MUFFIN GOES FORWARD.
I rose next morning shortly after seven, bathed and went to the cabin
for a cup of coffee. I could see through the skylight that it was a
fine day. The air showed a bright blue against the glass, and a rich
tremble of sunlight was on the thick crystal of every weather porthole,
the glory rippling with the reflective throbbing and running of the
sea, as it broke upon the polished panels abreast or flashed in the
confronting mirrors. The ocean was quiet too; the heave of the yacht
was gentle, though the heel of her gave assurance of a breeze of wind.
The two stewards were busy in the cabin. I knew that Finn would have
the forenoon watch, since Crimp had had charge from eight to midnight,
and I called to the head steward to know if the captain was about.
‘Not yet, sir, I believe.’
‘Take my compliments to him, and say I should like to see him at once,
if possible--here, in the cabin, I mean.’
Whilst I waited, Muffin, hearing my voice, came from his berth. I
watched him out of the corner of my eyes; he slowly advanced in a sort
of writhing way, making many grimaces as he approached, as if in the
throes of rehearsing a speech, and presently stood before me, first
casting a look at the second steward who was polishing a looking-glass,
and then clasping his hands before him and hanging his head.
‘Mr. Monson, I ’umbly ask your pardon, sir. May I beg that out of your
kind ’art you will overlook my doings last night? Sir, I do not find
myself partial to the hocean, and my desire is to return ’ome, sir. I
meant no ’arm. I would not wrong an ’air of Sir Wilfrid’s ’ed. My five
years’ character from the Right Honourable the Lord Sandown speaks to
my morals, sir. I am sincerely remorseful, Mr. Monson, and trust to be
made ’appy by your forgiving me, sir.’
I listened to what he had to say, and then exclaimed, ‘My forgiveness
has nothing to do with the matter. You are not a person fit to wait
upon Sir Wilfrid Monson, and--but I shall have something to tell you a
little later on. Meanwhile, you can go.’
He said unctuously, ‘Am I to take Sir Wilfrid his ’ot water as usual,
sir?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘continue to wait on him.’
He plucked up at this and withdrew with an ill-dissembled smirk upon
his countenance. Presently Captain Finn came trundling down the cabin
steps, cap in hand, his long face bright with recent cleansing, and
full of expectation. I asked him to sit, and then, without a word of
preface, I bluntly told him about the ‘warnings’ my cousin had received
for two nights running, and how last night my suspicion, in some
unaccountable way, having been aroused, I entered the baronet’s berth
and found Muffin painting the sentence in a vermin-killing composition
of phosphorus. Finn whistled.
‘The weasel!’ he cried; ‘how is he to be punished for this? Will ye
have him ducked from the yard-arm, or seized up aloft, or played
on with the hose for spells of half-an-hour, or whipped up for a
grease-down job that’ll last him nigh a day? Say the word, sir. I feel
to want the handling of a chap whose veins look to run slush, to judge
by his colour and the lay of his hair.’
‘No,’ said I, ‘no need to deal with him as you suggest. But he must
be turned out of this end of the vessel and sent into the forecastle.
Before we decide, however, can you make use of him?’
‘Ay, can I. Leave him to me, your honour,’ said Finn, grinning. ‘I’ll
make a man of him.’
‘Steward,’ I called, ‘send Muffin to me.’
The valet arrived, looking hard at Finn. I made some excuse to get the
stewards out of the cabin, and then said, ‘Now, Muffin, attend. You are
at once to decide whether you will go forward amongst the men, live
with them in the forecastle and do such work as Captain Finn appoints,
or whether Sir Wilfrid shall be told of last night’s business, that he
may deal with you as he thinks proper.’
Finn gazed at him with a frown and a cheek purpled by indignation and
contempt. The fellow fixed his dead black eye on me, and said, ‘I would
rather go ’ome, sir.’
‘I dessay you would!’ burst out Finn. ‘How will ’ee travel? By
locomotive or post-chay? By my grandmother’s bones! if one of my men
had played such a trick on me as you’ve played on your master, I’d
spreadeagle him with these here hands if he was as tall as my mainmast,
and lay on till there wasn’t a rag of flesh left to tickle.’
I motioned silence with an indication with my head in the direction of
Sir Wilfrid’s berth.
‘Take your choice, and be sharp about it,’ said I, turning hotly upon
Muffin, whose very sleekness at such a time was a kind of insolence
in him somehow; ‘either decide to be dealt with by Sir Wilfrid, who
probably will shoot you for what you have done, or go to him after he
has risen, tell him that you have made up your mind to discontinue your
services as a valet, and that you have requested Captain Finn to place
you upon the articles as a boy.’
‘Ay, as a boy,’ echoed Finn in a half-suppressed note of storm, and
fetching his leg a mighty thump with his clenched fist.
Muffin’s left leg fell away, he clasped his hands in a posture of
prayer upon his shirt-front, and, after looking in a weeping way
from Finn to me, and from me to Finn, he said, snuffling as he spoke,
‘Gentlemen, give me an ’arf hour to think it over, I beg of you.’
I pulled out my watch. ‘I must have your decision by eight o’clock,’
said I. ‘See to it. If you do not decide for yourself, I shall choose
for you, and give my cousin the whole truth; though for your sake,’
I added, with a menacing look at him, ‘as well as for his, I am very
desirous indeed that he should remain ignorant of your conduct. Go!’
I sat talking with Finn. His indignation increased upon him as we spoke
of Muffin’s behaviour.
‘It was enough to drive his honour clean mad, sir,’ he exclaimed. ‘Why,
though there’s little I believes in outside what my senses tells me
of, I allow I should feel like jumping overboard if so be on putting
out the light I found a piece of adwice wrote upon the dark in letters
of fire. But I’ll work his old iron up for that job. There’s something
leagues out of the ordinary in that there slush made cove, sir. ’Taint
that I hobjects to a man who never looks me in the eye. But there’s
something in the appearance of that there Muffin which makes me think
that if he could pull his heart out of his breast he’d find it like a
piece of rotten ship’s bread, full of weevils and holes.’
‘The man is pining for the shore,’ said I. ‘The fellow thought to
work upon the weak side of my cousin’s intellect. He meant no more, I
believe, than to frighten Sir Wilfrid into returning. He remains a very
good valet all the same, though we must have him out of this. He will
not be the only servant in the world who has procured his or her ends
by working on the master’s or mistress’s fears.’
‘Well, I suppose not, sir,’ said Finn; ‘taking men-servants all round
they’re a bad lot. I never yet see one, specially if he wore big calves
and had got white hair, but that I felt a longing to have him at sea
for a month. By the way, sir, talking of this here Muffin’s mystifying
of his honour, what d’ye think, Mr. Monson, sir? Blowed if old Crimp,
who I shouldn’t ha’ credited with a single idea outside the tar bucket,
hain’t gone and fallen superstitious! When I relieved him at midnight
he up and spins a long twister about you and him having heard a woice
holloing a curse upon this yacht away out on the starboard quarter
somewhere.’
He broke into a low, deep sea laugh, which he endeavoured to check by
clapping his hand to his mouth.
‘We heard something,’ said I, ‘that sounded like a voice, and we made
out the noise to signify the same thing. It may have been a bird,
or some mysterious fish come up to breathe, or some singular sound
produced by the yacht herself. No matter what--I have dismissed it from
my mind.’
‘Poor old Jacob!’ he continued, smothering another laugh; ‘why sir,
he’d actually thought hisself into a clam when I went on deck, and
said he reckoned this part of the hocean much colder than the coast
o’ Greenland. Jacob’s being so werry commonplace is the reason of my
thinking nothen of the yarn. Had he even a little bit more mind than
belongs to him I’d be willing to allow his story was a queer one; but
he’s so empty of any sort o’ intellects short of the ones that he needs
to enable him to keep a look-out and attend to the navigation of the
craft, that his werry hollowness touches t’other extreme of a brain
chock ablock with fantastical ideas; by which I mean that I’d as lief
attend to a madman’s notion of a strange woice as to Jacob’s. Not but
that he ain’t as trustworthy, practical a sailor as I could wish to
have by my side if I ever found myself in a quandary.’
I cast my eye at the clock under the skylight. As I did so, Muffin came
sliding towards us with exactly the same sort of gait and countenance
you would expect in a well-practised funeral mute. He approached close
before speaking, and postured in front of me, preserving a respectful
silence, whilst he kept his eyes fastened on the deck.
‘Well?’ said I.
‘I’ve been considering the matter, sir, and beg to state that I’ve made
up my mind.’
‘Well?’ I repeated.
‘It might ’urt Sir Wilfrid’s feelings, gentlemen, if you, Mr. Monson,
sir, explained away the cause of what had alarmed him, and I’ll not
deny that as his strength of mind isn’t such as to give him control
over his passions, sir, I should go in fear. Which being so, I’m
willing to tell him that I desire to discontinue my services as valet,
and should be glad to become what I’ve ’eard Captain Finn describe as
an ’and until such times as we fall in with a ship that may be willing
to carry me ’ome. To which, Mr. Monson, sir, and you, Capt’n Finn, I
trust, gentlemen, both, you’ll have no objection.’
I preserved my gravity with difficulty.
‘Very well,’ said I, witnessing in the vague indeterminable twinkle
of the unpolished jet of his eye that he detected in me the mirth I
flattered myself I had concealed; ‘after breakfast you will convey your
resolution to Sir Wilfrid, of course taking care to insist if he should
object, for after what has happened your connection with him must
_cease_.’
‘As you wish; sir,’ he exclaimed, giving me a bow with the whole spine
of him; ‘but, gentlemen, I should like to state that whatever may be
the work Captain Finn puts me too, I would rather do it as an ’and than
as a boy.’
I felt a bit sorry for the poor devil. It seemed to me that he had
accepted his alternative with some pluck.
‘A boy is the next grade to ordinary seaman,’ said I; ‘you will be a
hand just the same.’
‘What can you do?’ exclaimed Finn, running his eye over the figure of
the man with an expression that was not one of quite unmixed contempt.
‘Can ’ee go aloft?’
The fellow clasped his hands and turned up the whites of his eyes. ‘Not
to save my precious soul, sir.’
‘You can row,’ said I.
‘I’ll feather an oar agin any Thames waterman,’ exclaimed Muffin.
‘Enough has been said,’ I exclaimed, rising. ‘The stewards wait to lay
the cloth for breakfast,’ and so saying, I mounted on deck, followed
by the captain, who, after I had exchanged a few words with him, went
forward to break his fast before relieving old Crimp.
There was a large full-rigged ship on the weather beam. We were slowly
passing her. She was an East Indiaman, I think, of a frigate-like
stateliness, with her white band and black ports, and her spacious
rounds of canvas tapering in spires, to the delicate gossamer of the
top-most cloths. The red ensign was waving at her peak as it was at
ours, but then she was from England as we were, and had no more news
to give us than we her. The bosoms of her canvas arched towards us
with the rigging under each curve fine as wire against the sky that
sloped to the horizon white and blinding as irradiated steel with the
eastern gushing of glory there. There was just swell enough to heave a
little space of her coppered forefoot out of the glittering brine that
came brimming to her in a liquid blue light, and the rhythmic flash
of the metal over the curl of snow at the stem gave an inexpressible
grace to the dignity and majesty of the lofty and swelling fabric of
cream-coloured cloths, each softened by an airy pinion of shadow at
its lee clew. ’Twas wonderful the magic that ship had to vitalise and
to subdue to human sympathy the brilliant, weltering wilderness of
the morning ocean. She carried the thoughts away to the Thames and to
Gravesend, to leave-takings and weeping women and the coming and going
of boats, to the hurricane note of the Jacks getting the anchor, to
the waving of handkerchiefs up on the poop, to the smell of hay for
the live-stock, the gabble of poultry, the cries of children, the loud
calls of officers, the ceaseless movements of passengers, stewards,
friends, sailors, crowding and elbowing, talking, shaking hands, and
crying upon the main deck. All this, I say, she made one think of, with
a fancy, too, of the rushing Hooghley, a burning atmosphere sickly with
the smell of the incense of the hubble-bubble, with a flavour of hot
curry about, a dead black body gliding slowly past, the lip, lip, of
the rushing stream against the ship’s bow and seething to the gangway
ladder, the fiery cabins o’ nights vibratory with the horns of the
mosquitoes like a distant concert of Jew’s harps mingling with the
distant unearthly wail of the jackal. Pooh! ’twas a fit of imagination
for its torrid atmosphere and Asiatic smells to make one mechanically
mop the brow with one’s handkerchief. Why, far off as that Indiaman was
the clear cool wind seemed to breeze down _hot_ from her with an odour
of bamboo and cocoanut rope, and chafing gear wrought from the jungle
with strange aromas of oils along with the shriek of the paroquet and
the hoarse musings of the macaw. I turned to surly old Jacob.
‘Good-morning, Mr. Crimp.’
‘Marning.’
‘Fine ship out yonder.’
‘Well, I’ve seen uglier vessels.’
I approached him close. ‘Heard any more voices, Mr. Crimp?’
‘No,’ he answered, thrusting his fingers into the door-mat of oakum
upon his throat, ‘and I don’t want to.’
‘I advised you to keep your counsel,’ said I, ‘but I find that you have
spoken to Captain Finn.’
‘Who wouldn’t? My mind ain’t a demijean, smother me! It’s not big
enough to hold the likes of last night’s job. Told the capt’n? ’Course
I did.’
I saw that he was a mule of a man, and not proper to reason with. I
said with an air of indifference, ‘Have you thought the thing over? Was
it a bird, as I said at the time, or a noise breaking out perhaps from
the inside of the yacht, and by deception of the hearing sounding in
syllables apparently away out upon the sea?’
He eyed me dully, and after a stupid, staring pause, exclaimed, ‘I wish
_you_ hadn’t heard it.’
‘Why?’
‘Why? ’Cause then I might ha’ believed it was _my_ fancy; but as I says
to the capt’n, two collected intellects ain’t going to get the same
meaning out o’ what’s got no sense. I hope that this here trip may turn
out all right, that’s all. I’ve been a going to sea now for thirty
year, but smite me if ever I was in a wessel afore that was damned in
the first watch by a woice a-sounding out of the blackness with nothen
for it to come from.’
The breakfast bell now rang, and I went below not a little surprised by
this exhibition of superstitious alarm in so sour and matter-of-fact a
seaman as Jacob Crimp. For my part, though I admit the thing greatly
puzzled me, it was only as some conjuring trick might. Perhaps with
old Crimp I should have been better satisfied had but one of us heard
the voice; or, presuming us both to have caught the sound, had we
each made a different sentence of it. _There_ lay the real oddness of
the incident, but as to supposing there was anything supernatural in
it, I should have needed the brains of my cousin, who could interpret
Muffin’s stale and vulgar trick into a solemn injunction, perhaps from
heaven, to think so.
Wilfrid joined us at breakfast; he made a good meal, and was easy
in his spirits. I asked him if he had been troubled with any more
warnings. He answered no, nothing whatever had occurred to disturb
him. He had slept soundly, and had not passed so good a night for days
and days. ‘But,’ said he with a glance round the cabin, for the valet
had been hanging about, though he did not station himself behind his
master’s chair as heretofore, ‘if I were ashore I should be prepared
for another kind of warning, I mean a warning from Muffin, if I may
judge by his face and manner. Something is wrong with the fellow.’
‘You once suspected his sanity,’ said I, smiling. ‘Upon my word I
cannot persuade myself that such a dial-plate as his covers sound
clockwork. He strikes wrongly, I’m sure. He don’t keep true time, Wilf.’
‘Do you think so really?’ he exclaimed with some anxiety.
‘Do you believe Muffin to be perfectly sound, Miss Jennings?’ said I,
giving her a significant glance.
‘I should be very sorry to trust him,’ she answered with a spirited
gaze at Wilfrid.
The subject dropped; our conversation went to the Indiaman that lay
for a little, whilst we sat at the breakfast table, framed in the
cabin porthole abreast of us, coming and going with the light reel
of the yacht, but whenever set for a moment then the most dainty and
lovely image imaginable, like to some small choice wondrous carving in
mother-of-pearl of a ship, shot with many subtle complexions of light
as though you viewed her through a rainbow of fairy-like tenuity. Then,
having talked of her, we passed on to our voyage, till on a sudden a
fit of sullenness fell upon Wilfrid, and he became moody; but, happily,
I had by this time finished my breakfast, and as I had no notion of an
argument, nor of courting one of his hot, reproachful, vexing speeches
touching his own anguish and my coldness, I left the table, telling
Miss Jennings that she would find her chair, rugs, and novel ready for
her on deck when she should be pleased to join me.
She arrived alone in about half-an-hour. There was something so
fragrant in her presence, so flower-like in her aspect, that she could
not approach you but that it was as though she brought a nosegay with
her whose perfume had a sweetness for every sense of the body. We had
not been long together, yet already I might have guessed what had
happened with me by noticing in myself the impatience with which I
desired her company, the repeated glances I would send at the companion
hatch if I expected her on deck, the very comfortable feeling of
satisfaction, the emotion indeed of quiet delight that possessed me
when I had her snug by my side in her chair, with no one to break
in upon us but Wilfrid, who troubled us very little in this way. I
remember this morning when I took the novel off her lap to see what
progress she had made in it, thinking, as my glance went in a smile
from the mark in the middle of chapter the third to her eyes, in which
lay a delicate light of laughter, that before long we should be having
the weather of the tropics, the radiant ivory of the equinoctial moon,
the dew-laden stillness of the equatorial calm, and that there might
come night after night of oceanic repose for us to enjoy--and enjoy
alone; but I almost started to the fancy, for it was a sort of secret
recantation, a quiet confession of my heart to my reason that though to
be sure this voyage was to be viewed as a goose-chase, I was beginning
to feel willing that it should not be so brief as I was quite lately
trusting it would prove. No wonder the old poets represented love as a
kind of madness, seeing that a man who suffers from this disorder will,
like a madman, experience twenty different moods in an hour.
‘You do not appear to find the dukes and earls of this star-and-garter
novel very engaging company,’ said I, placing the book in her lap again.
‘It is a good sort of novel to dream over,’ said she; ‘the moment I
look at it I find my mind thinking of something else.’
‘A pity Wilfrid cannot read,’ said I, ‘but his mind, like the poet’s
eye, glances too much. There are two unfailing tests of brain power:
the appreciation of humour and the capacity of concentration.’
‘Might not a very clever man laugh at a very silly joke?’ she asked.
‘Yes, but his laugh will be of a different sort from a stupid fellow’s
at the same joke. Where did you leave Wilfrid?’
‘In the cabin. Muffin came up to me just now, apparently on his way to
his master, and begged me in a most strange, suppliant, hollow way to
implore you not to allow Sir Wilfrid to suspect that the handwriting
was a trick; “for,” said the man, “if he gets that notion into his head
he will suspect me, and then, miss,” he said, “the baronet might take
my life, for if he’s scarcely responsible for what he does when he’s in
a good temper, what would he not be capable of when he’s in a dreadful
passion?” This was in effect what he said. His language and manner
are not to be imitated. I told him very coldly that neither of us was
likely to tell Sir Wilfrid, not because we should not be very pleased
to see him punished by his master as he deserved, even though it came
to shooting him,’ she exclaimed, lifting her eyes to mine with roguish
enjoyment of Muffin’s terror, ‘but because we were anxious that Sir
Wilfrid should be spared the humiliation of the discovery.’
‘Muffin will be out of this end of the ship before noon,’ said I.
‘What have you arranged?’
‘His name will be entered in the articles as a boy, that is, as a
sailor below the grade of an ordinary seaman.’
‘Is he to work as a sailor?’
‘Finn will try him.’
‘The poor wretch!’ she cried, looking aloft; ‘have you ever observed
his feet? Such a man as that cannot climb.’
‘They’ll put him to deck work,’ said I, ‘scrubbing, polishing,
scraping, painting.’ She fell silent, with her gaze upon the open book.
Presently she sent a slow, thoughtful look along the sea and sighed.
‘Mr. Monson, I wonder if we shall fall in with the “Shark”?’
I shook my head.
‘But why not?’ she exclaimed with a pretty pettishness.
‘She might be yonder at this moment,’ said I, pointing to the
light-blue horizon that lined, like an edging of glass, the sky upon
our starboard beam. ‘Who is to tell? Our field is too big for such a
chase.’
‘We shall find them at Table Bay, then,’ she said defiantly.
‘Or rather, let us hope that they will find us there. But suppose
we pick the “Shark” up; suppose we are lying in Table Bay when she
arrives. What is to happen? What end is to be served? On my honour, if
Lady Monson were my wife----’ I snapped my fingers.
‘You are cold-hearted.’
‘I am practical.’
‘You would not extend your hand to lift up one who has fallen.’
‘Do not put it so. The girl I marry will, of course, be an angel.’ Her
lips twitched to a smile. ‘If she expands her wings and flies away
from me, am I to pick up a blunderbuss with the notion of potting her
as she makes sail? No, let her go. She is indeed still an angel, but a
bad angel. A bad angel is of no use to a man. She poisons his heart,
she addles his brains, she renders his sleep loathsome with nightmares,
she buries a stiletto in the vitalest part of his honour. _Follow_ her,
forsooth! I could be eloquent,’ said I with a young man’s confident
laugh, ‘but I must remember that I am talking to Laura Jennings.’
We were interrupted by Wilfrid. He came slowly forking up through the
hatch in his long-limbed way, and approached us with excitement in his
manner.
‘Mad!’ he cried with a look over his shoulder. ‘Mad, as you say, by
George! you were both right, and I’m deuced glad to have made the
discovery. Why, here was this fellow, d’ye see, Charles, hanging about
me at all hours of the day, free to enter my room at any time when I
might be in bed and sound asleep. Confoundedly odd, though.’
‘Are you talking of Muffin?’ said I.
‘Ay, of Muffin, to be sure.’
‘He’s not gone mad, I hope?’
‘I think so, any way,’ he answered with a wise nod that was made
affecting to me by the tremble in his lids, and the childish assumption
of shrewdness and knowingness you found in his eyes and the look of his
face.
‘What has he done?’ asked Miss Jennings, playing with the leaves of the
volume on her knee.
‘Why, he just now came to my cabin,’ answered my cousin, sending a
glance at the skylight, ‘and told me that he was weary of his duties as
a valet, and desired to be at once released. I said to him, “What do
you mean? We’re at sea, man. This is not a house that you can walk out
from!” He answered he knew that. He desired to go into the forecastle
and work as a sailor--as a sailor! Figure Muffin astride of a lee
yardarm in a gale of wind.’ He broke into one of his short roars of
laughter, but immediately grew grave, and proceeded: ‘There was a tone
of insolence in the fellow that struck me. It might have been because
he had made up his mind, expected that I should refuse, and had come
resolved to bounce, even to offensively bounce me into consenting.
Besides, too, there was an expression in his eye which satisfied me
that yours and Laura’s suspicions were sound--were sound. But I did
not need to witness any physical symptom of mental derangement. Enough
surely that this sleek, obsequious, ghostly, though somewhat gouty
rascal, whom I cannot imagine fit for any post in the world but that
of valet, should throw up his comfortable berth with us in the cabin
to become what he calls “an ’and.” Ha! ha! ha!’ His vast, odd shout of
laughter rang through the yacht from end to end.
‘Of course,’ said I, ‘you told him to go forward.’
‘Oh, certainly. I should not love to have a lunatic waiting upon me.
Why, damme, there are times when I have let that fellow shave me.
But--I say, Charles--Muffin as an ’and, eh?’
He turned on his heel, shaking with laughter, and walked up to Finn, to
whom I heard him tell the whole story, though repeatedly interrupting
himself with a jerky, noisy shout of merriment. He asked the skipper
what work he could put Muffin to, and Finn rumbled out a long answer,
but they stood at too great a distance to enable me to catch all that
was said. Presently Finn put his head into the companion hatchway and
called. After a little Muffin emerged. Wilfrid recoiled when he saw the
man, turned his back upon him, and stepped hastily right aft past the
wheel. I whispered to Miss Jennings, ‘Did you mark that? Each will go
in terror of the other now, I suppose; Wilfrid because he thinks Muffin
mad, and Muffin because he thinks that Wilfrid, should he get to hear
the truth, will shoot him.’
‘This way, my lad,’ cried Finn in a Cape-Horn voice, and a half smile
that twisted the hole in the middle of his long visage till it looked
like the mouth of a plaice. They both went forward and disappeared. The
sailors who were at work about the deck stared hard at Muffin as he
passed them, shrewdly guessing that something unusual had happened, and
not a little astonished to observe the captain conducting him between
decks to the mariners’ parlour. Soon the skipper came up, and called
to a large, burly, heavily-whiskered man, who, as I had gathered, was
a sort of acting boatswain, though I believe he had not signed in that
capacity, but had been appointed by Finn to oversee the crew as being
the most experienced sailor on board. The skipper talked with him, and
the heavily-whiskered man nodded vehemently with a broad smile that
compressed his face into a thousand wrinkles, under the rippling of
which his little eyes seemed to founder altogether. Then Finn came aft,
and Wilfrid and he fell to pacing the deck.
Miss Jennings read; I smoked occasionally, giving her an excuse to
leave her book by asking a question, or uttering some commonplace
remark. I was lying back in my easy, lounging deck-chair, with my eyes
sleepily following the languid sweep of the maintopmast-head, where the
truck showed like a circle of hoar frost against the airy blue that
floated in its soft cool bright tint to the edges of the sails whose
brilliant whiteness seemed to overflow the bolt ropes and frame them
with a narrow band of pearl-coloured film, when Miss Jennings suddenly
exclaimed, ‘Oh, Mr. Monson, do look!’
I started, and, following the direction of her gaze, spied Muffin
standing near the galley rigged out as a sailor. There may have been
a slop-chest on board--I cannot tell; perhaps Finn had borrowed the
clothes for the fellow from one of the seamen; anyway, there stood
Muffin, divested of his genteel frock coat, his gentlemanly cravat and
black cloth unmentionables, and equipped in a sailor’s jacket of that
period, a coarse coloured shirt, rough duck or canvas breeches, whose
bell-shaped extremities entirely concealed his gouty ankles. His head
was protected by a nautical straw hat, somewhat battered, with one long
ribbon floating down his back, under the brim of which his yellow face
showed with the primrose tincture of the Chinaman, whilst his dead
black eyes, gazing languishingly our way, looked the deader and the
blacker for the plaster-like streak of hair that lay along his brow as
though one of the Jacks had scored a line there with a brush steeped in
liquid pitch.
‘Heavens, what an actor that fellow would make!’ said I, the laugh
that seemed to have risen to my throat lying checked there by wonder
and even admiration of the astonishing figure the man cut in his new
attire. The burly, heavily-whiskered salt rolled up to him. What Muffin
said I could not hear, but there was the air of a respectful bow in the
posture of his odd form, and my ear easily imagined the oily tone of
his replies to the huge sailor. They crossed to the other side of the
deck out of sight.
Shortly afterwards I left my seat to join Wilfrid, and then the first
object that I beheld on the port side of the vessel was Muffin washing
the side of the galley with a bucket of water at his feet and the
heavily-whiskered man looking on. Well, thought I, rounding on my
heel with a laugh, ’twill make home the sweeter to him when he gets
there, and meanwhile Wilfrid will be free from all further phosphoric
visitations.