Le Maitre?"
"Sea-captain," said O'Shea.
"Oh! then _where_ is he?"
"Don't know."
"Isn't that rather strange, that his wife should be here, and that you
should not know where the husband is?"
"I can't see the ships on the other side of the world."
"Where did he go to?"
"Well, when he last sailed"--deliberately--"he went to Newcastle. His
ship is what they call a tramp; it don't belong to any loine. So at
Newcastle she was hired to go to Africy. Like enough, there she got
cargo for some place else."
"Oh! a very long voyage."
"She carries steam; the longest voyage comes to an end quick enough in
these days."
"Has Madame Le Maitre always lived on this island? Was she married
here?"
"She came here a year this October past. She came from a place near the
Pierced Rock, south of Gaspe Basin. I lived there myself. I came here
because the skipper had good land here that she said I could farm."
Caius meditated on this.
"Then, you have known her ever since she was a child?"
"Saw her married."
"What does her husband look like?"
"Well"--a long pause of consideration--"like a man."
"What sort of a man?"
"Neither like you nor me."
"I never noticed that we were alike."
"You trim your beard, I haven't any; the skipper, he's hairy."
Caius conceived a great disgust for the captain. He felt pretty well
convinced also that he was no favourite with O'Shea.
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