They went into perfect summer weather, and for a blissful week they voyaged through blue seas with a cloudless sky overhead.  Toby’s white skin began to tan.  The sharp lines went out of his face.  His laugh was frequent and wholly care-free.  He even developed a certain impudence in his attitude towards his master to which Saltash extended the same tolerance that he might have shown for the frolics of a favourite dog.  He accepted Toby’s services, but he never treated him wholly as a servant.

It was an odd companionship which only the isolated life they led during those few days could have developed along those particular lines.  When Saltash was bored he amused himself with his protege, teaching him picquet and chess, and finding in him an apt and eager pupil.  There was a good deal of the gambler’s spirit in Toby, and Saltash idly fostered it because it gave him sport.  He laughed at his opponent’s keenness, supplied stakes for the game, even good-naturedly let himself be beaten.

And then one day he detected Toby cheating.  It was an end that he might have foreseen.  He had encouraged the fever, he had practically sown the seeds; but, strangely, he was amazed, more disconcerted than he had been for years by the consequences.  For it was not his way to disturb himself over anything.  His principles were easy to laxness.  But that Toby—­the urchin he had sheltered and nursed like a sick puppy—­should have done this thing somehow cut clean through his complacence.

“I’m going to give you a licking for that,” he said, black brows drawn to a stern line.  “You can go below and wait for it.”

Toby went like an arrow, and Saltash spent the next half-hour pacing the deck, cursing himself, the youngster, and the insane and ridiculous Fate that had linked them together.

Then he went below to administer judicial corporal punishment to a human being for the first time in his life.  As he himself whimsically expressed it, he had received ample correction during his own chequered career; but he had never been in a position to correct anyone else.

He found Toby waiting for him in his shirt-sleeves, rather white but quite composed, his riding-switch all ready to his hand.

“Ever been flogged before?” he asked him curtly as he picked it up.

“No, sir,” said Toby, with downcast eyes.

“Why not?” There was a gibing note in Saltash’s voice.  “Never qualified before?”

Toby shot him a swift and nervous glance that was like a flash of blue flame.  “No, sir.  Never been caught before,” he said.

Saltash’s eyes flickered humour, but he steeled himself.  “Well, you’re caught this time—­fairly caught.  I may not be a specially fit person to punish you for it, but you won’t be let off on that account.”

“Go ahead, sir!” said Toby, with his hands twisted into a bony knot in front of him.

And Saltash went ahead.  His heart was not in the business, and as he smote the narrow bent back it cried shame on him.  Toby made no sound, but at the third stroke he winced, and Saltash with a terrific oath in French hurled his switch violently at the opposite wall.