“I’ve got something to say to you. Don’t treat me in the way I treated you the other day and refuse to listen to me. I was altogether in the wrong. It was beastly of me even if I had been in the right. I ought to have known you were telling the truth. And I ought not to have called you a liar, anyway. I’m very sorry. Will you shake hands?”
There was a most unpleasant lump in Captain John’s throat. He found that it was almost more upsetting to have things put right than it had been when they went wrong. Then at least he could be angry, and that was a help. This was worse. He swallowed twice, and he bit the inside of his lip pretty hard. He held out his hand. Captain Flint took it, and shook it firmly. John felt suddenly better.
“It’s all right now,” said he.
“I really am most awfully sorry,” said Captain Flint. “You know I was quite sure it had been you because I saw your boat and you, and never saw my wretched nieces. Not that that is any excuse for the way I behaved.”
“It’s quite all right,” said John.
They walked back towards the others.
“I’ve been paid for it in a way,” said Captain Flint. “Nancy tells me you came to warn me, and give me a message or something. If I’d only listened to you instead of being a cross-grained curmudgeonly idiot, I shouldn’t have lost my book. I’d have taken it with me. Nancy’s told you what’s happened?”
“Yes,” said Captain John, “but I didn’t come only to warn you. I was going to tell you what the charcoal-burners had asked us to tell Nancy and Peggy. Then I was going to tell you you were all wrong about that paper you put in my tent. Then I was going to tell you I’d never been near the houseboat. And then I was going to declare war.”