One certain method to provoke Cap’n Brackett to narration is to pretend incredulity. I smiled in a wary fashion, and said nothing.
“There was one whale I saw four times, myself,” he asserted.
“How do you know it was the same?”
“He was marked.... And the hand of Fate was in it, too.”
I turned the leaves of the book, and chuckled provokingly, watching covertly the captain’s countenance; and, as I expected, he began presently to tell the story that was in his mind. His gruff old voice ran quietly along; the fire puffed and flared as the wind whistled down the chimney, the snow flurried past the windows and hid the harbor below us. Cap’n Brackett’s voice droned on.
II
“You never heard of Eric Scarf,” the old man thoughtfully began. “Not more’n three or four men alive now that knew him. He were mate of the Thomas Pownal when I knew him; a big, straight, fiery man, powerful and strong. He came of some Northland breed, with a great shock of yellow hair, and eyes as blue as the sea; but he was not like most Norsemen in being slow of speech and dull of wit. Quick he was; quick to speak, and quick to think, and quick to act; quick to anger, quick to take hurt, and quick to know Joan for the one woman, when she began that v’y’ge on the Thomas Pownal.
“James Tobbey was the captain of the Pownal; Joan was his daughter. She was a laughing girl, always laughing; a child. Her hair was fine-spun and golden, and it curled. When the fog got into it, it kinked into ringlets as crisp as blubber scraps. You wanted to rub them in your hands, and hear them crinkle and crackle between your palms. And her voice, when she laughed, was the same way, crisp and clean and strong; and her eyes were brown. Give a girl light curly hair and dark brown eyes, and any man’s heart will skip a beat or so at seeing her.
“She used to be everywhere about the ship, always laughing; and little Jem Marvel forever hobbling at her heels. Jem was a baby, a little crippled baby, the son of a sister of Joan’s who had died when Jem was born; and Jem’s father was dead before that, although no one knew it till the Andrew Thomes came back without him, two years after.