"I've seen as much as I warnt to see," returned the traveller, with an emphasis on, and a pronunciation of, the word we have italicised, that cannot be committed to paper, but which were eloquence itself on the subject of self-satisfaction and self-knowledge.
"Well, that is the main point. When a man has got all he wants of a thing, any addition is like over-ballast. Whenever I can get fifteen knots out of the ship, I make it a point to be satisfied, especially under close-reefed topsails and on a taut bowline."
The traveller and the master nodded their heads at each other, like men who understood more than they expressed; when the former, after inquiring with marked interest if his room-mate, Sir George Templemore, had arrived, went below. An intercourse of three days had established something like an acquaintance between the latter and the passengers she had brought from the River, and turning his red quizzical face towards the ladies, he observed with inimitable gravity,
"There is nothing like understanding when one has enough, even if it be of knowledge. I never yet met with the navigator who found two 'noons' in the same day, that he was not in danger of shipwreck. Now I dare say, Mr. Dodge there, who has just gone below, has, as he says, seen all he warnts to see, and it is quite likely he knows more already than he can cleverly get along with.--Let the people be getting the booms on the yards, Mr. Leach; we shall be warnting to spread our wings before the end of the passage."
As Captain Truck, though he often swore, seldom laughed, his mate gave the necessary order with a gravity equal to that with which it had been delivered to him; and even the sailors went aloft to execute it with greater alacrity for an indulgence of humour that was peculiar to their trade, and which, as few understood it so well, none enjoyed so much as themselves. As the homeward-bound crew was the same as the outward-bound, and Mr. Dodge had come abroad quite as green as he was now going home ripe, this traveller of six months' finish did not escape diver commentaries that literally cut him up "from clew to ear-ring," and which flew about in the rigging much as active birds flutter from branch to branch in a tree. The subject of all this wit, however, remained profoundly, not to say happily, ignorant of the sensation he had produced, being occupied in disposing of the Dresden pipe, the Venetian chain, and the Roman conchiglia in his state-room, and in "instituting an acquaintance," as he expressed it, with his room-mate, Sir George Templemore.
"We must surely have something better than this," observed Mr. Effingham, "for I observed that two of the state-rooms in the main cabin are taken singly."
In order that the general reader may understand this, it may be well to explain that the packet-ships have usually two berths in each state-room, but they who can afford to pay an extra charge are permitted to occupy the little apartment singly. It is scarcely necessary to add, that persons of gentlemanly feeling, when circumstances will at all permit, prefer economising in other things in order to live by themselves for the month usually consumed in the passage, since in nothing is refinement more plainly exhibited than in the reserve of personal habits. "There is no lack of vulgar fools stirring with full pockets," rejoined John Effingham; "the two rooms you mention may have been taken by some 'yearling' travellers, who are little better than the semi-annual savant who has just passed us."
"It is at least something, cousin Jack, to have the wishes of a gentleman."
"It is something, Eve, though it end in wishes, or even in caricature."
"What are the names?" pleasantly asked Mademoiselle Viefville; "the names may be a clue to the characters."