dy done more
than once, without being able to get his attention: "How does my
grandfather seem?"

Momentary gravity fell upon him. "He--he don't always answer the helm,
Mr. Nicol," he said, and touched his forehead with a meaning look.
"Barring that, I'd rate him seaworthy, for all he's cruised so
long--nigh eighty year, ain't it?"

"I'm glad I came home," I said, concerned. "The old man should not be
alone."

"He ain't exactly alone," said Crump, with an uneasy glance into my
face. "He's signed on two new hands here lately--about a month ago, I
b'lieve. I dessay he was making pretty heavy weather of it by himself,
and so he--er--well----" He cleared his throat, hesitating in an odd
embarrassment; he plainly felt that here was information bound to be
distasteful, and set about imparting it with a painful diplomacy. "The
cap'n--Cap'n Pendarves, your grandfather, sir, was, as you might say,
short-handed, you being in foreign parts, and old John Behenna having
slipped his cable 'long about the last o' May, as I was telling you; and
so the cap'n he ups and ships these here--and--and, in fac', Mr. Nick,
one of 'em's a woman!" He drew a long breath and wiped his forehead.

"You don't mean he's married!" I shouted, and with, I am afraid, a
pretty strong term of disapproval.

"There, now, I _thought_ you'd take it that way!" Crump remarked, not
without gratification. "But it ain't so bad as that, Mr. Nicol." And he
went on to explain, with a variety of nautical metaphors, that the
couple, an elderly man and a young girl supposedly his grandchild, had
appeared in Chepstow some weeks ago during fair-time; that the young
woman "took observations," which I translated to mean that she told
fortunes, supporting them both, it would seem, by the pennies she gained
this way, for the man did no work, and was most often seen "hove to,
transhipping cargo," at the bar of the Three Old Cronies or elsewhere,
Crump said. He did not know how or when or where my grandfather had
first fallen in with these vagabonds. For several successive days he had
been noticed in their company, or laying a straight course for the
little booth wherein the girl plied her mean trade; and then, all at
once, to the stupefied astonishment of Chepstow,--where the captain was
reckoned, with reason, a particularly hard, sour, dour sort of body,
anything but friendly or hospitable,--the pair of them were discovered
comfortably installed beneath the Pendarves' roof