The Captain glanced at the newspaper in Mr Toots’s hand, and breathed short and hurriedly.
“Well,” pursued Mr Toots, “the reason why I’m rather late is, because I went up as far as Finchley first, to get some uncommonly fine chickweed that grows there, for Miss Dombey’s bird. But I came on here, directly afterwards. You’ve seen the paper, I suppose?”
The Captain, who had become cautious of reading the news, lest he should find himself advertised at full length by Mrs MacStinger, shook his head.
“Shall I read the passage to you?” inquired Mr Toots.
The Captain making a sign in the affirmative, Mr Toots read as follows, from the Shipping Intelligence:
“‘Southampton. The barque Defiance, Henry James, Commander, arrived in this port today, with a cargo of sugar, coffee, and rum, reports that being becalmed on the sixth day of her passage home from Jamaica, in’—in such and such a latitude, you know,” said Mr Toots, after making a feeble dash at the figures, and tumbling over them.
“Ay!” cried the Captain, striking his clenched hand on the table. “Heave ahead, my lad!”
“—latitude,” repeated Mr Toots, with a startled glance at the Captain, “and longitude so-and-so,—‘the look-out observed, half an hour before sunset, some fragments of a wreck, drifting at about the distance of a mile. The weather being clear, and the barque making no way, a boat was hoisted out, with orders to inspect the same, when they were found to consist of sundry large spars, and a part of the main rigging of an English brig, of about five hundred tons burden, together with a portion of the stem on which the words and letters “Son and H-” were yet plainly legible. No vestige of any dead body was to be seen upon the floating fragments. Log of the Defiance states, that a breeze springing up in the night, the wreck was seen no more. There can be no doubt that all surmises as to the fate of the missing vessel, the Son and Heir, port of London, bound for Barbados, are now set at rest for ever; that she broke up in the last hurricane; and that every soul on board perished.’”
Captain Cuttle, like all mankind, little knew how much hope had survived within him under discouragement, until he felt its death-shock. During the reading of the paragraph, and for a minute or two afterwards, he sat with his gaze fixed on the modest Mr Toots, like a man entranced; then, suddenly rising, and putting on his glazed hat, which, in his visitor’s honour, he had laid upon the table, the Captain turned his back, and bent his head down on the little chimneypiece.
“Oh” upon my word and honour,” cried Mr Toots, whose tender heart was moved by the Captain’s unexpected distress, “this is a most wretched sort of affair this world is! Somebody’s always dying, or going and doing something uncomfortable in it. I’m sure I never should have looked forward so much, to coming into my property, if I had known this. I never saw such a world. It’s a great deal worse than Blimber’s.”