“What’ll you show me?” said Captain Cammock.
“Nothing. Nothing,” said Perrin hastily. He blushed and turned to look at the town, so that the captain should not see his face.
Captain Cammock was a large, surly-looking man, with long black hair which fell over his shoulders. His face, ruddy originally, was of a deep copper colour; handsome enough, in spite of the surly look, which, at first glance, passed for sternness. There were crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes, from long gazing through heat haze and to windward. He wore heavy gold ear-rings, of a strange pattern, in his ears; and they became him; though nothing angered him more than to be told so. “I wear them for my sight,” he would say. “I ain’t no town pimp, like you.” The rest of his gear was also strange and rich, down to the stockings and the buckled shoes, not because he was a town pimp like others, but because, in his last voyage, he had made free with the wardrobe of the Governor of Valdivia. A jewel of gold, acquired at the same time, clasped at his throat a piece of scarlet stuff, richly embroidered, which, covering his chest, might have been anything, from a shirt to a handkerchief. The Spanish lady who had once worn it as a petticoat would have said that it became him. His answer to the Spanish lady would have been, “Well, I ain’t one of your dressy ducks; but I have my points.” Those who had seen him in ragged linen drawers, pulling a canoa off the Main, between Tolu and the Headlands, with his chest, and bare arms, and naked knees, all smeared with fat, to keep away the mosquitoes, would have agreed with him.
“There’s one thing I wish you’d show me,” said Captain Cammock, glancing at the schooners at anchor.
“What’s that?” said Perrin.
“Well,” said Captain Cammock, turning towards the harbour entrance, “why has Captain Margaret put into Salcombe? Wasting a fair wind I call it. We could a-drove her out of soundings if we’d held our course.”
“I don’t think I ought to tell you that, Captain Cammock. I know, of course. It has to do with the whole cruise. Personal reasons.”
Captain Cammock snorted.
“A lop-eared job the cruise is, if you ask me,” he growled.
“I thought you approved of it.”