“They are, sir,” was the stolid response.
“Did your brother come back with him--that one-armed man who went after him--Malachy, I think they called him?”
“Well”--Bernard bent forward impatiently--“tell me about it! Where did he find him? What do people say?”
“They do be saying manny things,” responded the oarsman, rounding his shoulders to the work.
Bernard abandoned the inquiry, with a grunt of discouragement, and contented himself perforce by watching the way in which the strange craft waxed steadily in size as they sped toward her. In a minute or two more, he was alongside and clambering up a rope-ladder, which dangled its ends in the gently heaving water.
Save for a couple of obviously foreign sailors lolling in the sunshine upon a sail in the bows, there was no one on deck. As he looked about, however, in speculation, the apparition of a broad, black hat, with long, curled plumes, rose above the companionway. He welcomed it with an exclamation of delight, and ran forward with outstretched hands.
The wearer of the hat, as she stepped upon the deck and confronted this demonstration, confessed to surprise by stopping short and lifting her black brows in inquiry. Bernard sheepishly let his hands fall to his side before the cool glance with which she regarded him.
“Is it viewing the vessel you are?” she asked. “Her jigger lug-sail is unusual, I’m told.”
The young man’s blue eyes glistened in reproachful appeal.
“What do I know about lugger jig-sails, or care, either,” he asked. “I hurried here the moment I heard, to--to see _you!_”
“’T is flattered I am, I’m sure,” said Kate, dryly, looking away from him to the brown cliffs beyond.
“Come, be fair!” Bernard pleaded. “Tell me what the matter is. I thought I had every reason to suppose you’d be glad to see me. It’s plain enough that you are not; but you--you _might_ tell me why. Or no,” he went on, with a sudden change of tone, “I won’t ask you. It’s your own affair, after all. Only you’ll excuse the way I rushed up to you. I’d had my head full of your affairs for days past, and then your disappearance--they thought you were drowned, you know--and I--I--”
The young man broke off with weak inconclusiveness, and turned as if to descend the ladder again. But John Pat had rowed away with the boat, and he looked blankly down upon the clear water instead.