WE START FOR HOME.
We were off the island again by nine o’clock. Greaves was wise to fill
his casks; the water was sweet, the road home long, and our peculiar
care was not to be forced to look in anywhere for supplies of any sort.
Yet it was as depressing as a disappointment to return to the island. Is
there an uglier heap of rock in the wide world? The black lava of the
scowling Galapagos yields nothing more horrid. And the spirit of its
dark and horrible solitude visited you the more sharply because of the
crawling, stealthy life you beheld low down by the wash of the beach,
remote from the inland loneliness; the creeping shape of the elephant
tortoise, of the black lizard, of crabs as huge as targets, and no
further motion save what’s in the air, where the ocean fowl are
glancing. That island was a fit tomb for the ship which it caverned. You
thought of it as a grave, of the ship as a corpse; and the ugly heap of
flat split cliff and black lava climbing into spires, and front of
cinderous rock corrugated by the arrest of their glowing cataracts, fell
cold upon the sight, and colder yet upon the heart.
We sent a hand aloft as before to keep a sharp lookout. The island lay
square in the north, and while we hung hove-to off the reefs, at any
hour something large and armed might come sailing up from the horizon at
the back, and heave the breast of a royal over the western or eastern
point ere we could guess that there was anything within leagues and
leagues of us. Yan Bol took charge of the longboat and went ashore. It
was a fine morning, but the sky looked dim, like a blue eye after tears;
the sun had his sting of yesterday, but not his flash. A long swell
swung through the sea, but the heave was out of the north, and we lay
south, the land between; it was smooth here or we could have done little
in the way of watering. The corners of the land illustrated the weight
of the swell; the white water burst in clouds there, and the noise of it
came along with the voice of a gathering storm.
Greaves was so much better of the pain in his side that he sat at
breakfast and took a chair upon the deck afterward. He called me to his
cabin, while we were heading for the island, and asked me to look at his
ribs. There was a little discoloration, such as might attend a
bruise--no more. I pressed the bones, but he did not wince. I dug
somewhat deep in the soft part just under the liver, but he uttered no
sound. The pain was very nearly gone, he told me; yet he looked pale,
and his eyes wanted their former light and old activity of glance.
I was busy in bringing the brig to a stand while Greaves was at
breakfast, and on passing the skylight and looking down, I saw the lady
Aurora seated at table with him. When he came on deck after breakfast,
she followed; Jimmy placed chairs and she was about to sit, but catching
sight of me she approached, bowing low, with a fine arch smile, and her
hand extended. I supposed she meant merely to shake me by the hand, but
on grasping my fingers she retained them, and I felt a foolish blush
upon my face, as she drew me to the binnacle stand, at which she
pointed, saying, “compass.” She then led me to the side, and projecting
her glittering hand over the rail, said “sea.” Then, looking aloft, she
laughed and shook her head, and cried:
“No sar, señor.”
“Star,” said I.
“_Si_--star--_gracias_,” she exclaimed.
“Had you not better mind your eye?” exclaimed Greaves, as we approached
him. “Somebody’s told her the value of your share in the chinks below.
She’s no clipper, but she’s got a devilish fine bow and run, and you’d
find her bends sweetly good, I’ll warrant you, were you to careen her
and clear her sides. By Isten! Fielding, she’ll be forging ahead and
taking you in tow if you don’t mind your helm.”
I made no reply. I did not greatly relish Greaves’ humor. The girl’s
ignorance of our tongue was an appeal to our respect. But then I was
twenty-four--an age of sensibility. Greaves was an older man, and though
I love his memory, I must say the sea had a little blunted some of the
finer points of feeling in him.
Madam Aurora took the chair which Jimmy had placed, and she and Greaves
sat together, but in silence. Some business of the brig occupied my
attention. Presently Greaves told me to go below and breakfast.
“I will look after the ship,” said he.
I went below and made a good breakfast. There was a dish of terrapin;
the Dutch sailor Wirtz, the burly, carroty man, with the deep roaring
voice--but all our Dutchmen had deep voices--had somewhere learnt the
art of cooking terrapin. He had stayed in the brig to dress this
delicious meat, and Frank Hals, the cook, had gone ashore in his place
in the longboat. I fared sumptuously, washing the delicate morsels down
with some of the _Casada’s_ cocoa, which had been prepared for the pot
by Thomas Teach, who professed to have learnt what he knew under this
head in two voyages he had made to the Dutch Spice Islands.
Galloon had followed me into the cabin, and bore me company. He sat upon
his chair and gazed at me affectionately when I talked to him. Often had
I talked out my mind to Galloon. Often in quiet, lonely watches, during
the outward passage, had I held his ears, while his fore paws rested
upon my knees, and given loose to the imaginations which the prospect of
the promise of realizing thirty thousand dollars raised up in me. And
then, again, I loved this dog as the savior of my life. Never could I
look into his affectionate, liquid, intelligent eye, but that I would
think to myself, and often say aloud to him, dog as he was, a poor
four-footed beast, soulless, as it is commonly supposed, of affections
to be best won by kicks and curses--that he had, by saving my life,
become in a sense the creator of a man, the renewer of a being deemed by
his own species immortal in spirit, so that whatever I did a dog would
be answerable for; the existence of all passions in me, my pleasures and
hopes and griefs; nay, my marriage, should ever I marry, and the
children I begot, would be all chargeable upon a poor dog, God wot! a
strange thing to reflect on by one who has been made to believe, all his
life, that he is only a little lower than the angels, and yet true as
the blessed sunlight itself; for if it had not been for Galloon, long
ago I should have been--what? the roe of a herring, perhaps, the liver
of a cod--instead of a man, capable of looking back, through a long
avenue of years, and of moralizing thus.
When I came on deck I found Antonio standing in front of Greaves, cap in
hand, translating for him and the lady. On my appearing, Miss Aurora
exclaimed quickly and eagerly to the Spaniard, who turning to me, said,
squinting as he spoke:
“The señorita has met you before.”
“Where?” said I.
“At Lima, señor.”
“Never was at Lima in my life.”
He translated; she made a little dignified gesture of impatience.
“The lady says that she has met you at the house of----” and here
Antonio named a Spanish merchant of Lima.
“No,” said I, looking at her and shaking my head.
“Yes,” she cried in English, and spoke rapidly to Antonio.
“She is not mistaken, _caballero_. Two thumbs are alike, but two faces
never.”
“You never were at Lima?” said Greaves.
“Never,” I exclaimed, laughing.
“Let her have her way,” said Greaves. “Contrive to have visited Lima,
and to have been a bosom friend of Don----,” and he named the Spanish
merchant. “What does it signify? May it not mean that she is in love
with you, and that her professing to have met you is a Spanish maiden’s
device to cover an advance, as a soldier would say.”
Antonio continued to squint. I viewed him narrowly, and was satisfied
that he had not understood the captain’s words.
“Beg the lady to continue her narrative,” said Greaves.
She addressed Antonio in a few sentences at a time. Occasionally her
language was above his understanding; he would look at her stupidly,
until she gave him another nod. How rich was her Spanish, how
honey-sweet her utterance! It was like listening to singing. The
memories which thronged her recital delicately colored with blood her
pale olive cheek; her eyes moistened or sparkled as she spoke, or
watched while Antonio interpreted. Most of the time her gaze was
fastened upon me. It seemed as though she put me before Greaves, as
though the incident of my having had charge of the boat which brought
her off the island, had established me in her gratitude as her
deliverer.
Her story, however, was little more than a repetition of what has
already been related. Her mother had been absent twenty years from Old
Spain. On the death of her husband, she sold the estate and all her
interest in the business, and went to Acapulco with her daughter, on a
visit to her brother, who was a priest at that place; thence she and
Aurora took shipping for Cadiz.
The lady broke off at this to implore us, through Antonio, to tell her,
as sailors, whether we believed her mother’s life had been preserved.
Greaves answered that he considered it very probable that her mother was
alive. Who was to tell that the ship had foundered? Who was to say that
she had not outweathered the gale, been jury-rigged and worked by the
survivors into port, the Señorita Aurora’s mother being on board?
The girl’s eyes glistened when this was translated. She smiled at
Greaves and thanked him in Spanish. An expression of pleading then
entered her face, and her look took a peculiar color of beauty from the
wistfulness and plaintiveness of it. Why would not the captain set her
ashore at Lima, that she might rejoin her mother, who, on landing--it
mattered not at what port on the coast--was sure to make her way to
Acapulco?
But Greaves shook his head, smiling into her eyes, which were
impassioned with entreaty.
“I must go straight home,” said he. “Do not you know that there is a
treasure in our hold, which obliges me to make haste to reach England? I
will take care that you safely arrive at Madrid, even should it come to
myself escorting you, señorita.”
She bowed, looking sadly.
“Or here,” said he, extending his hand toward me, “is a cavalier who
will be honored by conducting you to Madrid.”
She slightly glanced at me, then fastened her eyes upon the deck and
mused for a few moments; then addressed Antonio, who, turning to me,
said--but in English, you will please understand, which I do not attempt
to reproduce, that you may read without hindrance:
“The lady recollects that when she met you at Lima you spoke Spanish.”
“I was never at Lima,” I answered, coloring and then laughing.
“Depend upon it,” said Greaves, “that the fellow she met was
good-looking, or recollection wouldn’t be so bright.”
“What was the occupation of the gentleman?” said I to the lady, through
Antonio.
“He was an English naval officer, had been imprisoned, but had been at
liberty some weeks when the señorita met him.”
“What was his name?”
“She does not remember; but you are the gentleman.”
“Be it so,” said I, laughing.
“On slenderer evidence have men been hanged,” said Greaves.
Now came a short pause. Antonio shuffled his naked feet, sometimes
looking straight, sometimes squinting, impatient to get forward and
lounge. The longboat had made her second trip, and lay alongside the
beach. The figures of the men crawling from the grove of trees,
trundling the casks among them, showed like beetles in the distance. It
was about eleven o’clock. The sunlight was misty; the swell rolled with
a dull flash in the brows of it; the wind hummed like clustering bees
aloft, and swept the cheek as the breath and kiss of fever. The slewing
of the brig, along with the sliding of the sun, pitched the glare upon
the deck clear of the trysail, in whose shadow we had been conversing. I
called to a man to spread the short awning. Antonio was going; the lady
Aurora detained him.
“The señorita wants to know,” said the Spanish seaman, “how long the
voyage to England occupies.”
“We mean to thrash our way home,” answered Greaves. “We shall not take
long. Let us call it three months.”
“Blessed Virgin! Three months!” echoed the girl in Spanish.
A fine look of tragic horror enlarged her eyes. She distorted her mouth
into a singular expression. The tension paled her lips and exposed her
teeth.
Greaves seemed to admire her. For _my_ part, I thought her now the most
beautiful and wonderful creature I had ever heard of--a lady who might
either be angel or devil, you could not tell which; or she might be
both. Her face defied you, for it could put on twenty looks in the
course of a short conversation, thanks to her heavy eyebrows, which were
full of play and character, and thanks to the long lashes of her
eyelids, whose drop or lift, whose languishing falls, and arch or
scornful or playful erections, changed the meaning of her glances for
her as she chose, rendering them, at her will, transparently eloquent or
as inscrutable as a gypsy’s gaze. She put her hand upon her dress, and
Antonio interpreted.
“The lady’s gown will not last three months, and then, señor?”
“Chaw!” cried Greaves, and, pointing with something of passion to the
island, he exclaimed--“Ask the lady to put the clock back till the day
before yesterday is reached, and _then_!”
On this being explained a flash of temper lighted up her eyes.
“I shall be in rags,” said she, “before you reach your country.”
“We have needles and thread on board,” said Greaves coolly.
“You are men, and cannot conceive what it is to be a woman embarking on
a long voyage, possessed of no more clothes than what she has on.”
“How can we comfort her?” said I.
“Can the señorita sew?” said Greaves.
Certainly she could sew.
“Then,” said Greaves, “if the señorita can sew, let her mind be at rest.
I am the owner of a roll of fine duck, which is entirely at her service.
There are yards enough to yield her as many dresses as she needs. Will
she require stuff for trimming? Let her select a flag of two or three
colors. Bunting makes excellent trimming. It is light and brine-proof.”
Antonio bungled much, and squinted fiercely in the delivery of this; yet
he contrived to make the lady faintly understand the meaning of Greaves’
speech. She tapped on her knee with her fingers, and seemed to keep time
with the beat of her foot to an air that she inaudibly hummed; her black
eyes were downward bent, but at swift intervals the fringes lifted, and
a glance of light sparkled at me or Greaves. I noticed a pouting play of
mouth. In fact, her air was that of a girl who has been spoiled by
indulgence since her childhood. One figured her as the goddess of the
fandango, the burden of the midnight guitar, and the heroine of a score
of sweethearts.
“Duck is very well for dresses, sir,” said I. “She is thinking of
under-linen.”
“We are not to know anything about under-linen,” said Greaves. “She must
make what she wants. She doesn’t seem grateful enough to please me. To
bother me about dress now, after four days of that cinder, and the
deliverance recent enough to keep most people hysterically sobbing and
thanking God in fervent ejaculations!”
Antonio addressed her. I guessed he wanted to know if he could go. She
spoke to him, and the man, awkwardly smiling, said:
“The señorita asks if you are Catholics?”
“Yes and no, for my part,” answered Greaves, looking at her gravely, “I
am heading that way. I believe I shall hoist the Papal flag yet, but
it’s not flying at present.”
“Is the capitan a Catholic?” repeated the lady.
“Ay, but not a Papist,” said Greaves.
“Are you a Catholic, señor?”
“I love God and hate the devil,” said I. “That is my religion. It is
broad, and there is room for many names upon its back.”
“Is it customary for ladies, do you know, Fielding, for ladies who have
just been rescued from the horrors of a volcanic island, from perils
hideously increased by the association of such a yellow and by no means
fangless worm as that”--dropping his head in a cool nod at Antonio--“to
inquire into the religious faiths of their preservers?”
The lady Aurora spoke.
“The señorita wishes to know when you changed your religion?”
“Ah, when, indeed?” said I, laughing.
“You were a very good Catholic at Lima, señor?”
“Yes, when I was at Lima, I was a very good Catholic?” said I.
“Then you are the _caballero_ the señorita supposes?”
“Damn ye, you squinting devil, you know better!” thundered Greaves.
“Jump forward. We’ve had enough of this.”
The man fled toward the forecastle, noiseless with naked feet. The lady
looked frightened.
“Lima, señorita--_no_!” said I smiting my bosom with force.
She gazed at me earnestly with an expression of misgiving, then
addressed me in Spanish. Greaves gathered her meaning.
“I believe she says you are not her man, if you are not a Catholic,”
said he; and then pointing at me, and looking at her, he cried out, “No
Catholic--no Lima--not your man, in any sense of the word. Fielding,
what’s that Dutch devil Bol up to?”
I went to the side to look for the longboat. She was at that moment
coming through the two points of reef. Her oars rose and fell in the
distance in hairs of gold, and she seemed to tow a hair of gold in her
wake as she came out of the calm breast of the harbor into the soundless
heave of the ocean. I reported her approach and lay upon the rail
watching her, and musing upon what had passed between the Spanish maid
and us.
It was odd to think of a fine young woman, sitting on the deck of a
vessel, that had but a few hours before taken her off the desolate
island which was still in view, coolly inquiring into the religious
beliefs of her preservers, and looking as though, if time had been given
her, she would presently overhaul our consciences. To be sure, she hoped
that if she found us Catholics, she would get more of her way with us,
obtain pity, sympathy, enough to procure her direct conveyance to a near
port. She left her chair, came close to my side, and stood looking at
the boat; in a moment, pointing to it, she asked in Spanish for its
name. I gave her the name, turning to look at Greaves, who was laughing
softly, but with an averted face. She put more questions, pointing to
the objects, and then lightly laying her fingers upon my arm, she signed
that I should take her forward, glancing at Greaves as she did so,
following the look on with a full stare at me, and a shake of the head
eloquent as her speech. It was for all the world as though she had said
in plain English, “I don’t like that man; let us leave this part of the
ship.”
I made her understand as best I could, by pointing to the approaching
boat, and then to the yardarm whip for slinging the casks aboard, that
my duty obliged me to stop where I was. She bowed, but with a little
flush, as though vexed by my refusal; indeed, in her whole instant
manner, there was the irritation of your ladyship, of your exacting,
well-served, much-admired, fine young madam, who is very little used to
being disappointed.
I moved forward toward the gangway by two or three steps, that she might
guess my work prohibited talk; and, in fact, conversation would have
been impossible in a few minutes, for the longboat was fast nearing the
brig, and the job of seeing the water aboard was mine; and that was not
all, either. Greaves was captain; he was on deck, watching and
listening. The influence of the presence of a captain is always strong
upon the seaman, whether he be of the quarter-deck or of the forecastle.
Habit worked like an instinct, and disquieted me. Had Greaves been
below, I daresay I should have been very glad to keep the señorita at my
side, if only for the enjoyment of meeting her full gaze; for the longer
I looked at her eyes, the more did I wonder at their depth and life, at
their transcendent powers of repulsion and solicitation, and eloquence
of rapid expression; and the longer I listened to her voice, the more
was I charmed by the sweetness and richness of it; and the longer I
beheld her face, the more manifold grew its revelations. But its
revelations of what? My pen has no art to answer that question. You gaze
upon the face of the deep, and beauties steal out of it to your
perception, and you know not how to define them, you know not how to
indicate them. They come blending in an effect that enlarges as you
look, and the sum of the steady revelation is a deepening delight and a
constant growth of wonder. I hear you say, “Had a woman of Spain ever
the beauty you claim or invent for this lady?” My answer is as simple as
a look--I say “Yes.” The Señorita Aurora de la Cueva was a woman of
Spain, and she had the beauty, and more than the beauty, I feebly
attempt to describe. I care not if all the females of Old Spain are as
hideous as hobgoblins and witches; they may all be bearded like the
pard, thatched at the brow with horse hair, their complexions of
chocolate, their figures bolsters; the lady Aurora was beautiful, her
charms I have scarce language enough to hint at, much less portray. This
she was, and whether you believe me or not signifies nothing.
And I did not much admire the woman when I first saw her! thought I. In
fact, had I rowed her aboard another ship and never seen her again, I
should never have thought of her again. Is it to end in my making a fool
of myself? Does a man make a fool of himself when he falls in love? A
plague upon these cheap cynic phrases which creep into the national
speech, and form the mirth of boys and the wisdom of the sucklings of
literature. But I am not in love yet, anyhow, thought I.
“Oars!” roared Bol, in the stern sheets of the boat. “Standt by mit der
boathook. Vy der doyfil doan somebody gif us der end of a rope?”
A rope was flung. My lady Aurora walked forward, calling and beckoning
to Antonio. She arrived abreast of the galley and stood there, and
talked to the Spaniard, pointing about her and clearly asking for the
name of things in English.
“Fielding,” cried Greaves.
“Sir,” I answered, facing about.
“She will be making love to you in your own tongue before another week
is out,” he called.
“Such a voice as hers would keep anything not deaf listening as long as
she liked.”
“She has a very sweet voice,” he exclaimed, “and she is a very fine
woman. But should she pick up our tongue, you’ll find the devil that’s
inside of her come drifting out horns first with the earliest of her
speech. Talk of your fears of the crew! She’s the sort of party to carry
a ship single-handed, though the vessel mounted the guns and was manned
by the complement of the _Royal Sovereign_. She is learning English for
some piratic motive--it may be the dollars, it may be the brig--for she
don’t want to go, and I dare say she don’t mean to go round the Horn
without her mother. Bol, is this the last load?”
“Der last loadt, sir.”
“Bear a hand then to whip the water aboard, and let us get away.”
It was a quarter before one by the time we had chocked and secured the
longboat and were ready to start on a passage that was to carry us over
many thousands of miles of salt water. The breeze had freshened; soft
small clouds, like shadings in pencil, were sailing up off the edge of
the sea into the misty blue overhead; the luster of the sun was still
pale and brassy, and a look of wind was in the yellow of the disk-shaped
spread of radiance, out of which he looked like an eye of fire in a
target of gold.
“Make sail, Fielding,” called Greaves, from his chair, on which he had
been sitting ever since he came on deck, though in all those hours he
had not once complained of pain. “Make sail and heap it on her. Bring
her head due south, and let her go.”
The braces of the yards of the main were manned, the wheel turned, the
canvas filled as the fiery breath, that was now brushing the sea, and
that seemed to come the hotter for the very dimness of the sunshine,
gushed over the quarter. We squared away to it; and now the island
slided by, opening features of its swart, melancholy, loathly rocks,
which had been invisible before. The milk-white burst of surge made the
base of the cliff in the wash of it black. I noticed a hovering of pale
radiance upon the patch of verdure where the grove or wood stood. It was
no more than a patch to our distant eye; it was like the dance of the
South African silver tree. The verdure had the gleam of an emerald, and
you thought of a gem on the sallow breast of death.
I was full of the business of making sail, yet could find an eye for the
island as it veered away on the quarter. Greaves gazed at it intently,
so did the lady Aurora as she stood at the rail, with her profile cut
clear and keen as a marble bust against the sky over the horizon. The
mouth of the cave yawned upon us, then narrowed, then thinned into a
slice, then vanished round a shoulder of cliff.
“Pull, you toyfils! Shoomp und run!” bawled Bol, in his hurricane note,
to the two Spaniards, who were loafing near the galley, lazily looking
on at the work that was going forward. “Dis vhas not der islandt--dis
vhas no shipwreck. Shoomp, or I make you fly mit a sharge of goonpowder
in der slack of yer breeks.”
The royals were sheeted home; trysail, flying jib, staysails set; for it
was a quartering wind, and there was scarce a cloth that we could throw
abroad but could do serviceable work. They called this sort of sailing
in our time _going along all fluking_, the weather-clew of the mainsail
up and the lee-clew dully lifting its weight of blocks and hawser-like
sheets and thick frame of foot and bolt-rope.
“Set all stu’n’-sails,” cried Greaves; and soon out to windward soared
to their several yardarms and to their boom-ends those wide, overhanging
spaces of sail, clothing the brig in surf-white cloths from the royal
mast heads to the very heave of the brine, when she rolled her
swinging-boom to windward.
“Pipe to dinner!” called Greaves.
The sweet, clear strains of Yan Bol’s whistle found a hundred echoes in
the hollows on high. Aurora gazed upward, as though looking for the
birds. The men had worked hard, and were pale with heat and sweat. They
had worked with a will in making sail. Even the Dutchmen had sprang
along and aloft with a bluejacket’s activity; for we were homeward
bound! a cry in every marine heart magical in its inspiration of swift
and eager labor. With dripping brows the men stood looking at the
receding island, while Yan Bol whistled them to dinner; and when the
burly Dutch boatswain let fall the pipe upon his breast to the length of
its laniard, all hands, moved by feelings which made every throat one
for the moment, roared out a long, wild cheer of farewell to the island,
flourishing caps and arms to it, as though its heights were crowded with
friends who could see and hear them.
“Look at Galloon!” cried Greaves.
The dog was on the taffrail, and every bark he sent at the island was
like a loud hurrah, with the significance the noise took from the
wagging of the creature’s tail and the set of the whole figure of him.
“He knows we are homeward bound,” said Greaves.
“And that the dollars are aboard,” said I.
Miss Aurora went to the dog, caressed, and talked to him. The lad
Jimmy’s head showed at the galley door. Greaves hailed him to know when
dinner would be ready.
“Another twenty minutes, master.”
“Heave the log, Fielding, and let’s get the pace at the start.”
All expression of pain was now passed out of his face; likewise had his
natural, fresh color returned to him. The triumph of this time had
kindled his eyes anew, and there were pride and content in the looks
which he cast around his brig and over the rail at the island. And I
think if ever there was a man who had a right to feel satisfied with
himself and his work, Greaves, at this time, was he; for, truly,
something more than talent had gone to the discovery of the dollars in
the caverned ship. Mere accident it was that had disclosed the vessel,
but it needed the genius of a great adventurer to light upon the
dollars, to note all the particulars of the Spanish manifest, to hold
the secret behind his teeth till he got home, to inspire such an old
hunks as Bartholomew Tulp with confidence enough to shed his blood, or,
in other words, to disburse his money, in the furtherance of this
enterprise of recovery.
I called a couple of men aft and hove the log. What is the log? It is a
reel round which are wound many fathoms of line; at the end of the line
is attached a piece of wood, sometimes a canvas bag, designed to grip
the water when it is hove overboard. The line is spaced into knots, and
the running of it is timed by a glass of sand. This log is one of the
oldest contrivances we have at sea. With it the early navigators groped
their way about the world. It found them New Holland and the Indies, and
both Americas. It was their longitude and often their latitude. It was
their chronometer and sextant. We use it still, and cannot better it. A
simple and noble old contrivance is the log. May the mariner never lose
faith in it! Crutched by the log on one side, and the lead on the other,
he may hobble round the globe in safety, defiant of shoals, regardless
of fogs.
I hove the log, and made the speed seven knots.
“A good start!” exclaimed Greaves, rising and coming slowly to the rail,
and looking over. He walked without inconvenience or pain, and stood
with a thoughtful face, gazing at the satin-white sheets of foam sliding
past. Madam Aurora left Galloon and came to my side, but Galloon
followed her--never went there to sea a friendlier, a more affectionate
dog. The men were hauling in the dripping log line and reeling it up.
The lady with a smile said with a very good accent, “How do you call
it?” I laughed as I pronounced the word _log_. Oh, what should it convey
to the imagination of a Spanish maiden?
She understood, however, for what purpose it had been used, and with
eloquent gestures inquired the speed. I held up my fingers.
“_Quien lo hubiera creído?_” cried she.
“She is not grumbling, I hope,” called Greaves from the rail, and he
slowly approached us.
The lady looked for a little while very earnestly at the captain, with a
world of meaning in her beautiful eyes--meaning so eloquent in _desire_
of expression, that it was pathetic to witness the arrest of speech in
her gaze and face. She then with grace and dignity motioned round the
sea.
“It is very wide, and the voyage before us is a long one--I understand
that,” interpreted Greaves; and never did man peruse lineaments more
speaking or translate glances more radiant and expressive.
She then placed the forefinger of her right hand upon her lips to
signify silence or dumbness.
“Which means,” said Greaves, “that you can’t speak our tongue, and don’t
like the prospect, accordingly.”
She then took her dress in her hand, putting on a most mournful
countenance.
“Yaw, yaw,” cried Greaves, with a little irritation, “we have discussed
that matter, madam. But there is white duck below--duck for the duck,
what d’ye say, Fielding? and there are hussifs in the fok’sle.”
I believed that her dumb show was at an end. Not at all. Clasping her
hands sparkling with the several rings she wore, and raising them in a
posture of supplication to the level of her mouth, she upturned her face
to the sky, and with an inimitable expression of entreaty, of piteous
prayer rather, insomuch that her eyes seemed to swim and her lips to
work, she stood while you could have counted ten.
“Sainted and purest of all the Marias, put pity into the heart of this
British captain, and cause him to set me ashore, for the sea is wide and
the voyage is long; and I am possessed by a dumb devil and cast among
heretics; and I have but one gown; and, O Maria and ye saints! candles
shall ye have in plenty, mortification will I undergo, prayers by the
fathom will I recite, choice gifts will I make to Holy Mother Church, if
ye will but soften the heart of the durned, slab-sided skipper who
stands opposite me, interpreting my mind. There ye have it, Fielding.
That’s what her gestures said, that’s what her eyes looked. But I tell
you what--this sort of thing will grow tiresome presently. You must bear
a hand and teach her to speak English.”
“Dinner’s on the table, master,” said Jimmy, putting his head through
the companion way.
“Call Yan Bol aft to stand a lookout while we dine, Fielding,” said
Greaves, “and give your arm to the lady and bring her below. She don’t
like me.”