Then, barefooted, stumbling, and shivering, he returned to where Saltash leaned smoking in the narrow dressing-room, awaiting him.

Saltash’s dark face wore a certain look of grimness.  He bent without words and lifted the shrinking figure in his arms.

Ten seconds later Toby sank down in a berth as luxurious as any ever carried by private yacht.

He was still shivering though a grateful warmth came about him as Saltash tucked him in.  He tried to murmur thanks, but ended with a quivering chin and silence.

“Go to sleep, you little ass!” commanded Saltash.

And so at last Toby slept, the deep, unstirring sleep of exhaustion, utterly unconscious of his surroundings, unaware of the man who came in and out watching that unchanging repose, sublimely oblivious of all observation, sunk in a slumber so remote that it might have been the last long rest of all.

Saltash spent the night on the velvet couch under the closed porthole, dozing occasionally and always awakening with a jerk as the roll of the vessel threatened to pitch him on to the floor of the cabin.  It was not a comfortable means of resting but he endured it in commendable silence with now and then a grimace which said more than words.

And the little waif that the gods had flung to him slept in his bunk all through the long hours as peacefully as an effigy upon a tomb.

CHAPTER V

DISCIPLINE

The storm spent itself before they reached Gibraltar, and Toby emerged smiling from his captivity below.  He still wore the brown and gold hotel-livery as there was nothing else on board to fit him, but from Gibraltar a small packet of notes was dispatched to Antonio by Saltash in settlement of the loan.

“Now I’ve bought you—­body and soul,” he said to Toby, whose shining look showed naught but satisfaction at the announcement.

The vivid colours of his injured eye had faded to a uniform dull yellow, and he no longer wore a bandage.  When they put to sea again he was no longer an invalid.  He followed Saltash wherever he went, attended scrupulously to his comfort, and when not needed was content to sit curled up like a dog close to him, dumb in his devotion but always ready to serve him.

Saltash treated him with a careless generosity that veiled a good deal of consideration.  He never questioned him with regard to his past, taking him for granted in a fashion that set Toby completely at ease.  No one else had much to do with him.  Larpent ignored him, and Murray the steward regarded him with a deep suspicion that did not make for intimacy.

And Toby was happy.  Day after day his cheery whistle arose over his work while he polished Saltash’s boots and brushed his clothes, or swept and dusted the state-cabin in which he slept.  He himself had returned to his own small den that led out of Saltash’s dressing-room, but the intervening doors were kept open by Saltash’s command.  They were always within hail of each other.