Either he disbelieved my narrative, or fancied that it might involve himself in some trouble, for he doggedly said I had no right to come aboard of her without his leave, and that he should certainly put in at Ramsgate and hand me over to the authorities.
“Be it so,” said I, with an affected indifference. “The greater fool you not to earn fifty guineas for a kind office than go out of your way to do a churlish one.”
He left me at this to go up on deck, and came down again about half an hour later. I heard enough to convince me that the wind was freshening, and that a heavy sea, too, was getting up, so that in all likelihood he would hesitate ere he 'd try to put in at Ramsgate. He did not speak to me this time, but sat with folded arms watching me as I lay pretending to be asleep. At length he said,—
“I say, friend, you 've got no passport, I suppose? How do you mean to land in France? or, if there, how do you propose to travel?”
“These are matters I don't mean to trouble you about, Captain,” said I, haughtily; and though I said the words boldly enough, it was exactly the very puzzle that was then working in my brain.
“Ay, sir; but they are exactly matters that concern me; for you are not on the schooner's manifest,—you are not one of her crew,—and I don't mean to get into trouble on your behalf.”
“Put me ashore at night, or leave me to reach it in any way,” said I, half angrily; for I was well-nigh out of patience at these everlasting difficulties.
He made no reply to this speech, but starting suddenly up, like a man who had hastily made up his mind on some particular course, he went up on deck. I overheard orders given, and immediately after a stir and bustle among the sailors, and in my anxiety at once connected myself with these movements. What project had they regarding me? In what way did they mean to treat me?—were the questions that rose to my mind. The heavy working of the craft showed me that her course had been altered, and I began to dread lest we should be turning again towards England.
From these thoughts my mind wandered back and back, reviewing the chief events of my life, and wondering whether I were ever destined to reach one spot that I could rest in, and where my weary spirit might find peace. To be the sport of Fortune in her most wilful of moods seemed, indeed, my lot; and to go on through life unattached to my fellows, appeared my fate. I remember once to have read in some French author that the attachment we feel to home, the sacred names of son and brother, are not more than the instincts of habit; that natural affection, as it is called, has no real existence; and that it is the mere force of repetition that forms the tie by which we love those whom we call father or mother. It is a cold and a cheerless theory, and yet now it struck me with a certain melancholy satisfaction to think that, save in the name of parentage, I was not worse off than others.
The hours glided on unnoticed as I lay thus dreaming, and night at last fell, dark and starless. I had almost attained to a kind of careless indifference as to my future, when the mate, coming up to me, said,—