“Sleep is sweet, Master Cap,” said he, as soon as the eyes of the latter were fairly open, and his consciousness had sufficiently returned,—“sleep is sweet, as I know from experience, but life is sweeter still. Look about you, and say if this is exactly the moment for a commander to be off his feet.”
“How now? how now, Master Pathfinder?” growled Cap, in the first moments of his awakened faculties. “Are you, too, getting on the side of the grumblers? When ashore I admired your sagacity in running through the worst shoals without a compass; and since we have been afloat, your meekness and submission have been as pleasant as your confidence on your own ground. I little expected such a summons from you.”
“As for myself, Master Cap, I feel I have my gifts, and I believe they'll interfere with those of no other man; but the case may be different with Mabel Dunham. She has her gifts, too, it is true; but they are not rude like ours, but gentle and womanish, as they ought to be. It's on her account that I speak, and not on my own.”
“Ay, ay, I begin to understand. The girl is a good girl, my worthy friend; but she is a soldier's daughter and a sailor's niece, and ought not to be too tame or too tender in a gale. Does she show any fear?”
“Not she! not she! Mabel is a woman, but she is reasonable and silent. Not a word have I heard from her concerning our doings; though I do think, Master Cap, she would like it better if Jasper Eau-douce were put into his proper place, and things were restored to their old situation, like. This is human natur'.”
“I'll warrant it—girl-like, and Dunham-like, too. Anything is better than an old uncle, and everybody knows more than an old seaman. This is human natur', Master Pathfinder, and d—-me if I'm the man to sheer a fathom, starboard or port, for all the human natur' that can be found in a minx of twenty—ay, or” (lowering his voice a little) “for all that can be paraded in his Majesty's 55th regiment of foot. I've not been at sea forty years, to come up on this bit of fresh water to be taught human natur'. How this gale holds out! It blows as hard at this moment as if Boreas had just clapped his hand upon the bellows. And what is all this to leeward?” (rubbing his eyes)—“land! as sure as my name is Cap—and high land, too.”
The Pathfinder made no immediate answer; but, shaking his head, he watched the expression of his companion's face, with a look of strong anxiety in his own.
“Land, as certain as this is the Scud!” repeated Cap; “a lee shore, and that, too, within a league of us, with as pretty a line of breakers as one could find on the beach of all Long Island!”
“And is that encouraging? or is it disheartening?” inquired the Pathfinder.
“Ha! encouraging—disheartening!—why, neither. No, no, there is nothing encouraging about it; and as for disheartening, nothing ought to dishearten a seaman. You never get disheartened or afraid in the woods, my friend?”