“No, don’t!” Eugene caught him by the arm. “Best, not make a show of her. Come to our honest friend.”

He led him to the post of watch, and they both dropped down and crept under the lee of the boat; a better shelter than it had seemed before, being directly contrasted with the blowing wind and the bare night.

“ Mr. Inspector at home?” whispered Eugene.

“Here I am, sir.”

“And our friend of the perspiring brow is at the far corner there? Good. Anything happened?”

“His daughter has been out, thinking she heard him calling, unless it was a sign to him to keep out of the way. It might have been.”

“It might have been Rule Britannia,” muttered Eugene, “but it wasn’t. Mortimer!”