“Because there’s nothing there, my deary,” said the Captain. “Don’t be took aback, pretty creetur! Don’t, for the sake of Wal”r, as was dear to all on us! That there lad,” said the Captain, “arter working with the best, and standing by the faint-hearted, and never making no complaint nor sign of fear, and keeping up a spirit in all hands that made ’em honour him as if he’d been a admiral—that lad, along with the second-mate and one seaman, was left, of all the beatin’ hearts that went aboard that ship, the only living creeturs—lashed to a fragment of the wreck, and driftin’ on the stormy sea.”
“Were they saved?” cried Florence.
“Days and nights they drifted on them endless waters,” said the Captain, “until at last—No! Don’t look that way, pretty!—a sail bore down upon ’em, and they was, by the Lord’s mercy, took aboard: two living and one dead.”
“Which of them was dead?” cried Florence.
“Not the lad I speak on,” said the Captain.
“Thank God! oh thank God!”
“Amen!” returned the Captain hurriedly. “Don’t be took aback! A minute more, my lady lass! with a good heart!—aboard that ship, they went a long voyage, right away across the chart (for there warn’t no touching nowhere), and on that voyage the seaman as was picked up with him died. But he was spared, and—”
The Captain, without knowing what he did, had cut a slice of bread from the loaf, and put it on his hook (which was his usual toasting-fork), on which he now held it to the fire; looking behind Florence with great emotion in his face, and suffering the bread to blaze and burn like fuel.
“Was spared,” repeated Florence, “and—?”
“And come home in that ship,” said the Captain, still looking in the same direction, “and—don’t be frightened, pretty—and landed; and one morning come cautiously to his own door to take a obserwation, knowing that his friends would think him drownded, when he sheered off at the unexpected—”