“Did Rose approve of your sailing under false colours, Jack?”
“You must ask that of Rose herself. My story made her my friend; but she never said anything for or against my disguise.”
“It was no great disguise a'ter all, Jack. Now you're fitted out in your own clothes, you've a sort of half-rigged look; one would be as likely to set you down for a man under jury-canvas, as for a woman.”
Jack made no answer to this, but she sighed very heavily. As for Spike himself, he was silent for some little time, not only from exhaustion, but because he suffered pain from his wound. The needle was diligently but awkwardly plied in this pause.
Spike's ideas were still a little confused; but a silence and rest of a quarter of an hour cleared them materially. At the end of that time he again asked for water. When he had drunk, and Jack was once more seated, with his side-face toward him, at work with the needle, the captain gazed long and intently at this strange woman. It happened that the profile of Jack preserved more of the resemblance to her former self, than the full face; and it was this resemblance that now attracted Spike's attention, though not the smallest suspicion of the truth yet gleamed upon him. He saw something that was familiar, though he could not even tell what that something was, much less to what or whom it bore any resemblance. At length he spoke.
“I was told that Jack Tier was dead,” he said; “that he took the fever, and was in his grave within eight-and-forty hours after we sailed. That was what they told me of him.”
“And what did they tell you of your own wife, Stephen Spike. She that you left ashore at the time Jack was left?”
“They said she did not die for three years later. I heard of her death at New Orleens, three years later.”
“And how could you leave her ashore—she, your true and lawful wife?”
“It was a bad thing,” answered Spike, who, like all other mortals, regarded his own past career, now that he stood on the edge of the grave, very differently from what he had regarded it in the hour of his health and strength. “Yes, it was a very bad thing; and I wish it was ondone. But it is too late now. She died of the fever, too—that's some comfort; had she died of a broken heart, I could not have forgiven myself. Molly was not without her faults—great faults, I considered them; but, on the whole, Molly was a good creatur'.”