"To-morrow, then, I must insist on this interview, since I reflect about it for several reasons."
"To-morrow he shall come," she said, sententiously; "and now try and sleep again. It is very necessary you should gather strength, for we shall be in port shortly, when all will be confusion."
I went to sleep, I remember, murmuring to myself: "The hands were the hands of Jacob, but the voice was the voice of Esau;" and my bewildered faculties found rest until the morning's dawn.
After a hasty toilet made by the careful hands of Mrs. Clayton, a matutinal visit made by Mrs. or Lady Raymond, who always rose early as she informed me, and a cup of tea, very soothing to my prostrated nerves, the potentate of the Latona was duly announced.
Our ship's master was a tall, gaunt, sandy-haired man, with steady gray eyes, hard features, and enormous hands and feet, the first freckled and awkward, the last so long as very nearly to span the space between his seat (a small Spanish-leather trunk) and the berth I reposed in. He entered without his hat; and the swoop of the head he made to avoid the entanglement of the curtain was supposed to do double duty, and serve as a bow to the inmate of his state-room as well, for his I supposed it to be at the time, and he did not contradict me.
"I hope you find yourself comfortable, marm, on board of my ship."
"And in your state-room, captain!" I interrupted promptly.
"Wall, you see it all belongs to me, kinder," he said, after seating himself, as he rubbed his huge, projecting knees, plainly indicated through his nankeen trousers, with his capacious, horny hands. "I'm not very particular, though, where I sleep on shipboard, but at home there's few more so."
"I thought a captain was more at home on shipboard than anywhere else," I pursued mechanically; "such is the theory at least."
"Oh, not at all, not at all; when he has a snug nest on land, with a wife and children waiting to receive him. You might as well talk of a man in the new settlements bein' more at home in his wagon than in his neat, hewn-log cabin."