Well, it might have been worse, for
a great deal can be done in thirty-six hours.

True, all the salvage appliances, so the Admiral had said, were at
Cherbourg. What a shameful lack of forethought on someone's part! Still,
there was little doubt but that the _Neptune_ would be raised in--in
time. The British Navy would send her salvage appliances. Jacques de
Wissant had a traditional distrust of the English, but at such moments
all men are brothers, and just now the French and the English happened
to be allies. He himself felt far more kindly to his little girls'
governess, Miss Doughty, than he would have done five years ago.

Yes, without doubt the gallant English Navy would send salvage
appliances....

There would be some hours of suspense--terrible hours for the wives and
mothers of the men, but those poor women would be upheld by the
universal sympathy shown them. He himself as mayor of the town would do
all he could. He would seek these poor women out, say consoling, hopeful
things, and Claire would help him. She had, as he knew, a very tender
heart, especially where seamen were concerned.

Indeed, it was a terrible thought--that of those brave fellows down
there beneath the surface of the waters. Terrible, that is, if they were
alive--alive in the same measure as he, Jacques de Wissant, was now
alive in the keen, rushing air. Alive, and waiting for a deliverance
that might never come. The idea made him feel a queer, interior tremor.

Then his mind, in spite of himself, swung back to its old moorings. How
strange that he had not been told that Commander Dupre had applied for
a change of command! Doubtless the Mediterranean was better suited,
being a tideless sea, for submarine experiments. Keen, clever Dupre,
absorbed as he was in his profession, had doubtless thought of that.

But, again, how odd of Claire not to have mentioned that Dupre was
leaving Falaise! Of course it was possible that she also had been
ignorant of the fact. She very seldom spoke of other people's affairs,
and lately she had been so dreadfully worried about her sister's,
Marie-Anne's, illness.

If his wife had known nothing of Commander Dupre's plans, it proved as
hardly anything else could have done how little real intimacy there
could have been between them. A man never leaves the woman he loves
unless he has grown tired of her--then, as all the world knows, except
perchance the poor soul herself, no place is too far for him to make