'Here has the wife been in a taking along of you; never saying a word, going about like a stiff statue, with a face to turn a body against his victuals; and I saying where was the sense? had you never before been gone over a four-and-twenty hours? And now to fix her, clean without a cause, you bring back a hole to have let in Judgment-day. Now will come moils to drive a man daft. 'And to round off, by what I hear down yonder, never a civil answer but a broken head is all you'll give. "Look you there now," says Philip, and I heard him, and he has a hand clapped to his crown, and he points at your other piece of work, and he says, says Philip: "Look you there now, _he_ was never born to drown," and he laughs in his way. Well, I thought he was not far out, take it either way, when I see how you have brought the poor thing in mishandled. It passes me how you kept her afloat and brought her through. Let's hear.' Though Giles might rate, there was never a rub. Years before the old man and the boy had come to a footing strangely fraternal, set there by a common despair of satisfying the strict code of Lois. Again Christian shook his head. Giles reached up a kindly hand to his shoulder. 'What's amiss, boy? It's new for you to show a cross grain. A poor spirit it is that can't take blame that is due.' Christian laughed, angry and sore. 'O Dad!' he said, 'I must blame myself most of all. Have your say. Give me a taste of the sort of stuff I may have to swallow. But ask nothing.' Giles rubbed his grey locks in perplexity, and stared at the perverse boy. 'It can't be a venture--no,' he thought aloud. 'Nor none hinted that. 'Well, then; you've been and taken her between the Tortoises, and bungled in the narrows.' Christian opened his mouth to shout derision at the charge, gasped, and kept silence. 'There's one pretty guess to go abroad. Here's another: You've gone for the Land's End, sheared within the Sinister buoys, and got right payment. That you can't let pass.' 'Why not that?' Christian said, hoping his countenance showed no guilt. 'Trouble will come if you don't turn that off.' 'Trouble! Let them prate at will.' 'Well,' complained Giles, 'I won't say I am past work, but I will own that for a while gone I had counted on the near days when I might lie by for a bit.' 'But, Dad, that's so, all agreed, so soon as I should have earned a boat of my own, you should have earned holiday for good.' 'Then, you fool, speak clear, and fend off word of the Sinister buoys, or not a soul but me will you get aboard for love or money.' Eager pride wanted to speak. Giles would not let it. 'You think a mere breath would drive none so far. Ay, but you are not one of us, and that can't be forgot with your outlandish hair and eyes. Then your strength outdoes every man's; then you came by the sea, whence none know, speaking an unknown tongue; and then----' Giles paused. The heart of the alien swelled and shrank. He said very low: 'So I have no friends!'