“My dear Livy,” said Stukeley. “You’re like a justice of the peace.”
“But I want——” She checked herself sharply, and looked at the incoming ships. The men also turned to look, as she had planned that they should.
“That’s a nice one, isn’t it, Captain Cammock?”
“The Dutch-built one, Mrs. Stukeley? No.”
“How do you know she’s Dutch-built?”
“How do you know whether to trust a man when you meet him, Mrs. Stukeley? You don’t rightly know. You have an instinct. I’ve an instinct for ships. There’s twenty things tells me she’s Dutch, long before I’ve time to examine them.”
“Yes,” said Margaret, only too glad of the diversion. “But I want you to tell us now what it is that makes you say she’s Dutch. It’s in her hull, isn’t it? What is it in her hull?”
“The Dutch, sir,” said Cammock, “are built for the India trade, and they give their ships a rather high sheer, and not quite so much camber as an English builder likes. Then they like a very flat floor, and a tuck that——” He wandered on into a swamp of sea terms, taking it for granted that his hearers understood him. Margaret and Perrin plied him close with questions as the ship loitered past them, rolling in the light wind, her men singing out at her cluelines. While they talked, Stukeley and Olivia went below to the cabin; Stukeley with the feeling that Olivia would now make no more fuss; Olivia with the sense that all was not well, that something was withheld from her.
“Tom,” she said suddenly, as soon as the cabin-door had closed, “you’re keeping something from me. What is it? Why am I not to know?”
“I’m not keeping anything back.”