“All right,” he said.  “Stay with me and be damned if you want to!  I daresay it would come to the same thing in the end.”

Toby drew himself together with a swift movement.  “That means you’ll keep me, sir?”

His eyes, alight and eager, looked up to Saltash with something that was not far removed from adoration in their shining earnestness.

The strange smile still hovered about Saltash’s face; a smile in which cynicism and some vagrant, half-stifled emotion were oddly mingled.

“Yes, I’ll keep you,” he said, and paused, looking at him oddly.

Toby’s eyes, very wide open, intensely bright, looked straight back.  “For good, sir?” he said anxiously.

And Saltash laughed, a brief, mocking laugh.  “For better, for worse, my Toby!” he said.  “Now—­go!”

He smote him a light friendly blow on the shoulder and flung round on his heel.

Toby went, very swiftly, without looking back.

CHAPTER VI

THE ABYSS

They sighted the English shore a few days later on an evening of mist and rain.  The sea was grey and dim, the atmosphere cold and inhospitable.

“Just like England!” said Saltash.  “She never gushes over her prodigals.”

He was dining alone in the saloon with Toby behind his chair, Larpent being absent on the bridge.

“Don’t you like England, sir?” said Toby.

“I adore her,” said Saltash with his most hideous grimace.  “But I don’t go to her for amusement.”

Toby came forward to fill his glass with liqueur.  “Too strait-laced, sir?” he suggested with the suspicion of a smile.

Saltash nodded with a sidelong glance at the young face bent over the decanter.  “Too limited in many ways, my Toby,” he said.  “But at the same time useful in certain emergencies.  A stern mother perhaps, but a wise one on the whole.  You, for instance—­she will be the making of you.”

A slight tremor went through Toby.  He set down the decanter and stepped back.  “Of me, sir?” he said.

Saltash nodded again.  He was fingering the stem of his glass, his queer eyes dancing a little.  “We’ve got to make a respectable citizen of you—­somehow,” he said.

“Do you think that matters, sir?” said Toby.

Saltash raised his glass.  “You won’t always be a boy of sixteen, you know, Toby,” he said lightly.  “We’ve got to think of the future—­whether we want to or not.”

“I don’t see why, sir,” said Toby.

“You see, you’re young,” said Saltash, and drank with the air of one who drinks a toast.

Suddenly he turned in his chair, the glass still in his hand.

“Our last night on board!” he said, with a royal gesture of invitation.  “You shall drink with me.”

Toby’s face flushed burningly.  He hung back.  “Not—­not—­from your glass, sir!” he said.  “Not—­liqueur!”