At last, then, our voyage was indeed made, and all we wanted for our return homewards was another good stout frigate; and to this end the general resolved to beat the same covert we had always found so full of game—to wit, the coast beyond Carthagena, about the mouth of the Rio Grande.
All were very merry over the near hope of our return, except, I think, myself. As for me, I could not but brood over what I had lost or escaped from, I knew not which to call it. I fear I was but a very doleful companion, and Harry, being now in great spirits with all the world, would not let me rest.
'So your Señorita would not stay with you?' he said, with a twinkle in his eye that much belied his pretended seriousness.
'I did not ask her,' I answered.
'Not ask her!' said he, 'and wherefore not, in a devil's name? Why, lad, you were over ears in love with her.'
'You are merry,' said I, a little testily I think, for it angered me that both he and she should say this, while I was for ever telling myself I could not be so foolish. 'I could as soon have loved one of those glistening butterfly-birds that are all sparkle and humming, and nothing of them beside.'
'Well, what of that?' said he. 'Were I Pythagorean, I could find no better case for a true woman's soul than one of those same dainty, merry, little humming birds, that in these past months have so often beguiled us when there was little else to make us forget our troubles.'
'True,' I answered. 'Such qualities will make a plaything, but never a wife.'
'Well, I know not,' he said; 'but I think a wife is mostly what a husband makes her, and doubt if a man may not make as good a one out of a plaything as anything else.'
He should have known, yet I could not think him right, nor do I now. I had no heart to pursue such talk then, so when he continued to rally me I hastily told him the truth.