The words held a queer urgency. He raised himself as he uttered them, seeking to free his hand though with all gentleness from the clinging clasp. "Get up, boy!" he said. "Get up and go to bed! What? Oh, don't cry! Pull yourself together! Toby, do you hear?" Toby lifted a white, strained face. His eyes looked enormous in the dim light. "Yes, sir. All right, sir," he jerked out, and stumbled trembling to his feet. "I know I'm a fool, sir. I'm sorry. I can't help it. No one was ever decent to me--till you came. I--shall just go under now, sir." "Oh, stop it!" Saltash spoke almost violently. "Can't you see--that's just what I want to prevent? You don't want to go to the devil, I suppose?" Toby made a passionate gesture that was curiously unboylike. "I'd go to hell and stay there for ever--if you were there!" he said. "Good God!" said Saltash. He got up in his sudden fashion and moved away, went to the rail and stood there for a space with his face to the rippling sheen of water. Finally he turned and looked at the silent figure waiting beside his chair, and a very strange smile came over his dark features. He came back, not without a certain arrogance, and tapped Toby on the shoulder. "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."