He stopped speaking; for Margaret had left the cabin. “I wonder where he’s gone,” Stukeley muttered, smiling. Through the half-shut door he could see Margaret entering the cabin which he shared with Perrin. “What a rotter he is,” he thought. “I suppose now he’ll have a good cry. Or tell it all to that dead frog, Perrin.” For a moment, he thought that he would go on deck to walk with Perrin, not because he wanted to see the man, but because, by going on deck, he would keep both Perrin and the captain from talking to Olivia, who was mat-making on the poop, amid a litter of coloured silks. He thought with some disgust of Olivia. So that he might not be reminded of her, he drew the sun-screen across the skylight, shutting out the day. “Oh Lord,” he said, yawning, “I wish I was back in the inn with that girl, Jessie. She was some fun. Olivia gets on my nerves. Why the devil doesn’t she get some blood in her? These pious women are only good to ravish. Why the devil don’t they enter nunneries? I wish that one of these three sprightly lads would have a try at Olivia. One never knows, though. Even Olivia might take it as a compliment.” For a moment he wondered if there were any chance of trouble at Accomac. Very little, he concluded. He laughed to think of the strength of his position. It was a pleasure to him to think that three men hated him, perhaps longed to kill him, and that one refrained because of Olivia, while the other two refrained because of the first. “Lord, Lord,” he murmured, with a smile. “And they’ll all three die to save me. I’d go to Accomac if there were a dozen governors. I wonder if the Indian girls are any fun.” He was hardly built for marriage, he thought. Those old days had been sweet in the mouth. There was that sleepy-looking girl—Dick Sadler’s wife. She was some fun. How wild she used to get when she—— He wished that Perrin would come below as a butt for some of his ill-temper.
It was only four bells; there were at least two hours to wait till dinner-time. He was sick of sleeping; he was sick of most of his shipmates; he could not dice “one hand against the other.” Reading bored him, writing worried him, sketch he could not. He stretched himself down on the locker-top, and lit his pipe. Tobacco was forbidden in the cabin for Olivia’s sake; but he argued that he was the real commander of the ship, the practical owner, since he ruled her material destiny by ruling Olivia. As he smoked, it occurred to him that perhaps he had done wrong to anger Captain Margaret. That Maggy was a sullen devil. He might turn sullen, and give him up in spite of Olivia. He smoked quietly for a little time, till a scheme came to him, a scheme which gave him pleasure, so good it seemed.
He lay lazily on the locker-top, looking out over the sea, through the stern-windows. The sun was shining, making the track of the ship gleam. Just below Stukeley, sometimes almost within a sword’s thrust, when the counter squattered down, slapping the sea, were the rudder eddies, the little twirling threads, the twisted water which spun in the pale clear green, shot through with bubbles. They rose and whirled continually, creaming up and bursting, streaking aft in whiteness. Over them wavered some mewing sea-birds, dipping down with greedy plunges, anon rising, hovering, swaying up. Stukeley watched them with the vacant stare of one bored. For a few minutes he amused himself by spitting at those which came within range; then, proving a poor marksman, he rummaged for a biscuit, thinking that he would fish for them. He found a hank of white-line, and tied a bit of biscuit to the end. He was about to make his first cast when Mrs. Inigo entered, bearing a buck-basket containing her week’s washing, now ready to be dried.
When the Broken Heart left Falmouth, Captain Margaret made certain orders to ensure Olivia’s comfort. He had tried to put himself in her place, to see with her eyes, to feel with her nerves, knowing that her position on board, without another lady to bear her company, would not be a pleasant one. The whole of the ship abaft the forward cabin bulkhead had been given up to her. The three members of the afterguard took their meals in the cabin, but seldom entered it at other times, unless they wished to use the table for chess, cards, or chart-work. The negro steward, who had once ruled in the cabin, was now little more than a cabin-cook. Mrs. Inigo did much of his work. She cleaned the cabin, laid the breakfast, served Olivia’s early chocolate, letting the negro cook wash up. Cammock and Perrin agreed with Captain Margaret that the after part of the ship should be left as much as possible to the two Stukeleys, so that Olivia might feel that she was living in a private house. After the cabin supper, at the end of the first dog-watch, no man of the three entered the cabin unless Olivia invited him. Margaret felt that Olivia was touched by this thought for her. She was very gracious to him during her first evening party. It was sweet to hear her thanks, sweet to see her, flushed and laughing, radiant from the sea air, sitting there at the table, as Cammock dealt the cards for Pope Joan. That evening had been very dear to him, even though, across the cabin, on the heaped green cushions, lay Stukeley, greedy for his wife’s beauty, whetting his swine’s tusk as the colour came upon her cheek. It would all be for him, he thought, and the thought, now and then, was almost joyful, that she should be happy. It was not in his nature to be jealous. The greatest bitterness for him was to see the desired prize neglected, unappreciated, never really known; and to apprehend, in a gesture, in a few words, the thought implied, which the accepted lover failed to catch, or else ignored. He had tested Stukeley’s imaginative sympathy by the framing of another rule. In a small ship like the Broken Heart there is little privacy. To prevent a possible shock to her, he arranged that on washing-days the clothes of the women should be hung to dry from the cabin windows (from lines rigged up below the port-sills, where they were out of view of the crew). Olivia was pleased by this arrangement, without quite knowing why. Stukeley saw no sense in it. On this particular morning the arrangement bore peculiar fruit, very grateful to Stukeley, who had long hungered for a change.
Mrs. Inigo entered with the buck-basket, closing the door behind her. She dropped the basket on the deck below the window-seat, seized the clothes-line, and began to stop the linen to it, in the sea-fashion, with rope-yarns. She was a little flushed with the exertion of washing, and she was a comely woman at all times.
“I’m going to help you,” said Stukeley.
She smiled, and looked down, as he helped her to tie some clothes to the line. She blushed and smiled; he took her hand.
“Let go my hand,” she whispered.
He pressed the hand, and though she drew back, a little frightened, he managed to catch the other. He kissed the hands. They were rough but warm.
“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t, Mr. Stukeley.”