“I shan’t want it then. Once I’m independent of trade, I shall want to stick to it.”
This was of course unintelligible to Captain Welfare, with his ideal of “retiring”; but I understood perfectly. I said to myself, “The bishop was right. Edmund must have some service to perform as soon as possible.”
A tremendous sleepiness came upon me, and early as it was I said good-night and turned in.
I was on deck betimes next morning and found the sun well up in a clear blue April morning sky. The Astarte was foaming along very gaily with free sheets, two big square sails set on her foremast and all her head-sails drawing. There was a fair amount of following sea from which she lifted her short counter with exhilarating buoyancy.
She struck me as bigger and more of a ship than I had expected. The bulwarks round the afterdeck were nearly breast high, as she had a great deal of free-board for her size. There was a kind of short waist amidships, covering the hold, and a small deck over the fo’c’sle. Her slightly raking masts and leg-o’-mutton sails looked a tremendous height from the deck, and the whole boat seemed to taper away to the great sloping bowsprit with its flight of jibs. I thought what a weird-looking craft she must be from outside. But I realised that her lines, though strange, must be beautiful.
Her decks were holystoned and scrubbed to the whiteness of paper, and the thin lines of caulking between the planks had the polish of jet. The inside of the bulwarks and other parts were newly painted in green and white, and the mahogany and brass of the sky-lights, the wheel and binnacle, all shone with the lustre of well-tended furniture.
Two or three of the crew were busy about the deck.
Their bare legs, shining like brown silk stockings, their bright, exotic costumes, and dark faces with teeth flashing as they grinned and chattered at their work, gave me a queer feeling of having been transported in my sleep to the unknown East.
One of them was a thin, delicate creature with a skin of the colour and polish of black-lead—a Soudanese as I afterwards learned.
The wheel was a little abaft of the saloon companion. It was in charge of a tall, gracefully built Arab in a handsome blue linen galabieh. As we were practically before the wind there was little strain on the wheel, which he handled delicately and instinctively with one hand. The soft fez at the back of his head was bound with the green of a descendant of the Prophet. His lean brown face had an essential air of aristocracy and command in its repose. Only his accipitrine eyes seemed alert, intent on everything from the horizon to the details of the work of the man nearest to him. He reminded me irresistibly of a half-tamed falcon on a perch.