Page:Stevenson and Quiller-Couch - St Ives .djvu/429

 went back on their captain's oath, and kept the brig; and the American officer came home empty-handed. Your father was told to resume his duties, immortal souls being cheap in a country where they press seamen's bodies. And now, Mister First Officer Colenso, perhaps you'll explain how he had the impudence to come within two hundred miles of a coast where his name smelt worse than vermin."

"He was coming back, sir."

"Hey?"

"Back to Boston, sir. You see, Cap'n, father wasn't a rich man, but he had saved a trifle. He didn't go back to the service, though told that he might. It preyed on his mind. We was all very fond of father, being all one family, as you might say, though some of us had wives and families, and some were over to Redruth to the mines."

"Stick to the point."

"But this is the point, Cap'n. He was coming back, you see. The Lady Nepean wasn't fit for much after the handling she'd had. She was going for twelve hundred pounds. The Post Office didn't look for more. We got her for eleven hundred with the guns, and the repairs may have cost a hundred and fifty; but you'll find the account books in the cupboard there. Father had a matter of five hundred laid by and a little over."

Captain Seccombe removed his legs from the cabin-table, tilted his chair forward, and half rose in his seat.

"You bought her?"

"That's what I'm telling you, sir; though father'd have put it much clearer. You see, he laid it before the Lord; and then he laid it before all of us. It preyed on his mind. My sister Susannah stood up and she said, 'I reckon I'm the most respectably married of all of you, having a farm of my own; but we can sell up, and all the world's a home to them that fears the Lord. We can't