“A broken leg,” said I, carelessly; for it would not have done to tell him all the truth.

“Well, well,” said he, content with the explanation, “accidents will happen to them that travel; and a broken leg, they say, is stronger when well set.”

“If that’s so,” said I, “I’ve a double excuse to be thankful”—­which he did not understand, as I did not mean him to.

Darkness fell on us a little before we reached the camp.  From the first I had recognized there could be no chance to-day of visiting the shore and seeking the Gauntlet at her anchorage.  We were weary, too, and hungry, and nothing remained to do but light the camp fire, cook our supper, and listen to Billy’s tale of his adventures, a good part of which will be found in the following chapter.  I ought to say, rather, that Billy and I conversed, while Marc’antonio—­for we spoke in English—­sat by the fire busy with his own thoughts; and, by his face, they were gloomy ones.

“What puzzles me, Billy,” said I, as we parted for the night, “is who can be aboard of the ketch.  Reinforcements?  Why, what reinforcements could my uncle send?”

“The devil a one of me knows, as the Irishman said,” answered Billy, cheerfully.  “But sent ’em he has, and, if I know anything of Mr. Gervase, they’re good ones.”

I was up before dawn, and the sun rose over the shoulder of our mountain to find me a mile and more on my way down the track which led to the sea.  I passed the clearing and the copse where Nat had taken his wound, and the rock, high on my right, where I had stood and spied him running, the macchia-filled hollows and dingles, the wood, the village (still desolate), the graveyard where we had first encamped; and so came to the meadow below it, where Mr. Fett had gathered his mushrooms.  It was greener than I remembered it, owing to the autumn rains.

I pulled up with a start.  At the foot of the meadow, where the stream ran in a curve between it and the woods, stood a man.  He held a fishing-rod in his hand, and was stepping back to make a cast; but, at a cry from me, paused and turned slowly about.

“Uncle Gervase!”

“My dear Prosper!” He dropped his rod and advanced, holding out his hands to me.  “Why lad, lad, you have grown to a man in these months!”

“And it really is you, uncle!” I cried again, as yet scarcely believing it, though I clasped him by both hands.  “And what are you doing here?”

“Why,” said he, quizzically, “’tis a monstrous confession for this time of the year, but I was fishing for trout; and, what is more, I have taken two, with Walton’s number two June-fly, lad—­Mr. Grylls’s variety—­the wings, if you remember, made of the black drake’s feathers, with a touch of grey horsehair on the shank.  I wished to know, first, if a Corsican trout would answer to a Cornish fly, and, next, if they keep the same seasons as in England.  They do, Prosper—­there or thereabouts.  To tell you the truth—­though, as they say an angler may catch a fish, but it takes a fisherman to tell the truth about him—­I found them woundily out of condition, and restored them, as Mr. Grylls would put it, to their native element.”