"There must, as you suggest, be some purpose in it.

God writes straight on crooked lines, Captain." Thus Dormer Colville found two points of sympathy with this skipper of a slow coaster, who had never made a mistake at sea nor done an injustice to any one serving under him: a simple faith in the Almighty Purpose and a very honest respect for money.

This was the beginning of a sort of alliance between four persons of very different character which was to influence the whole lives of many.
They sat on the tarred seat set against the weather-beaten wall of "The Black Sailor" until darkness came stealing in from the sea with the quiet that broods over flat lands, and an unpeopled shore.

Colville had many questions to ask and many more which he withheld till a fitter occasion.

But he learnt that Frenchman had himself stated his name to be Barebone when he landed, a forlorn and frightened little boy, on this barren shore, and had never departed from that asseveration when he came to learn the English language and marry an English wife.