worse than useless for me to interfere. The pair would have repelled
me. This was a domestic rite. Once in his struggle with his coat the
dominant figure glanced down at the earnestness of his little mate,
paused for a moment, and the stern face relaxed.

With his attention concentrated and severe even in so small an effort
as taking from his broad back a reluctant coat, and the unvarying fixed
intentness of the dark eyes over which the lids, loose with age, had
partly folded, giving him the piercing look of a bird of prey; and the
swarthiness of his face, massive, hairless, and acutely ridged, with
its crown of tousled white hair, his was a figure which made it easy to
believe the tales one had heard of him when he was the master of the
_Oberon_, and drove his ship home with the new season's tea, leaving,
it is said, a trail of light spars all the way from Tientsin to the
Channel.

The coat was off. His wife had it over her arm, and was regarding with
concern the big petulant face above her. She said to him: "Number Ten
is let at last. They're a young couple who have got it. He's a
sailor."

The old man sat down at a corner of the table, stooped, and in one
handful abruptly hauled the cat off the rug, laying its unresisting
body across his knees, and rubbing its ribs with a hand that half
covered it. He did not appear to have heard what he had been told. He
did not look at her, but talked gravely to the fire. "I met Dennison
today," he said, as if speaking aloud to himself, in surprise at
meeting Dennison. "Years since I saw him," he continued, turning to
me. "Where was it now, where was it? Must have been Canton River, the
year he lost his ship. Extraordinary to find Dennison still afloat.