“Beautiful, isn’t she, mamma?” cries Bessy, exulting in the positive loveliness of the craft.
“A noble ship, madam,” says Basil; “and everybody predicts as swift as a bird.”
Mrs. Carraways glances aloft, then sideways; then sliding her hand under the arm of her husband, she asks, a little tremulously, “Do you think, Gilbert, she is quite safe? The first voyage! Of course, somebody must go the first voyage. Still, do you feel confident she is safe?”
“Safe as the ark, my dear,” answers Carraways, with a jocund laugh, squeezing his wife’s arm at the same time.
“And how long”—Mrs. Carraways had already twenty times put the self-same query—“how long shall we be shut up in this ship? I mean, how long will the voyage”—
“Oh, Captain Goodbody will pledge his name and fame as a sailor,”—cries Carraways—“not more than four months. Perhaps, a bare sixteen weeks. Why, what’s the matter?”
“Nothing, dear; nothing,” says the wife, with a blank face. “It’s the—the smell of the tar—the pitch—it always made my heart sink; but—it’s very strange—never so much as now.”
“How very odd, mamma!” cries Bessy; “but you will think me a curious creature. Upon my word, I think the odour rather pleasant; indeed, positively agreeable,” and the bride inhaled the pitched deck and tarred ropes as though she stood in a rose-garden. Bessy’s valorous nostril made even her mother smile through her paleness; and Carraways with a laugh declared the girl ought to have been born a mermaid. Basil, with proud and glowing looks, silently listened to the enthusiasm of his betrothed.
“I never did see a place in such a litter,” said Mrs. Carraways, looking with the eye of huswife at the crowded, scattered deck. “And all those ropes, Gilbert; why, they never can get them out of tangle by the time they say.”
“Never fear, lass; sailors can do anything. All they have to do with time is to beat it. But come, let us look over our house. As we are to be tenants for some weeks, you’ll like to see the drawing-room and dining-room; the parlours, the kitchens, the garrets; and all the other conveniences of the dwelling. And let me tell you, it has one capital recommendation: it has no taxes. Basil, lad, show the way.”