove
her in amidships.
"Ah, Les Verrés have caught her! I thought they would. God help those
poor fellows!"
It was Peridot who spoke, and the mere fact that he had abandoned hope
sounded the requiem of the Stella and all her company.
Then indeed her plight was like to have passed beyond human aid. She was
lodged on the outer fringe of an unapproachable reef, whence a rapidly
rising tide would lift her at any minute. Being built of steel, she
would sink forthwith, because her bows were crushed and plates started
below the load line. She carried four boats; but, with the ingenuity of
malice that the sea often displays in its unbridled fury, the two to
port were crushed to splinters when she heeled over, and those to
starboard, swinging inward on their davits, filled instantly, since the
waves poured in cascades over the hull, as though the mighty Atlantic
was concentrating all its venom on that one tiny adversary.
The marvel was that no one was swept overboard. Nothing could have saved
the men on deck had the Stella lurched on to her beam ends without
warning; but the fleeting interval while she was being carried round on
the pivot of her fore part enabled them to guard against the expected
shock. Nine figures were visible, two standing on the port rails of the
bridge, and the others on the deck rails, every man having braced his
shoulders against the deck itself. Masts, funnel, and upper saloon were
practically vertical with the plane of the sea, and the hull quivered
and moved under the assault of each wave. Yet the very injuries that
would swamp the vessel instantly when she rolled into deep water now
gave her a brief lease of life. The rocks that pierced the hull held her
fast. Her plight resembled that of some poor wretch stabbed mortally who
breathes and groans in agony, only to die when the knife that causes his
distress is withdrawn.
* * * * *
The horror of the sight brought a despairing cry to Yvonne's lips.
"Peridot, Peridot, can nothing be done?" she shrieked, turning to the
Breton sailor as though, at his prayer, the sky might open and
Providence send relief.
The boat was now nearly abreast of the wreck, and running free before
the wind. The girl's frantic appeal seemed to arouse the three men from
a stupor of helplessness.
"Look out, everybody!" shouted Peridot. "We're going head on."
It was a dangerous maneuver in a heavy sea; but fortune favored the
Hirondelle in so far that no mountainous wave struck her quarter as she
veered round. All were equally alive to the possibility of disaster.
Ingersoll, though he uttered no word till the boat had reversed her
course, was almost moved to protest.
"We are powerless," he said, coming aft to make his voice audible. "Even
if some of the yacht's people are swept clear of the reef, they will be
smothered long before they drift in this direction. The thing was so
unexpected that none of them has secured a cork jacket, or even a life
belt."
"There is one chance in a hundred, Monsieur," said Peridot, speaking so
that Ingersoll alone could hear. "The point is--will you take it? You
and Monsieur Tollemache would agree, of course. Will you risk
Mademoiselle's life as well?"
"A chance? What sort of chance?"
"I know every inch of Les Verrés. A little inlet, not much longer than
the yacht, and perhaps forty feet wide, runs in from the south just
where she lies. Her hull and the reef itself form a breakwater. We can
make it, and get a line aboard."
"Then for the love of Heaven why wait?"
"One moment, Monsieur. We have yet a second or two for decision. You see
how the wreck lifts each time a sea hits her. The tide is rising. If she
shifts when we are in there, goodby to the Hirondelle!"
The eyes of the two met, and Ingersoll wavered, but only as a brave man
takes breath before essaying some supreme test of hardihood.
"My daughter would never forgive me if she knew I chose the coward's
path," he said. "Go ahead, Peridot! Tell us what we have to do, and it
shall be done."
A cheerful chuckle was the Breton's answer as he thrust the tiller over
to port and sent the boat reeling on the starboard tack. Once she was
fairly balanced, he began to bellow instruction.
"Within a couple of minutes I'll put her head on again, and we'll drift
alongside the ship yonder. Monsieur Ingersoll and Monsieur Tollemache
will each take a sweep, and fend the after part off the rocks.
Mademoiselle will remain for'ard, and be ready to drop the anchor as a
last resource if I find the tide running too strong for the sweeps to
hold us back. Leave the rest to me!"
* * * * *
It is a glorious heritage of the English-speaking race that the men of
other nations regard sea valor as the birthright of its sons and
daughters. Peridot had stated the case for and against the attempted
rescue to Ingersoll as a father. When the die was cast, the decision
made, he counted on _ces Américains_ acting with the same cool heroism
he would himself display.
The Hirondelle quickly reached the position from which the Breton judged
it possible to drop into a natural dock, the existence of which he had
learned when catching lobsters and crabs. Wind and tide carried the boat
swiftly backward. At first it seemed that she was simply rushing to
destruction, and every eye was bent on the swirling maelstrom toward
which she was speeding rather than on the stricken yacht. Even Peridot's
face paled beneath its bronze, and he had a hand uplifted as a warning
to Yvonne to be ready instantly with the anchor, while Ingersoll and
Tollemache were standing, each with a long oar couched like a knight's
lance, when the Hirondelle swept past the bows of the wreck; only to be
checked immediately by a backwash from the higher part of the reef.
"_Dieu merci!_" sighed Peridot, jubilant because his faith was
justified. "Keep her steady now, _mes amis_, and with God's help we'll
succeed!"
A tremendous sea dashed over the Stella, and for one appalling moment it
appeared that she must roll bodily into deep water, and involve the
Hirondelle in her own ruin. But she settled again, with a rending of her
framework and inner fittings that was sweetest music in Peridot's ears,
since it meant that she was becoming wedged more firmly on the teeth of
the rock, and, owing to her construction, possessed no natural buoyancy
to be affected by the rising tide.
Already he had a coil of rope in his right hand, and was yelling orders
to the crew of the Stella. The noise of the seas pounding on Les Verrés
was deafening; but a hoarse cry from one of the men on the bridge
penetrated the din:
"No _comprenez_! Heave away!"
So they were English or Americans--which, none could tell. Even at a
distance of fifteen feet or thereabouts it was hardly possible to
distinguish nationality by facial traits owing to the torrents falling
continuously over the rounded hull, the smoke pouring from the funnel,
the flapping of the loosened sails, and the clouds of spray that lashed
the Hirondelle. At any rate, Tollemache, deciding instantly, as was his
way, sent back an answering shout:
"Haul in twenty feet of the rope when it reaches you, make fast, and
throw back the loose end. You must get across as best you can. No time
to rig a safer tackle."
"Ay, ay, Sir!" was the reply.
"Heave away, Peridot!"
Tollemache, though not neglecting his special duty, spared one glance
over his shoulder; but the rope did not undertake its spiral flight at
once. The resourceful Breton awaited a momentary lull in the wind. Then
the heavy coil was flung, and fell into the hands of one of the men on
the bridge. As he was securing it to a stanchion, his companion, he
whose gigantic stature had first caught Yvonne's attention, climbed into
the tiny wheelhouse, and reappeared almost immediately, carrying a woman
in his arms.
The sight caused a fresh thrill on board the Hirondelle. Somehow it was
totally unexpected.
"Fools!" said Tollemache, meaning, no doubt, that men might, if they
chose, venture their lives in fair fight against the storm gods, but
they had no right to subject a woman to the ordeal.
Ingersoll overheard, and understood. He even smiled. Lorry regarded
Yvonne as a chum to be trusted in fair weather or foul. It did not occur
to him that her father might reasonably have urged the same plea against
attempting a seemingly mad and impracticable rescue.
Evidently some fierce dispute was being waged on the Stella. The other
man on the bridge, who turned out to be the captain, had thrown back the
rope to Peridot, and summoned all hands to gather near. Now he was
urging the big man to intrust his inanimate burden to one of the
sailors, but met with the most positive refusal. Every second was vital,
and Peridot blazed into annoyance.
"_Gars!_" he roared. "If they waste time, I'll back out!"
The commander of the yacht, however, was well aware of the greatest
peril which threatened now; so without more ado he steadied the giant
while the latter raised the woman's body to his left shoulder, grasped
the double rope in both hands, and lowered himself into the water.
The passage was not difficult. The ropes were fairly taut, and the
distance between the two craft not more than sixteen feet. Indeed, such
a Hercules in physique might well regard the task as a mere nothing, and
he set out with quiet confidence, extending his left arm in each onward
movement, and closing up with the right.
Yvonne, watching his progress, suddenly yielded to another memory of
Tollemache swinging from the shepherds' hooks of Sainte Barbe's tower.
Suppose the rope were to break--just as one of the rings had come away
in Lorry's grip? Of course the notion was stupid. She knew that each
strand of that particular rope was sound, that it might be trusted to
hold the Hirondelle herself against the straining of wind and tide, let
alone bear the dead weight of two people; but a woman's intuition is
stronger than reason. And in this instance her foreboding came true,
though from a cause that she had not foreseen.
* * * * *
All at once Peridot uttered a yell that degenerated into a
semihysterical shriek; for temperament counts in such crises, and the
Breton nature was being strung to a high pitch.
"Hold tight, all hands! Here's a tidal wave!" The monster whose coming
the fisherman had feared all day was upon them before Tollemache could
translate the warning. It broke against the Stella's hull, and literally
dashed solid tons of water on the Hirondelle and the hapless pair now
midway between the two vessels. During some seconds the stanch sardine
boat seemed veritably to have foundered. Even in the convulsive and
choking effort needed to cling with the strength of desperation to the
nearest rope or stay, her occupants were aware that she sank appreciably
beneath the sheer weight and fury of that tremendous sea.
Then their blinded eyes emerged into blessed daylight again, their lungs
filled with air, the flood subsided, the Hirondelle rose, trembling like
a living creature, and the wave boomed away across the half-mile of
channel to tear at the rocks of Finistère in a last paroxysm.
Peridot, secure in the faith that one born with a caul could not drown,
was perhaps the first to regain his senses. When he swept the water from
his eyes he looked for the Stella; but that unfortunate little vessel
had only been driven still more tightly into the jaws of the reef,
though a great gap showed to starboard amidships. She was breaking in
two.
"God be thanked for that, at any rate!" he muttered.
The concession was due to the strong commonsense of a Breton, which told
him that signs and portents would prove of no avail against instant
death if the Stella had rolled over. Then, having ascertained that his
own people were safe, he looked for the colossus he had last seen
clutching the ropes. The ropes were there; but man and woman had
vanished. Something bobbed up among the spume and foam close to the
Hirondelle's side. He leaned over and grabbed a huge arm. With one
powerful tug he drew a body half out of the water. It was the man; but
the woman had been reft from his close embrace at the moment when some
chance of safety seemed to have come most surely within reach. His
sou'wester cap had been wrenched off, and, even when hauling the limp
body on board, Peridot knew that his quickness of eye and hand would
avail naught.
He held a corpse in his grasp. The top of the unfortunate man's skull
was visibly flattened, and the gray hair was already darkened by an
ominous dye. In all likelihood the wave struck him when least prepared,
tore his fingers from the ropes, and dashed him head foremost against
the Hirondelle's timbers.
Peridot was no sentimentalist. He did not waste a needless sigh over the
fate of one when the lives of many were trembling in the balance. Even
when he was placing the body at Yvonne's feet, where it would be out of
the way for the time, he peered up at her with a grim smile.
"Two gone, Ma'mselle," he said; "but with the help of the Madonna we'll
save the rest!"
A shriek from the girl's lips, and an expression of terror in her eyes
which assuredly was not there after the gallant Hirondelle had thrown
off her mightiest and most vindictive assailant, told him that some
worse tragedy was imminent. He turned, and saw Tollemache leaping into
the frothing vortex that raged between the stern of the boat and the
nearest rock. The Breton guessed instantly that the young American had
seen the drowning woman. Leaving the Stella momentarily in charge of
Ingersoll and Yvonne, he raced aft, and seized the sweep that Tollemache
had dropped. Simultaneously his friend's head rose above the maelstrom;
for the cork jacket bore Lorry bravely. He was clasping the woman's
apparently lifeless form with one hand, and battling against the sea
with the other when the long oar was thrust within reach, and he too was
drawn to the side.
Meanwhile Ingersoll, exercising splendid self control, had not deserted
his post. After the heavy backwash caused by the tidal wave, a sea had
curled in from the open to fill the inlet again, and the Hirondelle was
carried so near the reef that the stout oar bent under the strain of
fending her off, and might conceivably have snapped had not some
assistance been given by the ropes attached to the Stella. Another and
more normal backwash came in the nick of time, and the boat retreated to
her earlier position. Now, if the Fates were aught but merciless, there
might be a breathing space.
Peridot's gray-green eyes sparkled as they met Tollemache's brown eyes,
gazing up steadily from the swirl of waters.
"You all right?" he said, seizing the woman's arms.
"Why not?" said Tollemache. "Lift her aboard. Don't bother about me."
Ere Peridot had laid the dead or unconscious woman by the side of the
man who had already given his life for her sake, Tollemache was on deck
again, and lending a hand to the first sailor to cross by the ropes. The
survivors followed rapidly, and the last to leave the Stella was her
captain.
Ten men were rescued,--five sailors, including the master, two stokers,
an engineer, a steward, and a passenger. The two last were in the saloon
when the vessel struck, and had crawled on deck as best they could, the
passenger having sustained a broken arm, and the steward a sprained
ankle.
It was obvious, from the measures taken to safeguard the injured pair,
that they were in urgent need of attention; but Peridot knew that the
lives of all still trembled in the balance. So he bawled to Tollemache:
"Get the lady below, and as many of the others as you can pack in.
During the next few minutes I want none but sailors on deck. _Gars!_ Be
quick about it too! No, don't trouble about that poor fellow. He's
gone!"
* * * * *
Already he had cast off the ropes that formed the precarious bridge.
Tollemache told the shipwrecked crew what the Breton had said, and they
obeyed with the readiness of men who were aware of the paramount
necessity of prompt action.
The Stella's captain had already summed up the new problem facing the
Hirondelle, and issued his orders with decision. He and a sturdy
deckhand helped Tollemache and Ingersoll with the sweeps, which were now
to be used as oars, while the others carried the woman to the cabin, and
helped their disabled shipmates to make the descent.
Yvonne, though unwilling to leave the deck until the next ordeal was
ended, felt that she ought to sacrifice her own wishes to the need of a
sister in distress; but Peridot settled the matter by bidding her take
the tiller.
"We can't get back to the inside passage on this wind. If we tried it,
Les Verrés would catch us," he said. "We'll forge out a bit with the
sweeps. When clear of the yacht we'll be just clear of the reef too.
When you see me begin to haul at the sail put the helm hard over for the
seaward tack. We're going outside. You understand?"
"Perfectly," she said.
* * * * *
She ran between the four men laboring at the oars, well pleased to have
a task that would absorb her mind to the exclusion of all else, and
profoundly relieved because it took her away from the vicinity of the
dead body. Even as the Stella's company were climbing on board she could
not avoid an occasional glance at the huge and inert form at her feet.
It was a dreadful thing to see the soul battered out of such a
magnificent frame in such a way. Never before had she set eyes on a man
of similar proportions. He was inches over six feet in height, and stout
withal, so that he completely dwarfed the tall and sinewy frame of
Laurence Tollemache, who hitherto had loomed as a giant among undersized
Frenchmen. Oilskins and heavy sea boots added to the dead man's apparent
bulk. His face, which wore a singularly placid expression, was well
modeled. In youth he must have been extremely good looking; in middle
age--apparently he was over fifty--he still retained clear-cut features,
and strands of a plentiful crop of iron-gray hair dropped over a broad
and high forehead.
The woman whom he had declined to intrust to the care of any but himself
was probably his wife. Was she dead too? Yvonne wondered. It was almost
equally certain that the yacht was theirs; though perhaps they might
have hired it for a winter cruise in the Mediterranean by way of the
Spanish coast.
These thoughts flitted through the girl's brain as she followed the last
phases of the rescue. Now that her hand was on the tiller, and the open
sea began to show beyond the yacht's bowsprit, her mind was occupied by
the one remaining hazard to the exclusion of all else. She had every
confidence in Peridot's seamanship, having been out with him many a time
in weather that, if not quite so threatening as this, offered sufficient
test of skill and nerve. But she knew well that once the full force of
the tide was felt the oars would be useless, chiefly owing to their
unwieldy length, and the doubt remained whether the Hirondelle would
gain enough way to win out close hauled into deep water.
Still her heart leaped with high courage as her eyes took in the bold
and striking picture presented by the deck of the fishing boat during
that brief transit through broken seas. In the immediate foreground a
small hatchway framed the weather-tanned faces of two men lodged in the
companionway so as to avoid overcrowding the cabin. Behind were her
father and the yacht's Captain at one oar, and Tollemache and a sailor
at the other, pulling with the short, jerky, but powerful stroke alone
possible in the conditions. Ingersoll's sallow, well marked,
intellectual features were in sharp contrast with the fiery red skin,
heavy cheeks and chin, bullet head, and short neck of the man by his
side. For an instant the eyes of father and daughter met. He smiled
encouragement, and the odd notion occurred to Yvonne that strangest of
all the occurrences in an hour packed with incident was the fact that
the thin hands that could achieve such marvels by the delicate
manipulation of a camel's hair brush should be able to toil manfully at
a cumbrous oar.
Then she looked at Lorry, and he grinned most cheerfully.
Skipper and sailor wore the stolid expression of men who didn't know,
and didn't particularly care, what happened next. If anything, their
watchful glances betrayed a total lack of belief in the wisdom of
intrusting the helm to this slip of a girl.
Amidships, and slightly forward, Peridot was standing, both hands laced
in the rope that should hoist the sail. The small jib had not been
lowered. It was now flapping in the wind with reports like irregular
pistol shots; but Yvonne knew it would fill and draw instantly when the
tiller brought the boat's head around.
And beyond Peridot was the body of the man who had been snatched from
life with such awful suddenness. The broad back and slightly
outstretched legs kept it motionless no matter how the deck tilted; but
the front skirts of the oilskin coat crackled noisily in the gale, and a
lock of hair, though soaked and thick with salt, freed itself from the
clammy forehead, and moved fitfully in every gust.
The artist instinct in the girl's heart dominated every other emotion at
that moment. She felt that she could transfer this somber scene to
canvas if she was spared. And what a study of action it would make! What
staring lights and shadows! What types of character! The four men in
strenuous effort, the anxious faces peering from the semiobscurity of
the hatch, Peridot's sturdy figure braced for prompt and fierce
endeavor, the still form with sightless eyes peering up at the sky, and
all contained within the narrow compass of the deck, with the boat's
prow now cutting the horizon, now threatening to take one last horrific
dive into a wave overhanging it like a moving hillock! Beyond were a
slate-blue sea flecked with white and scurrying clouds tipped with
russet and gold by the last beams of a wintry sun.
All this, and more, Yvonne caught in one wide-eyed glance. She saw every
touch of color, every changeful flicker of light on the wet deck and
glistening oilskins. Tollemache alone supplied a different note. The
light brown squares of the cork jacket, and the dust-colored canvas
straps that clasped it to his body, stood out in marked relief. He, who
had been overboard and submerged for a few seconds, looked bone dry. The
others, wet as he no doubt, Ingersoll alone excepted, seemed to have
come straight from the depths.
* * * * *
But Peridot, watching the sea with sidelong glance, suddenly bent in a
very frenzy of exertion, and Yvonne, thrusting her right foot against
the low gunwale, put the tiller to port and leaned against it until her
left knee touched the deck. The men at the oars imitated her as best
they might, while striving to keep the boat moving.
At the first mighty pull of the partly raised sail the Hirondelle
flinched and fell back a little. Then she took hold, as sailors put it,
and careened under the strain until the iron socket on the starboard
sweep was wrenched off its pin, and Tollemache and the sailor were hard
pressed to keep it from swinging inboard and dealing Yvonne a blow.
Something black and sinister showed for a second in the yeasting froth
beneath the boat's quarter; whether rock or patch of seaweed none could
tell, though five pairs of eyes saw it.
Peridot's call came shrilly, "Keep her there, Ma'mselle!" Back swung the
tiller, and Yvonne "kept her there," though during a long minute the
Hirondelle tore at the rudder as a startled horse snatches at the bit,
and it seemed as if she must capsize without fail.
Again the Breton's cry rang out, "Ease her now, Ma'mselle!"
The boat fell away before the wind. Soon she was on an even keel, save
for the unavoidable rolling and pitching that resulted from the furious
seas. But, if stout canvas and trustworthy cordage held, they were safe
as though tied to the quay in the land-locked harbor at Pont Aven.
Already Les Verrés were a furlong or more in the rear. It was impossible
to see what had become of the Stella, because the spray was leaping high
over the reef, until its irregular crests were bitten off by the gale.
But a fishing smack which had gallantly put out from Brigneau was
signaled back before it crossed the bar, and the signal station was
hoisting a fresh set of flags which spelled in the _lingua franca_ of
the ocean, "Well done, Concarneau 415!" which was as near the
Hirondelle's name as the watchers on shore could get on the spur of the
moment.
* * * * *
Peridot paid Yvonne the greatest of all compliments by not coming aft to
relieve her. But her father, who had betrayed no flurry even when death
seemed unavoidable, drew near, and placed a hand on her shoulder.
"You're another Grace Darling, my dear!" was all he said.
But the look accompanying the words was enough, and the girl's eyes
began to smart painfully, because the sudden moisture in them revealed
how they had suffered from the spindrift.
And again, by sending her below on an errand of mercy, he only added
subtly to Peridot's tribute.
"We can spare you now, Yvonne," he said. "Tell those men to come on
deck, and you give an eye to the lady. You have some dry clothes down
there. If she has no bones broken, she will recover more quickly in a
warm bunk than under any other conditions. Get her undressed, and give
her a little cognac. Take some yourself,--don't spare it,--and pass the
bottle up here."
He took her place at the tiller, and she made off at once, only pausing
to pat Lorry's wet and shaggy head.
Six men came up the companion stairway; but two returned at her call to
lift the injured men into a lower and an upper bunk on the same side.
They had contrived already to bandage the broken arm with handkerchiefs.
The sprained ankle they could not deal with. The man with a broken arm
was making some outcry; but the other sufferer was patient and even
smiling.
"Gawd bless yer, Miss!" he said to Yvonne when he discerned her identity
in the dim light of the cabin. "If it 'adn't a been fer you an' yer
shipmites, we on the Stella 'ad as much chawnce as a lump o' ice in
hell's flimes!"
The Cockney accent was new in Yvonne's ear, and its quaintness helped to
soften the speaker's forcible simile.
"You'll soon be all right," she assured him. "We'll reach Pont Aven
within the hour, and the good folk there will look after you splendidly.
Please lie still now, as I must pin a blanket across these two bunks."
Then she was left alone with the insensible woman, who was alive, the
sailors said, but completely unconscious. She had fainted, they
believed, when the shaft snapped and the yacht was like to be lost
forthwith. The immersion in the sea seemed to have revived her for a few
seconds; but she swooned off again in the cabin, and, while the boat was
lurching so heavily, they thought it wiser to pillow her head on a coat
and not attempt to restore her senses.
* * * * *
On deck the captain of the Stella had picked out Ingersoll as the
probable owner of the Hirondelle. He came and stood by the artist's
side.
"Is this craft yours, Sir?" he inquired.
"Yes."
"And is that young lady your daughter, Sir?"
"Yes."
"Well, I need hardly say that we owe our lives to her, and you, and your
two friends. I've seen some rum things durin' thirty years at sea; but
I've never seen anything to ekal your pluck in runnin' into that death
trap. And that girl of yours--the way she behaved! Well, there! I never
could talk much. This time I'm clean stumped!"
"We did what we could. The real credit for your rescue lies with that
cool-headed Breton fisherman yonder. Is the poor fellow who was killed
the owner of the Stella?"
"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."