long sea-boots of a fisherman, but also seemed to have acquired the rolling gait of a mariner on land.
After a plain and frugal supper, Tom Pitts conducted his friend up the street to the Mermaid Inn, locally known as "the pub." The Professor was rather silent. The whole place felt new to him, and he wasn't quite sure whether he liked it or not. The fare promised to be plentiful, but coarse; the inhabitants were rough, uncouth, unintellectual. He could not understand what a man like Stranleigh found to enjoy in their company. Stranleigh, however, was very joyous, and apparently happy. He said enthusiastically that he would head a rescue party to free old Stover from the custody of his commandeering wife. The divorce of the old man from his mug of ale was a thing not to be contemplated—an exercise of tyranny that freemen must put down.
Because of a turning to the left in the mounting street, the inn as viewed from the shore seemed to stand across the road, and the long, low window of its common room gave a constant view of the sea, for toilers of the deep are always uneasy if cut off from sight or sound of the element that provides the means of life, and also, alas! sometimes the means of death. At night this red-curtained window sent forth a lurid invitation down the street; a signal of danger, as the Salvation Army captain called it, but the sea captains regarded it
