“What did you do that for?” said Rufus.

The coxswain shot him a brief and humorous glance.  “I always give you the plums if I can, my boy,” he said.  “I said to him, ’Me and my son, we’re partners.  Going out with him is just the same as going out with me, and p’raps a bit better, for he’s got the better boat.’  So he sheered off, and said maybe he’d look you up in the evening.”

“Maybe I shan’t be there,” commented Rufus.

The coxswain chuckled, and lashed out an end of rope, narrowly missing his son’s brawny legs.  “He’s not such a soft one as he looks, that chap,” he observed.  “Not by no manner of means.  Do you know what Columbine thinks of him?”

“How should I know?” said Rufus.

He stooped with an abrupt movement that had in it a hint of savagery, and picked up the end of rope that lay jerking at his feet.

“Tell you what, Adam,” he said.  “If that chap values his health he’ll keep clear of me and my boat.”

Everyone called the coxswain Adam, even his son and partner, Rufus the Red.  No two men could have formed a more striking contrast than they, but their partnership was something more than a business relation.  They were friends—­friends on a footing of equality, and had been such ever since Rufus—­the giant baby who had cost his mother her life—­had first closed his resolute fist upon his father’s thumb.

That was five-and-twenty years ago now, and for eighteen of those years the two had dwelt alone together in their cottage on the cliff in complete content.  Then—­seven years back—­Adam the coxswain had unexpectedly tired of his widowed state and taken to himself a second wife.

This was Mrs. Peck, of The Ship, a widow herself of some years’ standing, plump, amiable, prosperous, who in marrying Adam would have gladly opened her doors to Adam’s son also had the son been willing to avail himself of her hospitality.

But Rufus had preferred independence in the cottage of his birth, and in this cottage he had lived alone since his father’s defection.

It was a dainty little cottage, perched in an angle of the cliff, well apart from all the rest and looking straight down upon the great Spear Point.  He tended the strip of garden with scrupulous care, and it made a bright spot of colour against the brown cliff-side.  A rough path, steep and winding, led up from the beach below, and about half-way up a small gate, jealously padlocked in the owner’s absence, guarded Rufus’s privacy.  He never invited any one within that gate.  Occasionally his father would saunter up with his evening pipe and sit in the little porch of his old home looking through the purple clematis flowers out to sea while he exchanged a few commonplace remarks with his son, who never broke his own silence unless he had something to say.  But no other visitor ever intruded there.

Rufus had acquired the reputation of a hermit, and it kept all the rest at bay.  He had lived his own life for so long that solitude had grown upon him as moss clings to a stone.  He did not seem to feel the need of human companionship.  He lived apart.