“I stood at a window for a few minutes, looking sheepish enough; then I threw temptation to the winds, put about, and sailed right away back to my chambers, studding-sails set low and aloft.
“I finished packing, saw my owners in the afternoon, and when James came off to the ship he found me quietly smoking my biggest pipe in the saloon of the Sea Flower.
“He smiled now.
“‘Better already,’ he said; ‘His name be praised!’
“James was a strange man in some ways. This was one: he thanked Heaven for every comfort, even the slightest, and did nothing without, in a word or two, asking a blessing thereon.
“In three days’ time we were staggering southwards, and away across Biscay’s blue bay, with every inch of canvas set. And a pretty sight we were—our white sails flowing in the sunshine—the sea as blue as the sky, and the waves sparkling around us as if every drop of water contained a diamond.
“All the way to the Cape, and farther, James treated me as tenderly and compassionately as if I had been an invalid brother. He never contradicted me even once. He used to keep me talking and yarning on the quarterdeck, when he wasn’t on watch, for whole hours at a stretch; and in the evenings, when tired spinning me yarns, he would take his banjo and sing to me old sea-songs in his bold and thrilling voice. And James could sing too; there were the brine, and the breeze, and the billows’ roll in every bar of the grand old songs he sang, and indeed I was never tired of listening to them. Sometimes I closed my eyes as I sat in my easy-chair; then James’s banjo notes grew softer and softer, and ever so much farther away like, till at last it was ghostly music, and I was in the land of dreams.
“When I awoke, perhaps it would be four bells or even six, and there would be James, with his specs athwart his great jibboom of a nose, poring earnestly over his mother’s Bible.
“‘You’ve had a nice little nap,’ he would say cheerfully. ‘Now you’ll toddle off to your bunk, and when you’re safe between the sheets I’ll bring you a tiny little drop of rum and treacle.’
“Poor James! Rum and treacle was his panacea for every ill; and yet I don’t believe any one in the wide world ever saw James the worse of even rum and treacle.