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“‘There were eight of the crew. Four were below, and I doubt if the four on deck could swim.’

“I ran off on my errand, and, coming back a little later with a bottle of cordial waters, found Mr. Lovyes still standing in the moonlight. He seemed not to have moved a finger. I gave him the bottle, with a message that any who were rescued should be carried to Merchant’s Point forthwith, and that he himself should go down there in the morning.

“‘Who taught you Latin?’ he asked suddenly.

“‘Mrs. Lovyes taught me the rudiments,’ I began; and with that he led me on to talk of her, but with some cunning. For now he would divert me to another topic and again bring me back to her, so that it all seemed the vagrancies of a boy’s inconsequent chatter.

“Mrs. Lovyes, who was remotely akin to the Lord Proprietor, had come to Tresco three years before, immediately after her marriage, and, it was understood, at her husband’s wish. I talked of her readily, for, apart from what I owed to her bounty, she was a woman most sure to engage the affections of any boy. For one thing she was past her youth, being thirty years of age, tall, with eyes of the kindliest grey, and she bore herself in everything with a tender toleration, like a woman that has suffered much.

“Of the other topics of this conversation there was one which later I had good reason to remember. We had caught a shark twelve feet long at the Poul that day, and the shark fairly divided my thoughts with Mrs. Lovyes.

“‘You bleed a fish first into the sea,’ I explained. ‘Then you bait with a chad’s head, and let your line down a couple of fathoms. You can see your bait quite clearly, and you wait.’

“‘No doubt,’ said Robert; ‘you wait.’

“‘In a while,’ said I, ‘a dim lilac shadow floats through the clear water, and after a little you catch a glimpse of a forked tail and waving fins and an evil devil’s head. The fish smells at the bait and sinks again to a lilac shadow–perhaps out of sight; and again it rises. The shadow becomes a fish, the fish goes circling round your boat, and it may be a long while before he turns on his back and rushes at the bait.’

“‘And as like as not, he carries the bait and line away.”

“‘That depends upon how quick you are with the gaff,’ said I.’ Here comes my father.’

“My father returned empty-handed. Not one of the crew had been saved.

“‘You asked my name,’ said Robert Lovyes, turning to my mother. ‘It is Crudge–Jarvis Crudge.’ With that he went to his bed, but all night long I heard him pacing his room.

“The next morning he complained of his long immersion in the sea, and certainly when he told his story to Mr. and Mrs. Lovyes as they sat over their breakfast in the parlour at Merchant’s Point, he spoke with such huskiness as I never heard the like of. Mr. Lovyes took little heed to us, but went on eating his breakfast with only a sour comment here and there. I noticed, however, that Mrs. Lovyes, who sat over against us, bent her head forward and once or twice shook it as though she would unseat some ridiculous conviction. And after the story was told, she sat with no word of kindness for Mr. Crudge, and, what was yet more unlike her, no word of pity for the sailors who were lost. Then she rose and stood, steadying herself with the tips of her fingers upon the table. Finally she came swiftly across the room and peered into Mr. Crudge’s face.

“‘If you need help,’ she said, ‘I will gladly furnish it. No doubt you will be anxious to go from Tresco at the earliest. No doubt, no doubt you will,’ she repeated anxiously.