week already. So we sat down to wait, and talked meantime of dear old
Winston every day. There were just one hundred such days before the
_Sapphire_ got reported "All well" in the chops of the Channel by an
incoming mailboat.

"I am going to Dunkirk to meet him," says she. The _Sapphire_ had a
cargo of jute for Dunkirk. Of course, I had to escort the dear lady
in the quality of her "ingenious friend." She calls me "our ingenious
friend" to this day; and I've observed some people--strangers--looking
hard at me, for the signs of the ingenuity, I suppose.

After settling Mrs. Bunter in a good hotel in Dunkirk, I walked down to
the docks--late afternoon it was--and what was my surprise to see the
ship actually fast alongside. Either Johns or Bunter, or both, must have
been driving her hard up Channel. Anyway, she had been in since the
day before last, and her crew was already paid off. I met two of
her apprenticed boys going off home on leave with their dunnage on a
Frenchman's barrow, as happy as larks, and I asked them if the mate was
on board.

"There he is, on the quay, looking at the moorings," says one of the
youngsters as he skipped past me.

You may imagine the shock to my feelings when I beheld his white head. I
could only manage to tell him that his wife was at an hotel in town.
He left me at once, to go and get his hat on board. I was mightily
surprised by the smartness of his movements as he hurried up the
gangway.

Whereas the black mate struck people as deliberate, and strangely