Pete, smitten mightily by the distress of the comely middle-aged widow, melted to a misery of unexpressible tenderness and solicitude. In his words and actions of comfort he resembled a great, loving St. Bernard dog who had accidentally knocked down a toddling child and is desirous of making amends. Ma Schofield took note of his desire to lighten her burden, and presently permitted it to be lightened.
Then they talked over the situation, and Pete finally said:
"I'm sending Jimmie Thomas down to Castalia in his motor-dory to find Code. Of course, the skipper took his own dory, and we may meet him coming back. What we want to do is head him off an' keep him away from here. Now, there's no tellin' how long he might have to stay away, an' I've been figgerin' that perhaps if you was to take him a bundle of clothes it wouldn't go amiss."
"I'll do it," announced ma sturdily. "Just you tell Jimmie to wait a quarter of an hour and I'll be along. Now, Pete Ellinwood, listen here. What scheme have you got in your mind? I can see by your eyes that there is one."
"May!" cried Pete reproachfully. "How could I have anythin' in my mind without tellin' you?"
Nevertheless, when he walked out of the cottage door it was to chuckle enormously in his black beard and call himself names that he had to deceive May.
He called Jimmie Thomas up from the duties of the paint-pot and brush, and gave him instructions as to what to do. They talked rapidly in low tones until Mrs. Schofield appeared; then Jimmie helped her into the motor-dory and both men pushed off.
"I cal'late I'll have it all worked out when you come back, Jim," said Pete as the engine caught the spark and the dory moved away.
Mrs. Schofield turned around and fixed her sharp, blue eyes upon the giant ashore.
"Peter!" she cried. "I knew there was some scheme. When I get back--"
But the rest was lost, for distance had overcome her voice. Ellinwood stood and grinned benignly at his goddess. Then he slapped his thigh with an eleven-inch hand and made a noise with his mouth like a man clucking to his horse.
"Sprightly as a gal, she is," he allowed. "Dummed if she ain't!"
On a chart the island of Grande Mignon bears the same relation to surrounding islands that a mother-ship bears to a flock of submarines. Westward her coast is rocky and forbidding, being nothing but a succession of frowning headlands that rise almost perpendicularly from the sea. It is one of the most desolate stretches of coast in moderate latitudes, for no one lives there, nor has ever lived there, except a few hermit dulce-pickers during the summer months.