“I honour and respect, Mrs. Budd, as my captain's lady, you see, Mr. Mulford, and intend to treat her accordin'ly. She knows it—and Rose knows it—and they both declare they'd rather sail with me, since sail they must, than with any other ship-master out of America.”
“You sailed once with Capt. Budd yourself, I think I have heard you say, sir?”
“The old fellow brought me up. I was with him from my tenth to my twentieth year, and then broke adrift to see fashions. We all do that, you know, Mr. Mulford, when we are young and ambitious, and my turn came as well as another's.”
“Capt. Budd must have been a good deal older than his wife, sir, if you sailed with him when a boy,” Mulford observed a little drily.
“Yes; I own to forty-eight, though no one would think me more than five or six-and-thirty, to look at me. There was a great difference between old Dick Budd and his wife, as you say, he being about fifty, when he married, and she less than twenty. Fifty is a good age for matrimony, in a man, Mulford; as is twenty in a young woman.”
“Rose Budd is not yet nineteen, I have heard her say,” returned the mate, with emphasis.
“Youngish, I will own, but that's a fault a liberal-minded man can overlook. Every day, too, will lessen it. Well, look to the cabins, and see all clear for a start. Josh will be down presently with a cart-load of stores, and you'll take 'em aboard without delay.”
As Spike uttered this order, his foot was on the plank-sheer of the bulwarks, in the act of passing to the wharf again. On reaching the shore, he turned and looked intently at the revenue steamer, and his lips moved, as if he were secretly uttering maledictions on her. We say maledictions, as the expression of his fierce ill-favoured countenance too plainly showed that they could not be blessings. As for Mulford, there was still something on his mind, and he followed to the gangway ladder and ascended it, waiting for a moment when the mind of his commander might be less occupied to speak. The opportunity soon occurred, Spike having satisfied himself with the second look at the steamer.
“I hope you don't mean to sail again without a second mate, Capt. Spike?” he said.
“I do though, I can tell you. I hate Dickies—they are always in the way, and the captain has to keep just as much of a watch with one as without one.”