His picturesque appearance had impressed us equally during the day, but until now we had not met in concert about Christian Garth, for such we soon found was the name of our polite pilot.
He was a Jerseyman, he told us, of German descent, married to the girl of his heart, and living on the coast of that adventurous little State, famous alike for its peaches and wrecks.
"Sall had a stocking full of money," he informed us, "silver, and copper, and gold, when he married her, for her mother had been a famous huckster—and never missed her post in the Philadelphia market for thirty years, and this was her child's inheritance, and with this money he had fixed up his old hut, till it looked 'e'en a'most inside like a ship-captain's cabin.'"
And now Sall wanted him to stay at home, he informed us, with her and the children, but somehow or other he could never tarry long at the hearth, for the sea pulled him like it was his mother, and the spell of the tides was on him, and he must foller even if he went to his own destruction, like them men that liquor lures to loss, or the love of mermaids.
"All land service is dead when likened to the sea," he said, shaking his great water-dog head, and looking out lovingly upon his idol. "But ships a'n't like they oncst was, ladies," he added, "before men put these here heavy iron ingines to work in 'em—it's like cropping a bird's wing to make a river-boat of a ship, and a dead, dead shame to shorten sails till it looks like a young gal dressed in breeches or any other onnatural thing—for a sailing-ship and a full-flowing petticoat always rise up in a true man's mind together—God bless them both, I say."
"To which we cordially say amen, of course," said Miss Lamarque, laughing. "We should have been at a loss, however, Mr. Garth, but for our engine during the dead calm preceding the storm, when our ship's sails flapped so lazily about her masts, and she rocked like a baby's cradle without making progress. It is well the engineer manoeuvred so successfully while we lay fireless on the low rolling waves; but we are speeding along merrily enough now, to make up for it all—I take comfort in that—"
"But not exactly in the right direction, though, to suit my stripe," he said, turning his quid in his mouth as he looked out to leeward, revealing, as he did so, a fine yet rugged profile relieved against the silvery purple sheen of the moonlit sky.
"Do you see that dark object lying beyond" (our eyes mechanically followed his), "so still on the water?" and he indicated it with the pipe he held in one sinewy hand—for the native courtesy of the man had involuntarily proffered us the homage of removing it from his lips, when we addressed him.
"Yes—what is it? a wreck? a whale? a small volcanic island? Do explain, Mr. Garth," said Miss Lamarque.
"Nothing but an iceberg, and we are bearing down upon it rather too rapidly, it seems to me."