The Captain, however, scarcely appeared to relish the commission, or to be by any means confident of his powers of executing it. He had arranged the future life and adventures of Walter so very differently, and so entirely to his own satisfaction; he had felicitated himself so often on the sagacity and foresight displayed in that arrangement, and had found it so complete and perfect in all its parts; that to suffer it to go to pieces all at once, and even to assist in breaking it up, required a great effort of his resolution. The Captain, too, found it difficult to unload his old ideas upon the subject, and to take a perfectly new cargo on board, with that rapidity which the circumstances required, or without jumbling and confounding the two. Consequently, instead of putting on his coat and waistcoat with anything like the impetuosity that could alone have kept pace with Walter’s mood, he declined to invest himself with those garments at all at present; and informed Walter that on such a serious matter, he must be allowed to “bite his nails a bit”.
“It’s an old habit of mine, Wal”r,” said the Captain, “any time these fifty year. When you see Ned Cuttle bite his nails, Wal”r, then you may know that Ned Cuttle’s aground.”
Thereupon the Captain put his iron hook between his teeth, as if it were a hand; and with an air of wisdom and profundity that was the very concentration and sublimation of all philosophical reflection and grave inquiry, applied himself to the consideration of the subject in its various branches.
“There’s a friend of mine,” murmured the Captain, in an absent manner, “but he’s at present coasting round to Whitby, that would deliver such an opinion on this subject, or any other that could be named, as would give Parliament six and beat ’em. Been knocked overboard, that man,” said the Captain, “twice, and none the worse for it. Was beat in his apprenticeship, for three weeks (off and on), about the head with a ring-bolt. And yet a clearer-minded man don’t walk.”
In spite of his respect for Captain Cuttle, Walter could not help inwardly rejoicing at the absence of this sage, and devoutly hoping that his limpid intellect might not be brought to bear on his difficulties until they were quite settled.
“If you was to take and show that man the buoy at the Nore,” said Captain Cuttle in the same tone, “and ask him his opinion of it, Wal”r, he’d give you an opinion that was no more like that buoy than your Uncle’s buttons are. There ain’t a man that walks—certainly not on two legs—that can come near him. Not near him!”
“What’s his name, Captain Cuttle?” inquired Walter, determined to be interested in the Captain’s friend.
“His name’s Bunsby,” said the Captain. “But Lord, it might be anything for the matter of that, with such a mind as his!”
The exact idea which the Captain attached to this concluding piece of praise, he did not further elucidate; neither did Walter seek to draw it forth. For on his beginning to review, with the vivacity natural to himself and to his situation, the leading points in his own affairs, he soon discovered that the Captain had relapsed into his former profound state of mind; and that while he eyed him steadfastly from beneath his bushy eyebrows, he evidently neither saw nor heard him, but remained immersed in cogitation.