"She was my yacht, that's all; and I was without a captain through that
storm. Will you think me a good enough sailor now?"
The skipper wrung his hand till he nearly wrung it off.
"Good enough! Blast my timbers! There aren't one will beat you in any
waters. Come on, sir, if so be as you wishes it; but never a stroke of
work shall you do atween my decks. I never did think as how one of your
yachting-nobs could ever be fit to lay hold of a tiller; but, hang me,
if the Club make such sailors as you it's a rare 'un! Lord a mercy! Why,
my wife was in the 'Wrestler.' I've heard her tell scores of times as
how she was almost dead when that little yacht came through a swaling
sea, that was all heaving and roaring round the wreck, and as how the
swell what owned it gave his cabin up to the womenkind, and had his
swivel guns and his handsome furniture pitched overboard, that he might
be able to carry more passengers, and fed 'em, and gave 'em champagne
all around, and treated 'em like a prince, till he ran 'em straight into
Brest Harbor. But, damn me! that ever a swell like you should--"
"Let's weigh anchor," said Bertie quietly.
And so he crossed unnoticed to Algeria, while through Europe the tidings
went that the mutilated form, crushed between iron and wood, on the
Marseilles line, was his, and that he had perished in that awful,
ink-black, sultry southern night, when the rushing trains had met,
as meet the thunder-clouds.
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