“How’s her head, Captain?” asked Miss Penny jovially.

“Dead on to a lee shore,” he answered in her own humour.  “But the anchorage is good and we’re not likely to drift.”

“Come!  That’s something to be thankful for, under the circumstances.  Brecqhou banging broadside on to that big black Gouliot rock would be a most unpleasant experience.  How about the sunset cliffs of Sark?”

“They’re very much under a cloud.  I’m afraid we must pass them for this time and choose a better.  The cliffs indeed are there, but the sun is much a-wanting.”

“Hamlet without the ghost of a father or even a sun.”

“Truly!” And looking at Margaret, he said earnestly, “I can’t tell you how sorry I am it has turned out this way.”

“But it is no fault of yours, Mr. Graeme.  No one could possibly have foreseen such a breakdown in the weather, with such a glorious morning as we had.”

“After all, I’m not at all sure it isn’t all Mr. Graeme’s fault,” said Miss Penny musingly.

“As how?” he asked.

“Didn’t you stop me giving Johnnie Vautrin six demanded pennies to keep it fine all day?”

“I discouraged the imposition, certainly.  But I don’t suppose Johnnie could have done much—­except with your sixpence.”

“He’s a queer clever boy, is Johnnie.  He certainly said it wasn’t going to keep fine.”

“Little humbug!”

“Yet you gave him fivepence for seeing—­or saying he saw—­two crows and three crows, because two crows mean good luck and three crows mean——­”

“You talk as if you believed his nonsense, Hennie,” broke in Margaret.

“Perhaps I do—­to some extent.  He certainly declined to pledge himself to a fine day, and it remains to be seen if the rest of his—­”

“—­Humbug,” suggested Graeme.

“We’ll say predictions, since we’re in a superstitious land,—­come true.  I shouldn’t be a bit surprised.  Thunderstorms are not, as a rule, deadly, and it is conceivable that they may, at times, even be means of grace.  Would you mind piling some more gorse on that fire, Mr. Graeme?  A counter-illumination is cheerful when the heavens without are all black and blazing.  What a joke it would be if we had to stop here all night!”—­she said it with intention, and Graeme understood and blessed her.

“We’ll hope it won’t come to that,” he said, as lightly as he could make it.  “But, if it should, we could make ourselves fairly comfortable.  Robinson Crusoes up to date!”

“No—­Swiss Family Robinsons!” was Margaret’s quota to the lightening of gloom.  “The way everything turned up just when that interesting family required it struck me as marvellous even when I was a child.”

“You always were of an acutely enquiring—­not to say doubting—­disposition, my dear, ever since I knew you,” said Miss Penny.

“I always liked to get at the true truth of things, and humbug always annoyed me.”