So speaking, the Abbé held open the door of communication and bowed the Marquise into the adjoining room, where food and wine were served with all the ceremonious grace of the old Court. His brow was never smoother, his smile never more assured; but as soon as he found himself alone, he sat down at the writing-table and buried his face in his hands.
“So fair a scheme!” he muttered. “So deep! So well-arranged! And to fail at last like this! But what tools I have had to work with! What tools! What tools!”
Meantime two honest voices in the bar were pealing louder and louder in joyous interchange of questions, congratulations, and entreaties to drink. The shouts of laughter that had reached the Marquise at the top of the stairs came from no less powerful lungs than those of Slap-Jack, who had stolen down from the hill as usual for the hindrance of Alice in her household duties. He was leaning over her chair, probably to assist her in mending the house linen, when his occupation was interrupted by the arrival of a tall, dried-up looking personage dressed in a long duffle coat, who entered the sanctum with a valise and other luggage in his hands. Something in the ship-shape accuracy with which he disposed of these roused Slap-Jack’s professional attention, and when the stranger turning round pushed his hat off his forehead, and shut one eye to have a good look, recognition on both sides was instantaneous and complete.
“Why, Alice, it’s Smoke-Jack!” exclaimed her sweetheart, while volumes would have failed to express more of delight and astonishment than the new-comer conveyed in the simple ejaculation, “Well! Blow me!”
A bowl of punch was ordered, and pipes were lit forthwith, Alice filling her lover’s coquettishly, and applying a match to it with her own pretty fingers. Smoke-Jack looked on approving, and winked several times in succession. Mentally he was scanning the damsel with a critical eye, her bows, her run, her figure-head, her tackle, and the trim of her generally. When the punch came he filled three glasses to the brim, and observed with great solemnity—
“My sarvice to you, shipmate, and your consort. The sooner you two gets spliced the better. No offence, young woman. If I’d ever come across such a craft as yourn, mate, I’d have been spliced myself. But these here doesn’t swim to windward in shoals like black fish, and I was never a chap to take and leap overboard promiscuous after a blessed mermyed ’a-cause she hailed me off a reef. That’s why I’m a driftin’ to leeward this day. I’ll take it as a favour, young woman, if you’ll sip from my glass!”
This was the longest speech Slap-Jack ever remembered from his shipmate, and was valued accordingly. It was obvious that Smoke-Jack, contrary to his usual principles, which were anti-matrimonial, looked on his old friend’s projected alliance with the utmost favour. The three found themselves extremely pleasant company. Alice, indeed, moved in and out on her household duties, rendered the more engrossing that her aunt was occupied in the kitchen, but the two seamen stuck to the leeside of their bowl of punch till it was emptied, and never ceased smoking the whole time. They had so much to talk about, so many old stories to recall, questions to ask, and details to furnish on their own different fortunes since they met, to say nothing of the toasts that accompanied each separate glass.
They drank ‘The Bashful Maid’ twice, and Alice three times, in the course of their merry-making. Now it came to pass that during their conversation the name of Captain Bold was mentioned by Slap-Jack, as an individual whose head it would give him extreme gratification to punch on some fitting occasion; and that his friend showed some special interest in the subject appeared by the cock of his eye and the removal of his pipe from between his lips.
“Bold!” repeated Smoke-Jack, as if taxing his memory. “Captain Bold you calls him. Not a real skipper, but only a soger captain, belike?”
“Not even good enough for a soger to my thinking,” answered the other, in a tone of disgust. “Look ye here, brother, I’ve heard some of the old hands say, though, mind ye, I doesn’t go along with them, that sogers is like onions, never looks so well as when you hangs them up in a string. But this here captain’s not even good enough for hanging, though he’ll come to the yard-arm at last, or I’m mistaken.”