Sard thanked him and returned to his ship.
“There it is,” he said, when he stood once more in his cabin. “This thing has no foundation in fact, but it has the power to make me do stupid things. I will not go ashore again, unless I have some certain tidings to take me there. This love has led me elsewhere in the past: it must not lead to folly now.”
His room was light enough to show how little his love had led him to folly in the past. He was a tall lean muscular man in hard condition, sunburnt to the colour of a Red Indian. His hair was black, very fine and worn a little long (to shore eyes). He was clean-shaven and his face was a clear brown with blood in it. Wind and sun puckers made his look hawklike. His hands were big and fine. He was always choicely and subtly well-dressed. Everything about him was fastidious, to the point of keeping people aloof and afraid.
His room contained many books, for he was deeply read in his profession and in the sciences allied to it. He spoke the four languages which he reckoned to be necessary in his profession. French, German and Norwegian he had learned from intelligent shipmates as a lad: Spanish he had learned more thoroughly, since it was “her” native tongue. He had read not widely but choicely in all these tongues. In English he cared deeply for only one literary period, from the coming of Dryden to the death of Doctor Johnson. A flute and the music of that time amused his odd moments. He had taught himself to make accurate drawings of things which interested him. His sketch books contained much that would be valuable now to historians of that old way of life:
“The forepeak of the Venturer at 3 a.m., March 3rd, 1889, after collision with the Tuggranong.”
“The main top-gallant parral goes.”
“The following sea. June 16th, 1891,” etc., etc.
On the bulkheads of his room were standard and aneroid barometers given to him by the Meteorological Society, with other instruments, for the excellence of his meteorological records.
He looked round these things, with the thought that they were not life, but the solace of loneliness. He felt as lonely as a captain. “I’ll go no more ashore,” he thought, “I’ll spend my time teaching the boys Spanish. Huskisson has a gift for languages: he ought not to be at sea.”
He did not go ashore again, but thought, day after day, that before he sailed he would perhaps go. As the time passed, the thought that he was a fool to be swayed thus by dreams kept him on board. In five more weeks the Pathfinder got her hatches on, although light, ready to drop down to leeward to Santa Barbara to complete with sugar for home. It was the evening of the 18th March, 1897: the tug was to be alongside early the next morning, to tow her clear of the Rip-Raps.