CHAPTER XXVI. SIGNOR BRUNO
Silas Lebrun, captain and part-owner of the brig Agnes and Mary of Jersey, was an early riser. Moreover, the old gentleman entertained peculiar views as to the homage due to Morpheus. He made no elaborate toilet before entering the presence of that most lovable god. Indeed he always slept in his boots, and the cabin-boy had on several occasions invited the forecastle hands to believe that he neither removed the ancient sealskin cap from his head nor the wooden pipe from his lips when slumber soothed his senses; but this statement was always set aside as unauthenticated.
In person the ancient sailor was almost square, with short legs and a body worthy of promotion to something higher. His face was wrinkled and brown, like the exterior of that incomprehensible fruit the medlar, which is never ripe till it is bad, and then it is to be avoided. A yellow-grey beard clustered closely round a short chin, and when perchance the sealskin cap was absent yellow-grey hair of a similar hue completed the circle, standing up as high from his brow as fell the beard downward from his chin. A pair of intensely blue eyes, liquid always with the milk of human kindness, rendered the hirsute medlar a pleasant thing to look at.
The Agnes and Mary was ready for sea, her cargo of potatoes, with a little light weight in the way of French beans and eggs, comfortably stowed, and as Captain Lebrun emerged from what he was pleased to call his “state-room” with the first breath of a clear morning he performed his matinal toilet with a certain sense of satisfaction. This operation was simple, consisting merely in the passage of four very brown fingers through the yellow-grey hair, and a hurried dispersal of the tobacco ash secreted in his beard.
The first object that met the mariner's astonished gaze was the long black form of a man stretched comfortably upon the cabin locker. The green mud adhering to the sleeper's thin shoes showed that he had climbed on board at low tide when the harbour was dry.
Captain Lebrun gazed meditatively at the intruder for some moments. Then he produced a powerfully-scented pipe of venerable appearance, which had been, at various stages of its existence, bound in a seaman-like manner with pieces of tarred yarn. He slowly filled this object, and proceeded to inform it in a husky voice that he was “blowed.” The pipe was, apparently, in a similar condition, as it refused absolutely to answer to the powerful suction applied to it.
He then seated himself with some difficulty upon the corner of the low table, and examined the sleeper critically.
“Poor devil,” he again said, addressing himself to his pipe. “He's one of them priest fellows.—Hi, mister!” he observed, raising his voice.
Christian Vellacott woke up at once, and took in the situation without delay. He was not of those who must go through terrible contortions before regaining their senses after sleep.