“I have been wrecked, sir, since you received my last letter.”
“What! has Davy Jones got possession of the red gentleman at last?”
“The misfortune occurred in a ship from Bristol, aboard which I was placed as a sort of prize-master.—He certainly continues to stand slowly to the northward!”
“Let the young coxcomb go! he will have all the better appetite for his supper. And so you were picked up by his Majesty’s ship the ‘Antelope.’ Ay, I see into the whole affair. You have only to give an old sea-dog his course and compass, and he will find his way to port in the darkest night. But how happened it that this Mr Howard affected to be ignorant of your name, sir, when he saw it on the list of my officers?”
“Ignorant! Did he seem ignorant? perhaps”—
“Say no more, my brave fellow, say no more,” interrupted Wilder’s considerate but choleric Commander. “I nave met with such rebuffs myself; but we are above them, sir, far above them and their impertinences together. No man need be ashamed of having earned his commission, as you and I have done, in fair weather and in foul. Zounds, boy, I have fed one of the upstarts for a week, and then had him stare at a church across the way, when I have fallen in with him in the streets of London, in a fashion that might make a simple man believe the puppy knew for what it had been built. Think no more of it, Harry; worse things have happened to myself, I do assure you.”
“I went by my assumed name while in yonder ship,” Wilder forced himself to add. “Even the ladies who were the companions of my wreck, know me by no other.”
“Ah! that was prudent; and, after all, the young sprig was not pretending genteel ignorance. How now, master Fid; you are welcome back to the Dart.’”
“I’ve taken the liberty to say as much already to myself, your Honour,” resumed the topman, who was busying himself, near his two officers, in a manner that seemed to invite their attention. “A wholesome craft is yonder, and boldly is she commanded, and stoutly is she manned; but, for my part, having a character to lose, it is more to my taste to sail in a ship that can shew her commission, when properly called on for the same.”
The colour on Wilder’s cheeks went and came like the flushings of the evening sky, and his eyes were turned in every direction but that which would have encountered the astonished gaze of his veteran friend.