“Madge!” exclaimed the little captain, smiling as she tried to re-arrange her hair. “What a funny name for a monkey. Why, that is my name!”
After a few advances the monkey became very friendly with the other girls, but she would have nothing to do with Madge. She would fly into a perfect tempest of rage whenever Madge approached her or tried to talk to her. The monkey even deserted her master to perch in Tania’s arms. The animal put its little, scrawny arms about the queer child’s neck, and there was almost the same elfish, wistful look in both pairs of dark eyes.
“Do you catch many fish in these waters?” inquired Eleanor, whose housewifely soul was interested in the big basket of lobsters that she saw crawling about, writhing and twisting as though they were in agony.
“Almost every kind that lives in temperate waters,” answered the sailor, “but there is nothing like the variety one finds in the tropics.”
“Were you once a sea captain?” asked Lillian curiously.
The man shook his head. “I’m not a captain in the United States service,” he returned. “I am called captain in these parts, ‘Captain Jules,’ but I have only commanded a freight schooner.”
“I know I have no right to be so curious,” interposed Madge, “but I dearly love everything about the sea. Were you ever a deep sea diver? Somehow you look like one.”
“I was a pearl-fisher for many years,” the seaman answered as calmly as though diving for pearls was one of the most ordinary trades in the world. But his eyes twinkled as he heard Madge’s gasp of admiration and caught the expression on the faces of the other girls.
“You were looking for pearls in those oysters and mussel shells when our boat came along, weren’t you?” divined Madge, regarding him with large eyes.
The man nodded a smiling answer.