Percival shot a rather displeased glance at him. "Don't go talking like that before the men," he said.
"I am not talking before the men," rejoined the steerage passenger, with a smile: "I am talking to you, Mr. Heron. And I repeat my question—Do you think we shall ever get to Pernambuco?"
"Yes," said Percival, stoutly. "A ship will see our signal and call for us."
"It's a very small flag," said Mackay, in a significant tone.
"Good Heavens!" burst out Percival, with the first departure from his good-humoured tone that Mackay had heard from him: "why do you take the trouble to put that side of the question to me? Don't you think I see it for myself? There is a chance, if it is only a small one; and I'm not going to give up hope—yet."
Then he walked away, as if he refused to discuss the subject any longer. Mackay looked at the sea and sighed; he was sorry that he had provoked Mr. Heron's wrath by his question. But he found afterwards that it contributed to form a kind of silent understanding between him and Percival. It was a sort of relief to both of them, occasionally to exchange short, sharp sentences of doubt or discouragement, which neither of them breathed in the ear of the others. Percival divined quickly enough, that the steerage passenger was not a man of Thomas Jackson's class. As the hoarseness left his voice, and the disfiguring redness disappeared from his face, Percival distinguished signs of refinement and culture which he wondered at himself for not perceiving earlier. But there was nothing remarkable in his having made a mistake about Mackay's station in life. The man had come on board the Arizona in a state of wretched suffering: his face had been scorched, his hair and beard singed, his clothes, as well as his person, blackened by dust and smoke. Then his clothes were those of a working-man, and his speech had been rendered harsh to the ear from the hoarseness of his voice. But he gradually regained his strength as he lay in the fresh air and the sunshine, and returning health gave back to him the quiet energy and cheerfulness to which Jackson had borne testimony. He was a great favourite with the men, who, in their rough way, made a sort of pet of him, and brought him offerings of the daintiest food that they could find. And his hands were not idle. He wove baskets and plaited hats of cocoa-nut fibre with his long white fingers, which were very unlike those of the working-man that he professed to be. Percival Heron was often struck by the appearance of that hand. It was one of unusual beauty—the sort of hand that Titian or Vandyke loved to draw: long, finely-shaped, full of quiet power, and fuller, perhaps, of a subtle sort of refinement, which seems to express itself in the form of tapering fingers with filbert nails and a well-turned wrist. It was not the hand of a working-man, not even of a skilled artizan, whose hand is often delicately sensitive: it was a gentleman's hand, and as such it piqued Percival's curiosity. But Mackay was of a reserved disposition, and did not offer any information about himself.
One day when rain was falling in sheets and torrents, as it did sometimes upon the Rocas Reef, Percival turned into the log hut for shelter. Mackay was there, too; his leg had been so painful that he had not left the rude bed, which his comrades had made for him, even to be carried out into the fresh air and sunshine, for two or three days. Percival noticed the look of pain in the languid eyes, and had, for a moment, a fancy that he had seen this man before. But the burns on his face, the handkerchief tied round his head to conceal a wound on the temple, and the tangled brown beard and moustache, made it difficult to seize hold of a possible likeness.
Percival threw himself on the ground with a half-sigh, and crossed his arms behind his head.
"Is anything the matter?" asked Mackay.
Percival noticed that he never addressed him as "Sir" or "Mr. Heron," unless the other men were present.