“Oh, confound the chart!” I broke out, finding this flow of plausible comfort too dismally suggestive for my nerves. “Look at it, man! Supposing anything happens—supposing it blows a gale! But it’s no good shivering here and staring at the view. I’m going below.”
There was a mauvais quart d’heure below, during which, I am ashamed to say, I forgot the quest.
“Which soup do you feel inclined for?” said Davies, timidly, after a black silence of some minutes.
That simple remark, more eloquent of security than a thousand technical arguments, saved the situation.
“I say, Davies,” I said, “I’m a white-livered cur at the best, and you mustn’t spare me. But you’re not like any yachtsman I ever met before, or any sailor of any sort. You’re so casual and quiet in the extraordinary things you do. I believe I should like you better if you let fly a volley of deep-sea oaths sometimes, or threatened to put me in irons.”
Davies opened wide eyes, and said it was all his fault for forgetting that I was not as used to such anchorages as he was. “And, by the way,” he added, “as to its blowing a gale, I shouldn’t wonder if it did; the glass is falling hard; but it can’t hurt us. You see, even at high water the drift of the sea——”
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, don’t begin again. You’ll prove soon that we’re safer here than in an hotel. Let’s have dinner, and a thundering good one!”
Dinner ran a smooth course, but just as coffee was being brewed the hull, from pitching regularly, began to roll.
“I knew she would,” said Davies. “I was going to warn you, only—the ebb has set in against the wind. It’s quite safe——”
“I thought you said it would get calmer when the tide fell?”