At the close of the dessert, we happened to know that he had quitted the table and gone on deck, by one of the waiters coming down and requesting Mr. Overslaugh (who was sitting a-tilt, while discussing his walnuts, with his chair balanced on one leg, and his head leaning against the wainscot) to let him pass for a moment, while he went into No. eleventeen for that gentleman's overcoat. I now found that the servants had converted No. 13 into eleventeen. By-the-bye, that gentleman had a state-room all to himself, sometimes occupying the upper and sometimes the under berth.
"Captain Santlow," said Mr. Fenton, "allow me to ask you the name of that gentleman."
"Oh! I don't know"—replied the captain, trying to suppress a smile—"at least I have forgotten it—some English name; for he is an Englishman—he came on board at Plymouth, and his indisposition commenced immediately. Mrs. Cummings, shall I have the pleasure of peeling an orange for you?"
I now recollected a little incident which had set me laughing soon after we left Plymouth, and when we were beating down the coast of Devonshire. I had been trying to write at the table in the Ladies' Cabin, but it was one of those days when
"Our paper, pen and ink, and we
Roll up and down our ships at sea."
And all I could do was to take refuge in my berth, and endeavour to read, leaving the door open for more air. My attention, however, was continually withdrawn from my book by the sound of things that were dislodged from their places, sliding or falling, and frequently suffering destruction; though sometimes miraculously escaping unhurt.
While I was watching the progress of two pitchers that had been tossed out of the washing-stand, and after deluging the floor with water, had met in the Ladies' Cabin, and were rolling amicably side by side, without happening to break each other, I saw a barrel of flour start from the steward's pantry, and running across the dining-room, stop at a gentleman that lay extended in a lower berth with his room door open, and pour out its contents upon him, completely enveloping him in a fog of meal. I heard the steward, who was busily engaged in mopping up the water that had flowed from the pitchers, call out, "Run, boys, run, that gentleman's smothering up in flour—go take the barrel off him—jump, I tell you!"
How that gentleman acted while hidden in the cloud of flour, I could not perceive, and immediately the closing of the folding doors shut out the scene.
For a few days after he appeared among us, there was some speculation with regard to this nameless stranger, whose taciturnity seemed his chief characteristic. One morning while we were looking at the gambols of a shoal of porpoises that were tumbling through the waves and sometimes leaping out of them, my husband made some remark on the clumsy antics of this unsightly fish, addressing himself, for the first time, to the unknown Englishman, who happened to be standing near him. That gentleman smiled affably, but made no reply. Mr. Fenton pursued the subject—and that gentleman smiled still more affably, and walked away.
Nevertheless, he was neither deaf nor dumb, nor melancholy, but had only "a great talent for silence," and as is usually the case with persons whose genius lies that way, he was soon left entirely to himself, no one thinking it worth while to take the trouble of extracting words from him. In truth, he was so impracticable, and at the same time so evidently insignificant, and so totally uninteresting, that his fellow-passengers tacitly conveyed him to Coventry; and in Coventry he seemed perfectly satisfied to dwell. Once or twice Captain Santlow was asked again if he recollected the name of that gentleman; but he always replied with a sort of smile, "I cannot say I do—not exactly, at least—but I'll look at my manifest and see"—and he never failed to turn the conversation to something else.