“Have you superstitions about dates?” he asked after another pause.
“No; I don’t think so. My life has been so uneventful. Few days record anything memorable. But why did you ask?”
“I am—I am a devout believer in lucky and unlucky days, and had I only bethought me this was a Friday, I’d have put off our sail till to-morrow.”
“It is strange to see a man like you attach importance to these things.”
“And yet it is exactly men like me who do so. Superstitions belong to hardy, stern, rugged races, like the northmen, even more than the’ natives of southern climes. Too haughty and too self-dependent to ask counsel from others like themselves, they seek advice in the occult signs and faint whispers of the natural world. Would you believe it, that I cast a horoscope last night to know if I should succeed in the next project I undertook?”
“And what was the answer?”
“An enigma to this purpose: that if what I undertook corresponded with the entrance of Orion into the seventh house—Why are you laughing?”
“Is it not too absurd to hear such nonsense from you?”
“Was it not the grotesque homage of the witch made Macbeth a murderer? What are you doing, child? Luff—luff up; the wind is freshening.”
“I begin to think there should be a more skilful hand on the tiller. It blows freshly now.”