“Why, Mate!” said the Captain, as a smart sailor-like looking fellow fidgeted across the quarter-deck, with an irregular step and an anxious countenance; “is this what you call sailing at ten a.m. precisely? Most of us would have liked another forenoon on shore, but your skipper was so confounded peremptory; and this is what comes of it.”
“What is one to do, sir?” said the Mate, who seemed fully to participate in the Captain’s grievance. “These Russians have taken up all the private cabins for their own particular use, and occupy half the berths in the main and fore-cabins besides—we cannot help waiting for them. They have pretty well chartered the ship themselves—what can we do? But,” continued he, after a pause, during which he had been looking over the side, as the steamer now began evidently to swing in her turn, “I wish we had gone down with the morning’s tide.”
“We should have been at the mouth of the river by this time,” said the Captain, “if we had started when we ought.”
“Yes,” said the Mate, “and we should now be crossing the dangerous shoals, with fair daylight and a rising tide before us.”
“Why, surely you are not afraid,” said the Parson; “that track is as well beaten as the turnpike road.”
The Mate shrugged his shoulders, and stepped forward, giving some unnecessary orders in a tone unnecessarily sharp and angry.
“Well, Birger, what news? Do you see anything of them?”
The individual addressed was a smart, active, little man, with a quick grey eye, and a lively, pleasant, good-humoured countenance, who was coming aft from the bridge of the steamer, on which he had been seated all the forenoon, sketching, right and left of him groups of shipping on the water and groups of idlers on the deck.
“Anything of whom?” said he. “Oh! the Russians. No, I don’t know. I suppose they will come some time or other; it does not signify—it is all in the day’s work. Look here,”—and he opened his portfolio, and displayed, in wild confusion all over his paper, the domes of Woolwich, the houses of Blackwall, the forests of masts and yards in the Pool, two or three picturesque groups of vessels, a foreign steamer or two, landing her weary and travel-soiled passengers at the Custom-house—and, over leaf, and in the background as it were, slight exaggerations of the ungainly attitudes in which his two friends were then sprawling. “If you had found something as pleasant as this grumbling to fill up your time with, you would not be wasting your eyes and spoiling your temper in looking for the Russians. They are going back to their own country, poor devils! no wonder they are slow about it. Did you ever see a boy going to school?”
“Birger is not over-fond of the Russians,” said the Captain.