indicated two ominous words, "Bad news." Launce looked significantly
at the owner of the yacht (meaning of the look, "Is he at the bottom of
it?"). Natalie frowned in reply (meaning of the frown, "Yes, he is").
Launce looked down again into the plate. Natalie instantly pushed all
the pieces of ham together in a little heap (meaning of the heap, "No
more to say").

"Well?" said Richard Turlington, turning sharply on Sir Joseph. "Get on
with your story. What next?"

Thus far he had not troubled himself to show even a decent pretense of
interest in his old friend's perpetually-interrupted narrative. It was
only when Sir Joseph had reached his last sentence--intimating that the
man overboard might turn out in course of time not to be a man of the
pilot-boat's crew--it was only then that Turlington sat up in his chair,
and showed signs of suddenly feeling a strong interest in the progress
of the story.

Sir Joseph went on:

"As soon as we got on deck, we saw the man in the water, astern. Our
vessel was hove up in the wind, and the boat was lowered. The master and
one of the men took the oars. All told, our crew were seven in number.
Two away in the boat, a third at the helm, and, to my amazement, when
I looked round, the other four behind me making our number complete.
At the same moment Mahogany Dobbs, who was looking through a telescope,
called out, 'Who the devil can he be? The man is floating on a hen-coop,
and we have got nothing of the sort on board this pilot-boat.'"

The one person present who happened to notice Richard Turlington's