Mr Carker pared his nails delicately with a penknife, and smiled at the Captain, who was standing by the door looking at him.
“I excessively regret poor Gay,” said Carker, “and the crew. I understand there were some of our very best men among ’em. It always happens so. Many men with families too. A comfort to reflect that poor Gay had no family, Captain Cuttle!”
The Captain stood rubbing his chin, and looking at the Manager. The Manager glanced at the unopened letters lying on his desk, and took up the newspaper.
“Is there anything I can do for you, Captain Cuttle?” he asked looking off it, with a smiling and expressive glance at the door.
“I wish you could set my mind at rest, Sir, on something it’s uneasy about,” returned the Captain.
“Ay!” exclaimed the Manager, “what’s that? Come, Captain Cuttle, I must trouble you to be quick, if you please. I am much engaged.”
“Lookee here, Sir,” said the Captain, advancing a step. “Afore my friend Wal”r went on this here disastrous voyage—”
“Come, come, Captain Cuttle,” interposed the smiling Manager, “don’t talk about disastrous voyages in that way. We have nothing to do with disastrous voyages here, my good fellow. You must have begun very early on your day’s allowance, Captain, if you don’t remember that there are hazards in all voyages, whether by sea or land. You are not made uneasy by the supposition that young what’s-his-name was lost in bad weather that was got up against him in these offices—are you? Fie, Captain! Sleep, and soda-water, are the best cures for such uneasiness as that.”
“My lad,” returned the Captain, slowly—“you are a’most a lad to me, and so I don’t ask your pardon for that slip of a word,—if you find any pleasure in this here sport, you ain’t the gentleman I took you for. And if you ain’t the gentleman I took you for, may be my mind has call to be uneasy. Now this is what it is, Mr Carker.—Afore that poor lad went away, according to orders, he told me that he warn’t a going away for his own good, or for promotion, he know’d. It was my belief that he was wrong, and I told him so, and I come here, your head governor being absent, to ask a question or two of you in a civil way, for my own satisfaction. Them questions you answered—free. Now it’ll ease my mind to know, when all is over, as it is, and when what can’t be cured must be endoored—for which, as a scholar, you’ll overhaul the book it’s in, and thereof make a note—to know once more, in a word, that I warn’t mistaken; that I warn’t back’ard in my duty when I didn’t tell the old man what Wal”r told me; and that the wind was truly in his sail, when he highsted of it for Barbados Harbour. Mr Carker,” said the Captain, in the goodness of his nature, “when I was here last, we was very pleasant together. If I ain’t been altogether so pleasant myself this morning, on account of this poor lad, and if I have chafed again any observation of yours that I might have fended off, my name is Ed’ard Cuttle, and I ask your pardon.”
“Captain Cuttle,” returned the Manager, with all possible politeness, “I must ask you to do me a favour.”