THE PEOPLE OF LA CASANDRA.
The two foreigners, as I might suppose them to be--the two gentlemen
who had talked to me and viewed me in the cabin before I went to the
captain's berth--these men were pacing the sand-colored planks of
the quarter-deck arm in arm, cigars in their mouths, as I emerged;
but, on seeing me, they came to a halt. One was a truly noble-looking
fellow, rising a full inch taller than six feet, and of a magnificently
proportioned shape. This was the man who had addressed me in good
English, but with a foreign accent. He was, besides, an exceedingly
handsome person, his complexion very dark, his eyes of the dead
blackness of the Indian's, but soft and glowing; he wore a large
heavy mustache, black as ink, and curling to his ears; his teeth were
strong, large, and of an ivory whiteness. Plain sailor-man as I was,
used to the commonplace character and countenance of the mariner, I
was without any art in the deciphering of the mind by gazing at the
lineaments of the human face. To me this person offered himself as a
noble, handsome man, of imposing presence, of a beauty even stately;
but when I think of him now in the light of that larger knowledge of
human nature which years have taught me, when I recall his face, I say,
I am conscious of having missed something in the expression of it which
must have helped me to a tolerably accurate perception of the _real_
character of this schooner's errand, when the "motive" of her voyage
was explained to me.
His companion was a short man, a true Spaniard in his looks; his
large hooked nose, his searching, restless, brilliant black eyes, his
mustaches and short black beard might well have qualified him to sit
for a picture of Cervantes, according to such prints of that great
author as I have seen. They were both well dressed--too well dressed,
indeed. They wore overcoats richly furred, velvet coats beneath,
splendid waistcoats, and so forth. The fingers of the shorter man
sparkled with precious stones. There was a stout gold chain round
his neck, and a costly brooch in his cravat. They both fastened a
penetrating gaze upon me for some moments, and exchanged a few
sentences in Spanish before addressing me.
"The gentleman's name is Portlack--Mr. Portlack, Don Christoval," said
Captain Dopping: "he was second mate of a bark named the Ocean Ranger.
He was hocussed, as the Pikeys (gypsies) say, by an American captain.
He'll tell you the story, sir."
"How do you feel?" said Don Christoval.
"Perfectly recovered, I thank you," said I.
"I am glad. We were not too soon. I believe that another twenty-four
hours of your desperate situation must have killed you," said this
tall Don, delivering his words slowly, and looking very stately, and
speaking in English so correctly that I wondered at his foreign accent.
"Vot ees secon' mate?" inquired the shorter man, pronouncing the words
with difficulty.
"Why, you might call it second lieutenant, Don Lazarillo," replied
Captain Dopping.
"It is a position of trust; it is a position of distinction on board
ship?" exclaimed Don Christoval.
"Oh yes," said Captain Dopping.
"Do you know navigation?" asked the tall Don.
"I hold a master's certificate," I replied, smiling.
"Explain," said Don Lazarillo sharply, as though his mind were under
some constant strain of unhealthy anxiety.
"I do not speak a word of Spanish," said I, turning to Captain Dopping.
"No need for it," said he, in his harsh accents. "A master's
certificate, Don Christoval, enables the holder of it to take charge of
a ship, and in order to take charge of a ship a man is supposed to know
everything that concerns the profession of the sea."
"Explain," cried Don Lazarillo with impatience.
His tall companion translated; on which the other, nodding vehemently,
stroked his mustaches while he again surveyed me from head to foot,
letting his eyes, full of fire, settle with the most searching look
that can be imagined upon my face. I caught Don Christoval exchanging a
glance with Captain Dopping. There was a brief pause while the tall Don
lighted his cigar. He then said, with a smile:
"You have lost your ship, sir?"
"I have, I am sorry to say."
"What will you do, sir?"
"It is for you to dispose of me. I should be glad to make myself
useful to you until you transfer me or land me."
"But then--but then?"
"Then I must endeavor to obtain another berth," said I.
"Explain," cried Don Lazarillo.
Don Christoval spoke to him in Spanish.
"You are a gentleman by birth?" said the tall Don.
"My father was a clergyman," I answered.
"Yes, sir, that is very good. Your speech tells me you are genteel. To
speak English well you must be genteel. Education will enable you to
speak English grammatically, but it will not help you to pronounce it
properly. For example, a man vulgarly born, who is educated too, will
omit his h's, and he will neglect his g's. He will say nothin', and he
will say 'ouse instead of house. Yes, I know it--I know it," said he,
smiling. "Well, you shall tell me now all about your adventure."
This I did. He occasionally stopped me while he interpreted to his
companion, who listened to him with eager attention, while he would
also strain his ears with his eyes sternly fixed upon my face when I
spoke. When I had made an end, Don Christoval drew Captain Dopping to
him by a backward motion of his head, and, after addressing him in
low tones, he took Don Lazarillo's arm, and the pair of them fell to
patrolling the deck.
"We shall sling a hammock for you under the main hatch," said Captain
Dopping, walking up to me. "Sorry we can't accommodate you aft. There's
scarce room for a rat in my corner, let alone two men."
"Any part of the schooner will serve to sling a hammock in for me,"
said I.
"You will take your meals with me in the cabin," said he. "I eat when
the two gentlemen have done."
"Where does your mate live?" said I.
"I have no mate," he answered. "We were in a hurry, and could not find
a man."
He eyed me somewhat oddly as he spoke, as though to mark the effect of
his words.
"But is there no one to help you to keep a look-out?"
"Ay! a seaman," he answered, carelessly. "But now that you're aboard we
will be able to relieve him from that duty."
"Whatever you put me to," said I, "you will find me as willing at it as
gratitude can make a man."
He roughly nodded, and asked me what part of England I came from. I
answered that I was born near Guildford.
"I hail from Deal," said he. "Do you know Deal?"
"Well," I answered; and spoke of some people whom I had visited there;
gave him the names of the streets, and of a number of boatmen I had
conversed with during my stay at the salt and shingly place. This
softened him. It was marvelous to observe how the magic of memory, the
tenderness of recollected association humanized the coarse, harsh,
bold, and staring looks of this scarlet-haired man.
"But," said I, "you have not yet told me where this schooner is bound
to."
"You will hear all about it," he answered, with his usual air returning
to him.
I was not a little astonished by this answer. Had the schooner sailed
on some piratic expedition? Was there some colossal undertaking of
smuggling in contemplation? But though piracy, to be sure, still
flourished, it was hardly to be thought of in relation with those
northern seas toward which the schooner was heading; while as for
smuggling, if the four seamen whom I counted at work about the vessel's
deck comprised--with the fifth man, who was at her helm--the whole of
the crew, there was nothing in any theory of a contraband adventure to
solve the problem submitted by Captain Dopping's reticence.
He left me abruptly, and walked forward and addressed one of the men,
apparently speaking of the job the fellow was upon. I listened for
that note of bullying, for that tone of habitual brutal temper, which
I should have expected to hear in him when he accosted the seamen,
and was surprised to find that he spoke as a comrade rather than as a
captain; with something even of careless familiarity in his manner as
he addressed the man.
I had now an opportunity for the first time since I came on deck to
inspect the schooner. It was easy to see that she had never been
built as a yacht; her appearance, indeed, suggested that in her day
she had been employed as a slaver. She was old, but very powerfully
constructed, and seemingly still as fine a sea-boat as was at that time
to be encountered on the ocean. Her bulwarks were high and immensely
thick; the fore-part of her had a rise, or "spring" as it is called,
which gave a look of domination and defiance to her round bows which
at the forefoot narrowed into a stem of knife-like sharpness. She was
very loftily rigged and expanded an enormous breadth of mainsail.
I had never before seen so long a gaff, and the boom when amidships
forked far out over the stern. Her decks were very clean but grayish
with brine and years of hard usage. I noticed that she carried a small
boat hanging in davits on the starboard side, and a large boat abaft
the little caboose or kitchen that stood like a sentry-box forward.
This boat, indeed, resembled a man-of-war's cutter--such a long and
heavy fabric as one would certainly not think of looking for on board a
craft of the size of La Casandra. It was my sailor's eye that carried
my mind to this detail. No man but a sailor, and perhaps a suspicious
sailor as I then was, standing as I did upon the deck of a vessel whose
destination was still a secret to me, would have noticed that boat.
The five of a crew were all of them Englishmen, strong, hearty fellows.
I inspected them curiously, but could find nothing in them that did
not suggest the plain, average, honest merchant sailor. They were well
clothed for men of their class, habited in the jackets, round hats
and wide trousers of the Jacks of my period, and I took notice that
though their captain stood near them they worked as though without
sense of his presence, occasionally calling a remark one to another,
and laughing, but not noisily, as if what discipline there was on
board the schooner existed largely in the crew's choice of behavior.
These and other points I remarked, but nothing that I saw helped me
to any sort of conclusion as to the destination of the little ship or
the motive of the cruise. All that I could collect was that here was a
schooner bearing a Spanish name and owned or hired by one or both of
those Spaniards, who continued to pace the quarter-deck arm-in-arm, but
manned, so far as I could see, by a company of five Englishmen and a
negro lad, and commanded by an English skipper.
I walked a little way forward, the better to observe the vessel's
rig at the fore, and on my approaching the galley, a fellow put his
head out of it--making a sixth man now visible. He kept his head
out to stare at me. Many ugly men have I met in my time, but never
so hideous a creature as that. His nationality I could not imagine,
though it was not long before I learned that he was a Spaniard. His
coal-black hair fell in a shower of greasy snake-like ringlets upon his
back and shoulders. One eye was whitened by a cataract or some large
pearly blotch, and the other seemed to me to possess as malevolent an
expression as could possibly deform a pupil unnaturally large, and
still further disfigured by a very net-work of blood-red lines. His
nose appeared to have been leveled flat with his face at the bridge by
a blow, leaving the lower portion of it standing straight out in the
shape of the thick end of a small broken carrot. His lips of leather,
his complexion of chocolate, his three or four yellow fangs, his mat
of close cropped whiskers, coarse as horse-hair, his apparel of blue
shirt open at the neck and revealing a little gilt or gold crucifix, a
pair of tarry leather trousers, carpet slippers, and the remains of an
old Scotch cap that lay rather than sat upon his hair; all these points
combined in producing one of the most extraordinary figures that had
ever crossed my path--a path, I may say, that in my time had carried
me into many wild scenes, and to the contemplation of many strange
surprising sights.
While this prodigy of ugliness and I were staring at each other, the
captain came across the deck to me.
"What do you think of this schooner?" he said.
"She is a very good schooner. She is old--perhaps thirty years old. I
believe she has carried slaves in her time."
"I _know_ it," he replied, with a strong nod, to which his furiously
red hair seemed to impart a character of hot temper.
"I have seen," said I, "handsomer men than yonder beauty who is staring
at me from the galley door."
"Ay. He is good enough to shut up in a box and to carry about as a
show. He is cook and steward. His name is Juan de Mariana. He cooks
well, and is or has been a domestic in Don Lazarillo's establishment."
"How many go to your crew?" said I, questioning him with an air of
indifference now that I found he was disposed to be communicative.
"Eight."
"The number includes you and the cook and the nigger lad?"
He nodded, and looked at me suddenly, as though about to deliver
something on the top of his mind, then checked himself, and pulling out
his watch, exclaimed: "I understand you are willing to serve as mate of
this vessel."
"I am willing to do anything. Do not I owe my life to you all?"
"Well," said he, "that may be settled now. It is Don Christoval's wish.
As to pay, him and me will go into that matter with you by and by."
I opened my eyes at the sound of the word _pay_, but made no remark. It
was a grateful sound, as you will suppose, to a man who had as good as
lost everything save what he stood up in, and who, when he got ashore,
might find it very hard to obtain another berth. The two Spanish
gentlemen had left the deck. Captain Dopping said: "Step aft with me,"
and we walked as far as the cabin skylight, where facing about the
captain called out, "Trapp, South, Butler, Scott, lay aft, my lads. I
have a word to say to you." He then turned to the fellow who stood at
the helm and exclaimed, "Tubb, you'll be listening."
The seamen quitted their several employments and came to the
quarter-deck. The Spanish cook stepped out of the galley to hearken,
and a moment later the ebony face of the negro showed in the square of
the forecastle hatch. The sailors looked as though they pretty well
guessed what was coming.
"Lads," said Captain Dopping, placing his hand upon my arm, "this here
is Mr. James Portlack. He was second mate of the bark, Ocean Ranger, a
ship I know."
"And I know her, too," said one of the men.
"Mr. Portlack," continued Captain Dopping, "holds a master's
certificate, which is more than I do, and he tops me by that. But I'm
your captain, and your captain I remain. Mr. Portlack consents to act
as the mate of the Casandra. Is this agreeable to you, lads?"
"Ay, ay; agreeable enough," was the general answer.
"Well, then, Butler, you're displaced, d'ye see? No call for you to
relieve me any longer."
"And a good job too," said the man, a heavy, sturdy, powerfully built
fellow with small, honest, glittering blue eyes, and immense bushy
whiskers; "there was nothin' said about my taking charge of the deck in
the agreement."
"Well, you're out of it," exclaimed Captain Dopping, "and the ship's
company's stronger by a hand, which is as it should be. D'ye hear me,
cook?"
"Yash, yash, I hear all right, capitan," answered the swarthy creature
from the door of his galley, contorting his countenance into the aspect
of a horrid face beheld by one in a high fever, in his struggle to
articulate in English.
"That'll do, my lads," said the captain.
The men leisurely rounded and went forward again. There was nothing
unusual in this proceeding. It was customary, it may still be
customary at sea, to invite the decision of the crew before electing
a man to fill a vacant post as first or second mate. All that I found
singular lay in the behavior of the men. There was something in their
bearing I find it impossible to convey--a suggestion of resolution
struggling with reluctance, or it might be that they gave me the
impression of fellows who had entered upon an undertaking without
wholly understanding its nature or without fully believing in the
sincerity of its promoters. But be their manner what it might, its
effect upon me was to greatly sharpen my curiosity as to the object of
this schooner's voyage from Cadiz to the north as she was now heading.
I said to Captain Dopping, "I will take charge at once if you wish to
go below."
"Very well," said he, "I will relieve you at four bells, and that will
give you the first watch to stand," by which he meant the watch from
eight o'clock till midnight.
"But I do not know your destination," said I. "How is the schooner to
be steered?"
"As she goes," said he with a significant nod, angry with the scarlet
flash of hair and whisker which accompanied it.
"Right," said I, and fell to pacing the deck, while he disappeared down
the companion-way.
Athirst as I was for information, I was determined that my curiosity
should not be suspected. Be the errand of this little ship what it
might, I was always my own master, able to say "No" to any proposals I
should object to, though taking care to give due effect by willingness
in all honest directions to the gratitude excited in me by my
deliverance. I would find the fellow at the helm watching me with an
expression on his weather-darkened face that was the same as saying
he was willing to tell all he knew, but I took no notice of him,
contenting myself with merely observing the vessel's course and seeing
that she was kept to it. The voices of the two Spaniards and Captain
Dopping rose through the little skylight, one of which lay open. They
spoke in English, and occasionally I heard my name pronounced with now
and then a sharp hissing "Explain" from Don Lazarillo, but I did not
catch, nor did I endeavor to catch, any syllables of a kind to furnish
me with a sense of their discourse.
All this afternoon the weather continued rich, glowing, summer-like.
One seemed to taste the aromas of the land in the eastern gushing of
the blue and sparkling breeze. The three white spires of a tall ship
glided like stars along the western rim, but though we were in the
great ocean high-way nothing else showed during the remainder of the
hours of light. Beyond a little feeling of stiffness and of aching in
my joints I was sensible of no bad results of my night-long bitter
and perilous exposure in the jolly-boat of the Ocean Ranger. I had,
indeed, been too long seasoned by the sea to suffer grievously from an
experience of this sort. Night after night off the black and howling
Horn, off the stormy headland of Agulhas, amid mountainous seas, in
frosty hurricanes whose biting breath was sharpened yet by hills and
islands of ice glancing dimly through the snow-thickened darkness, I
had kept the deck, I had helped to stow the canvas aloft, I had toiled
at the pumps, waist-high in water, my hair crackling with ice, my hands
without feeling. No! I was too seasoned to suffer severely from the
after-effects of exposure in an open boat throughout an August night in
the Portuguese parallels.
At five o'clock, when I glanced through the skylight, I spied the negro
lad named Tom laying the cloth in the little cabin. Occasionally a
whiff of cooking, strong with onions or garlic, would come blowing aft
in some back-draught out of the canvas. I judged that the crew were
well fed by observing one of them step out of the galley and enter the
forecastle, bearing a smoking round of boiled beef and a quantity of
potatoes in their skins; then by seeing another follow him with pots
of coffee or tea, two or three loaves of bread, and other articles of
food which I could not distinguish. Fare so substantial and bountiful
seemed to my fancy a very unusual entertainment for a forecastle tea or
"supper," as the last meal at sea is commonly called.
I found myself watching everything that passed before me with growing
curiosity. The hideous cook Mariana, followed by the negro boy
bearing dishes, came aft with the cabin dinner, and presently, when
I peeped again through the skylight as I trudged the deck in the
pendulum walk of the look-out at sea, I perceived the two Spaniards
at table. The several dyes of wines in decanters blended with the
brilliance of silver--or of what resembled silver--and other decorative
details of flowers and fruit, and the square of the skylight framed
a picturesquely festal scene. It was possible to peep without being
observed. The Spaniards talked incessantly; their speech rose in a
melodious hum; for to pronounce Spanish is, to my ear, to utter music.
But the majestic dialect was as Greek to me. Don Lazarillo gesticulated
with vehemence, and I never glanced at the skylight without observing
him in the act of draining his glass. Don Christoval was less
demonstrative. He was slow and stately in his movements, and when he
flourished his arm or clasped his hands, or leaned back in his chair to
revolve the point of his mustache with long, large, but most shapely
fingers, he made one think of some fine actor in an opera scene.
It was six o'clock by the time they had dined, and at this hour the
seamen taking the privilege of the "dog watch"--but, indeed, it was
all privilege from morning to night in that schooner--were pacing the
deck forward, four of them, every man smoking his pipe--the fifth man
being at the tiller. I might now make sure that there went but five
seamen to this ship's company. The ugly cook leaned in the door of his
galley puffing at a cigarette. The sun was low, his light crimson; his
fan-shaped wake streamed in scarlet glory under him to the very shadow
of the schooner, and the little fabric, slightly leaning from the soft
and pleasant breeze, floated through the rose-colored atmosphere, her
sails of the tincture of delicate cloth of gold, her bright masts
veined with fire, her shrouds as she gently rolled catching the western
light until they burned out upon the eye as though of polished brass.
The two Spaniards arrived on deck, each with an immensely long cigar
in his mouth. Don Christoval addressed me pleasantly in his excellent
English. He asked me with an air of grand courtesy if I now felt
perfectly well, inquired the speed of the schooner, my opinion of
her, my experiences of the Bay of Biscay in this month of August, and
inquired if I was acquainted with the coast of England, and especially
with that part comprised between St. Bees Head and Morecambe Bay. His
friend eagerly listened, keeping his fiery eyes fastened upon my face,
and whenever I had occasion to say more than "yes" or "no," he would
call upon Don Christoval to interpret.
Shortly after the tall Don had ceased his questions--and I found no
expression in his handsome face and in the steady gaze of his glowing
impassioned eyes to hint to me whether my replies satisfied him or
not--Captain Dopping came up out of the cabin.
"Now, Mr. Portlack," said he, in his harsh, intemperate voice, yet
intending nothing but civility, as I could judge, "get you to your
supper, sir; eat hearty, and you can make as free with the liquor as
your common sense thinks prudent."
I was hungry, having tasted no food since the meal of beef and
biscuit which had been set before me when I was first brought on
board; nevertheless I entered the cabin and took my place with some
diffidence. I felt a sort of embarrassment in eating alone and helping
myself--perhaps because of the shore-going appearance of the interior;
it was like making free in a gentleman's dining-room, the host being
absent. Tom, the nigger boy, waited upon me. He gave me a dish of
excellent soup, and I fared sumptuously on spiced beef, some sort of
dried fish that was excellent eating, potatoes, beans, fruit, and
the like. The fruit was fresh enough to make me understand that the
vessel was but recently from port. There were several kinds of wines in
decanters upon the table; but two glasses of sherry sufficed me, though
two such glasses of sherry I had never before drank. It might be that
I was no judge, but to my palate the flavor of that amber-colored wine
was exquisite.
The negro boy stood near waiting and watching me intently in the
intervals of his business. Had the skylight been closed I should have
put some questions to him, but the regular passage of the shadows of
the two Spaniards upon the glass of the skylight as they walked the
deck, warned me to be very wary. The change, not indeed from an open
boat, but from the decks and the cabin of the Ocean Ranger to this
interior, with its pictures, mirrors, its handsomely equipped and most
hospitable table, was great indeed, and as I looked about me I found
it difficult to realize the experience I was passing through. I could
now tell by the weight of the fork and spoon which I handled that the
plate which glittered upon the white damask cloth was solid silver.
There could be no doubt whatever that the furniture of a drawing-room
or of a boudoir had gone to the equipment of this cabin. Nothing seemed
to fit, nothing had that air of oceanic _fixity_ which you look for
in sea-going decorations. But a quality of tawdriness stole into the
general appearance through contrast of the gilt, the looking glasses,
the pictures, the velvet, with the plain, worn sides of the vessel, the
rude cabin beams, and the gray and even grimy ceiling or upper deck. I
asked the negro boy if he spoke English.
"Yes, massa," said he, "I speak English, nuffin else, tank de Lord."
"Were you shipped at Cadiz?"
"Yes sah."
"I suppose they found you cruising about on the look-out for a job."
He showed his teeth and smiled broadly and blandly, in silence
upturning his dusky eyes to the skylight. It was no business of mine to
question him, but I thought it as likely as not that he had run from
some American vessel, for it was hard to imagine that a lad who was
undoubtedly a Yankee negro, and who I might fully believe was without a
word of Spanish, would be idling in Cadiz.
I was about to go on deck when the boy said to me, "Do yah know where
yaw've to sleep?"
"In the 'tween decks I understood," said I.
"I'll show yah, massa, I'll show yah. Dis is de road to your bedroom,
sah," and, somewhat to my surprise, he went to a little door at the
foremost end of the cabin, opened it, and conducted me into a part of
the schooner that was almost immediately under the main-hatch. The
main-hatch was a very wide square, and the cover of it was formed
of three pieces, one portion of which was lifted so that light and
air penetrated; the sun was still above the horizon, and I could see
plainly. A hammock had been swung in a corner on the starboard side;
it was to be my bed, and there was no other article of furniture; but
then I was a sailor, very well able to dispense with all conveniences,
requiring nothing but a bucket of fresh brine to supply the absence of
a wash-stand. There was a quantity of rope, some bolts of canvas, and
other matters of that kind stowed away down here. The space, however,
was no more than a good sized cabin, owing to the after bulk-head
coming well forward and the forecastle bulk-head standing well aft.
Having taken a brief survey of my quarters, heaving as I did so a
melancholy sigh of regret over the new sea-chest, the quantity of
wearing apparel, the nautical instruments, books and old home memorials
which the Ocean Ranger had sailed away with, and which it was as likely
as not I should never hear of again, I re-entered the cabin and mounted
the short flight of companion steps. Captain Dopping was walking with
the two Spaniards. I went a little way forward to leeward, and leaned
upon the rail, looking at the sea. The breeze was soft and pleasant,
warm with the long day of sunshine, and the schooner was sliding in
buoyant launchings over the round brows of the wide heave of the swell
which in the far dim east swayed in folds of soft deep violet to the
tender magical coloring of the shadow of the coming night that had
paused in the heavens there. Four of the seamen were sitting in the
schooner's head, watching with amused hairy countenances the face of
the cook Mariana, who grotesquely gesticulated and contorted his form
in his efforts to address them in English. On a sudden Captain Dopping
crossed the deck, holding a handsome cigar case filled.
"Don Christoval wants to know if you smoke?" said he.
I took a cigar and lighted it at the stump which Captain Dopping was
smoking, and perceiving that Don Christoval observed me, I raised
my hat, and made him a low bow, which he returned with the majesty
of a grandee. The captain resumed his place at the side of the two
Spaniards, and I smoked my cigar alone, with wonder fast increasing
upon me as I looked at the cigar, and then reflected upon the
entertainment I was fresh from, and recollected how Captain Dopping
had pronounced the word _pay_. What did it all mean? What mystery was
signified, what proposals presently to come were indicated by this
handsome, this hospitable reception of a distressed seaman--a mere
second mate as I was or had been, rendered destitute by disaster--one
of a crowd of obscure persons without pretensions of any kind or sort?
Surely, had I been a nobleman, a man in the highest degree important
and influential, this treatment could scarcely have been more liberal
and considerate.
I had nearly smoked out the exceedingly fine cigar when Captain
Dopping, in his rasping voice, cried out to one of the men--I believe
it was to the man George South--to step aft and take charge of the deck
for a bit. I turned my head, and found that the two Spaniards had gone
below. Captain Dopping beckoned to me, but the gesture was not wanting
in respect. He was but a Deal longshore man, though superior to the
ordinary run of those fellows, and was impressed or, at all events,
influenced by my holding a master's certificate and, let me say it
without vanity, for it is a thing to concern me but little after all
these years, by my speech, manners, and appearance.
"You are wanted in the cabin," said he, and he led the way below.