He was nervously anxious, it would appear, to tide over a difficult moment; to give Loo Barebone breathing space, and yet to avoid unnecessary question and answer.

He had not lived forty adventurous years in the world without learning that it is the word too much which wrecks the majority of human schemes.
Their preparations had been made beforehand in readiness for the return of the tide, without the help of which the voyage back to Royan against a contrary wind must necessarily be long and wearisome.
There was nothing to wait for.

Captain Clubbe was not the man to prolong a farewell or waste his words in wishes for the future, knowing how vain such must always be.

Loo was dazed still by the crash of the storm and the tension of the effort to bring his boat safely through it.
The rest had not fully penetrated to his inmost mind yet.

There had been only time to act, and none to think, and when the necessity to act was past, when he found himself crouching down under the weather gunwale of the French fishing-boat without even the necessity of laying hand on sheet or tiller, when, at last, he had time to think, he found that the ability to do so was no longer his.