"'For Heaven's sake, what was it?' I broke out eagerly. 'Well, then, Ned,' answered he, leaning back on the two back legs of his chair, and eyeing me with a comical air, which surprised me a little; 'do you consider yourself good-looking?' I started up. 'What do you mean by that, Tom?' said I; but next moment I sat down again with a sulky 'No, I'll be hanged if I do! so——' 'No more does your lady-love, then,' said Westwood, 'for she made the remark very coolly, and even without my asking her—but don't be down-hearted at that, my dear Ned, for I think more of that little sentence, in the way it was said, than of all she did not say!' 'The greater the difference between us, I suppose,' said I savagely. 'Why,' replied Tom, ''tis my conviction you never hear a woman say the man she likes is handsome—and from a perverse young gipsy like——' 'Well, by Jove! Westwood,' said I, losing my temper altogether, and giving the table a slap with my fist that sent my glass crash to the deck, 'you beat everything! I suppose if she'd called me a fool and a blessed lubber, you'd turn it to my favour. But the truth is, I don't understand your niceties—I want something broad and above-board, that a fellow can lay hold of—and the short and the long of it is——' With that I laid my face on my arms down in the spilt grog on the table, and fairly groaned. My head reeled till I scarce knew it was myself that was sitting there, as all of a sudden one thought after another crowded on me. Somehow I seemed for a single moment to be out and out in the open sea, the different faces I'd seen along the ship's bulwarks rushing past me, with Jones's face, and the look of the Indiaman in the sunset; through all sorts of weather, too, in that confounded moment.
"Then, I can't say why, but my hair crept as I came back to the thought of the Indiaman and the schooner in the calm at the time, and I almost fancied I heard a whisper at my ear. I looked up, and saw Tom Westwood sitting opposite me, with a musing air, and rather melancholy. The sight of my wild stare, with the grog I suppose trickling down my forehead, and dripping off my nose, appeared to startle him, and our eyes met queerly enough for half-a-minute—till all at once the notion seemed to strike both of us, of the absurdity of two fellows hobnobbing and lackadaisying away this fashion in a hole of a schooner's cabin, thousands of miles from land; and I'm blessed if we didn't both burst at the same moment into regular roars of laughter—first one broadside, then 'bout ship, as it were, to deliver the other, gun after gun. By George! though, I felt it do me good, as if something deadly went off with it. 'Hallo!' sung out the planter, blocking up the moonlight that shone misty-white down the steps of the companion, to a blue glimmer at the foot of them; 'both surviving yet, I declare'; and we felt the scent of his cheroot in the hot calm as he walked aft again.
"'Well, Ned,' said Westwood, still laughing, 'there's one thing more I did contrive to get out, and it is certainly broad enough to lay hold of, as you say. Do you know, from some hints the judge let drop in course of the passage, after he got to know me, I have a rather sharp suspicion he has someone in view for his daughter already!' At this I gasped once more. 'Whether she knows it herself or not, I'm not sure,' added Tom; 'but, very naturally, the gentleman I mean was often enough mentioned in Sir Charles's cabins—for who do you imagine, of all persons in the world, it is?'
"I made no trial at a guess, but sat eyeing Westwood in perfect silence, and he went on—'Who but—don't look so fierce, my dear fellow—just this—this said nabob of an uncle of mine, the Bengal Councillor! Why, you've no conception,' said Westwood, 'what presents of pearl necklaces, fans, cashmere shawls, and China ivory work-boxes, and so on, the Councillor must have sent home to her at different times, for the Seringapatam to bring back again. I didn't see her wear any of them; but every now and then Sir Charles would point to something that lay about, telling me it came from my uncle! He is a bachelor, you know, not so old as Sir Charles himself, who isn't so old as he looks, and they seem to be sworn friends!' 'Tuts, man!' said I, brightening a bit, 'can't you see he wants to adopt her?' 'So I should have imagined,' answered Westwood; 'but the fact is, two or three times, as I told you, Sir Charles Hyde hinted as much as that it was an idea of long standing between himself and his friend the Councillor, so——' 'The old villain!' I roared. 'Begging your pardon, Westwood—but I must say you are the pattern of a Job's comforter, and no mistake!' 'Well,' answered he, 'if you had heard the way in which the young lady mentioned my uncle to me, you wouldn't be much afraid of your rival, Ned. Why, she said she thought she remembered him when she was a little girl, bringing her Indian sweetmeats from the bazaar in his carriage—she actually supposed he must be older than her father, when the judge set her right eagerly enough—but, you must know, he no more seems able to say a sharp word to her, than Jacobs yonder would. So what did she say next, after apparently thinking a little, but that, now she recollected, my uncle used to have gray hair and white whiskers, like Mr Rollock, which for my part I knew no more about than the table, when her father broke out describing him as warmly as possible; and suddenly Miss Hyde looked at him with a little turn of her pretty lip, and a twinkle in her eye, that sent the old gentleman fiddling about his coffee-cup, and stopped him in a moment as if she had been a little witch!'
"'What's to be done, Tom?' I faltered out, after a long stop. 'I'm sure I don't know, Ned,' said he gravely; 'let's go on deck at any rate, for it's too hot here to sleep.' The moment the sight of the calm burst upon us, however, with the two vessels together in the midst of it, in the hazy sort of moonlight, the same notion seemed to strike both of us in a different way. 'I'll tell you what, Collins,' said Westwood, half-jokingly, half in earnest, 'uncle though he be, if you can contrive to cut out the Councillor anyhow, I'll forgive you, for one!' 'How, though—how, by Jove!' replied I—'if they go to Bombay in the Indiaman, by the time they reach Calcutta, I shall be in the Pacific!' ''Tis a difficult case,' said Westwood, 'no doubt. And even suppose you had the opportunity, 'twould be hard to manage an elopement ashore in India, travelling "dauk" in two palanquins. Seriously speaking, Ned, I see nothing for it but to wait till you come back from the Pacific.'
"I looked hopelessly round: the calm and heat together gave one a helpless feeling, and every notion of an active sort appeared desperate. A perfect calm it was, too: there was some filmy scum of a haze aloft, that served to spread the moonlight all over, shutting out the shape of the sky, and softening off the horizon; with the moon standing slant up in it, like a brighter spot, and a few stars low down in the east. But for the long wide tremble of the water, in fact, as it glanced up with a blue flicker, you'd have fancied we mightn't be far from land; while the big Indiaman lay off the schooner's bow, without the least motion one could see; the moonshine edging round her spars and ropes from the other side, and her sails hanging shadowy against it, except below, under her brailed-up courses, where the masts, the thick of the rigging, and the tops of her deck-lumber, glistened as if they were newly wet. Half of her watch were on the bowsprit, sending out a 'fished' spritsail-yard, the same we had set dangling about their ears that afternoon, and we could hear them speaking plain enough; every time they sang out at a haul, it went far away on all sides—ho-ho-ho-he-ho-ho-o—till you lost it in the dead calm, as if somebody had gone there. Now and then the Seringapatam made a slight plunge by the head, as the wide soft swell floated up with her; and the glossy black shadow, that seemingly gave her hull the height of a tower, came wavering in quicksilver circles to our very cutwater, while the lights from her after-windows went twisting away round her heavy counter to the moonshine, like yellow snakes; the schooner all the time lying as quiet as if she were on a pond, except that by little and little she kept shifting her bearings to the Indiaman, and things were confoundedly like our both sticking together in course of the morning, if the calm held. I went forward to the forecastle and desired Jones to get all hands down into the boats, and have her towed off to safe distance, seeing that the worst of it would be sure to fall to our share.
"This was doing, and we drew slowly off the ship's bow, where her men coolly knocked off working to watch ours, and pass jokes on our gang of Lascars, as they handled the oars in awkward style; in fact, by the way the Indiaman's watch carried on, most of them seemed to have passed the grog-can pretty freely, being Saturday night, which we could hear they were still keeping up below in the forecastle, when our quarter came abreast of her larboard bow. 'Hurrah!' said one, waving his tarpaulin; and 'Pull, you beggars!' roared another; when my old customer, ugly Harry, all at once leant out of her fore-chains, and sung out to Jones, who was next him in the stern-sheets of our gig: 'I say, mate, so ye're clearing off, are ye? The better for that 'ere nutshell of a schooner o' yours, I reckon!' Jones made no answer, and the fellow added; 'Come aboard when you've got a safe berth, anyhow, and drink "sweethearts and wives," will ye?' I saw Jones start, and turn his face fiercely into the shadow of the ship's main-course on the water, rising half-up with one fist clenched, but he said nothing. 'Oh, you're blasted proud!' Foster called out: 'you forgets a man, blow me! D'ye think I doesn't know a fellow I got glorious with myself, in old Van Stinkoff's, at Cape Town? Sink me, mates,' said he, as loud as before, turning round on the rail of the bulwarks to the rest, 'I picked him out o' the street scuppers, under the sign of the Flying Dutchman, an' I'm blowed if I didn't think it beneath me at the time!' Here the end of our main-boom opened us in sight of the ugly ruffian, and he was sinking down in-board, when I hailed the Indiaman's quarter-deck, where the Scotch mate was to be seen. 'Ay, ay, the schooner ahoay!' sung out he, coming to the gangway. 'Did you hear that man's impertinence, sir,' said I sternly, 'to my officer on duty there? I expect you to see him punished, sir.' The Scotchman said he'd inquire into it; but shortly after he came back, saying he 'doubted' he couldn't be sure of the man; and, at any rate, he could have 'meant no ill.' The boats had towed us by this time almost out of fair hearing, but Harry Foster was to be seen coolly eyeing us from the midst of his watchmates, as he slung a couple of blocks over his shoulder; when he turned away with as much indifference as if we had been a Thames collier, growling some two or three words or other that brought a loud laugh from the Indiaman's forecastle to her bowsprit, where the men were turning lazily to their business again.
"Being now clear off the ship, with the rake of her hull in our command if I chose, and free of her broadside at the same time, I hailed the boats to leave off towing and come aboard. As Jones came on deck, I saw that in his face to make me think he took the thing to heart, seeing he met my first look with his lips set together and a steady gleam of his eyes. The truth was, I never in my life came across a man that struck me so much with the notion of his having a devil in him, seeking to get the better of what was good.
"'I think we shall do, Mr Jones?' I said. 'Quite safe, sir,' said he, quietly; at that moment, standing as we did out of earshot, with the setting moon in sight past the Indiaman, shining in a rusty yellow glare to her hanging sails, 'twas strange how the odds of our different stations passed off. We were foot to foot, in fact; I was fully aware, if never before, what an enemy Jones would make—he had great daring and knowingness in him, and all on the wrong side of the hedge for me at the time, seeing I had such a ticklish part to play with the Indiaman. I caught myself, on the instant, measuring youth and activity, not to say regular breeding to the service, and a clear conscience besides, against him and his thews and sinews; but as for turning and twisting with the man before me, I saw it was the tack likely to throw him to windward of me. My voice changed, and I lowered it as I said: 'Mr Jones, I happened to sail half the voyage as a passenger in that ship, and I've no common reason to be anxious about her getting safe into port. There's one single being in her at this moment I'd willingly lose my life to save from anything like what one could fancy—ay, so help me God, suppose I'd no chance of ever setting eyes on her again!' Jones never stirred a feature, but looked past me into the gleam of the moon over my shoulder.
"'Well, Mr Jones,' I said, 'I'll acknowledge to you frankly, as from one seaman to another, the question is, Are you for me—or not?' 'We speak as man with man, it seems, Mr Collins!' said Jones quietly; 'then I am—for you!' and he struck his hand all at once into mine; 'here's a hand that never lied, whatever the tongue may have done—bad or good; I am for you, sir, and no more of it! I knew as well as if you'd told me, Mr Collins, by the looks of the passengers, that you had sailed aboard that ship in some way or other—and what's more, sir, I saw——' here he stopped, looking at me with his back to the sinking gleam of light beyond the ship's hull, from the moon as she touched the water, and I saw nothing but the shape of his head under the straw hat, with a shadow blurring his face together, though I felt him eyeing me out of it all the time—'what some would think more worth while than if you were a Spanish plate-ship,' he went on; and he lowered his voice nearly to a whisper as he added, 'I tell you what, Mr Collins, 'tis my conviction that, if you chose, you might do what you liked in the end with that Indiaman and all aboard her!' I stepped back with a shiver through me, as the sudden setting of the moon blended everything black in with Jones's shoulders, leaving his head instead of her against a glimmer of light, till for a moment it seemed peering at me off the horizon with the whole lump of shadow betwixt the two craft for a body; and I must say I thought of old stories about the Tempter in human form. 'Devil!' said I hoarsely, while the last gleam to westward went out, and it got so dark I could have fancied Jones had vanished from the bulwarks without stirring a foot; in fact, on my moving to the place I touched the cool planks with my hand—he was actually gone! Nothing was visible beyond our own decks, save a slight glimmer such as one would make in sculling with a single oar; and I saw at once he had taken the small boat alongside to go aboard the Indiaman! All the rest was that thick heavy darkness only to be found in a calm in the Indian Ocean, towards morning: you may not only say you see it, but could stir it, as it were, with a stick.