Moggridge was just going down the poop-ladder as I mounted it, on his way forward to execute some order Captain Miles had given him.
“Fine morning, Master Tom,” he said.
“It is,” I responded, “a regular jolly one; but, how busy you all are!”
“Aye, aye, young master, we can’t afford to wait when there’s so much to be done and so precious little time to do it in.”
And then he was off in a jiffey.
Captain Miles was sitting on the port bulwarks, which were intact, polishing up his sextant.
“Good morning, captain,” I said.
“Morning,” he answered absently, so much engrossed with one of the eye-pieces of the instrument that he couldn’t even look up.
I felt like the idle little boy in the story-book, who went and asked, first, the horse to play with him, and then, when that sagacious animal refused to accede to his request, on the plea of having his master’s business to attend to, he tried to induce various other quadrupeds to come and amuse him, only to meet with a constant refusal—the idle boy having in the end to go to work himself, finding idleness, without companions to share it, the reverse of pleasure.
Everybody on board seemed too much engrossed with some task in hand to attend to me; even Jake, when I went below again, could hardly spare me a word, for he was intent on polishing up the saloon table again, trying to efface the effects of its long immersion in the water from the surface of the mahogany—a somewhat vain task, I may add, as the wood never recovered its original tone.