The sailor removed his pipe. "Mate," he replied laconically. "Master just coming aboard." He indicated with the stem of his pipe another mariner, also red-faced and blue-eyed, who was making his way round a pile of timber towards the gang-plank. Him La Vireville intercepted, hastily filling up in his own mind the gaps in the story designed for his edification, since here Duchâtel's papers were not likely to be of much avail. "Captain," he began enthusiastically, taking off his hat, "the Supreme Being has surely sent you to a fellow-creature in need!" The master of the _Trois Frères_ grunted. "Le bon Dieu is good enough for a plain sailor like me," he responded, and the émigré perceived that he had overshot the mark. "What do you want?" "I want to go to Caen," returned La Vireville simply. "I and my little nephew here. Can you give us a passage?" The master of the _Trois Frères_ regarded La Vireville and his nephew. "No," he replied, with equal simplicity. "Why should I? I'm a trading vessel, not a packet." The petitioner came nearer and dropped his voice. "If you will grant me the favour of a word or two in private," he said, "I will tell you why I ask. It is for a most pressing family matter--an affair, I may say, almost of life and death . . . and an affair of haste." "Come on board then," said the master-mariner briefly, and led the way over the gang-plank to the cabin. It was that neat little cabin with its shining brass fittings, therefore, which witnessed the apotheosis of the Chevalier de la Vireville as a liar. Even at the time a part of himself was watching the other, the speaking half, with an amused wonder, as he unfolded his tale, recounting how he was hastening, or wished to hasten, to Caen on this most pressing family matter. He had sent Anne-Hilarion to the other end of the cabin, and himself sat, with the captain, at the table in the middle. "The fact is," he said in lowered tones, after a short exordium, "that my brother's wife has run away from him, and we have reason to believe that she has gone to Caen." "With her lover, I suppose," finished the sailor bluntly. "No," said La Vireville; "that is the whole point. My brother believes that he has not yet joined her, though on the way to do so. Hence, citizen, my need of haste. I want to arrive at Caen before it is too late, and to that end I am taking my brother's little son with me to plead his father's cause, and to see if he cannot persuade his unfortunate mother to return." It was only because he felt sure that Anne, however willing he might be, would inevitably make a slip if required constantly to address him as Papa, that La Vireville had cast himself for the part of uncle in this speedily-imagined drama. Otherwise he might have played the part of the stricken husband rather than that of the sympathetic brother. Indeed, there would have been an advantage in the former rôle, for it would have spared him the captain's next and very natural question: