One day Ralph and I had been down to inspect the craft and attend to certain alterations in the cabin which were to be made for the accommodation of the two passengers, when the captain grew quite communicative on his favorite theme.
“I knew that little chick ’ud make something when she wa’n’t no higher than that,” he remarked, holding his brown, tattooed hand about three feet above the deck.
“I didn’t cal’late on her turnin’ out so mighty rich, of course,” he continued, meditatively, leaning against the rail and evidently pleased to find an appreciative listener, “but I allus knew, by the way the little thing kep’ askin’ questions about everything under heaven, that she’d got a headpiece on her that ’ud make things spin one o’ these days. Full o’ fun, too. She could swim like a duck, and row a boat with them little pipe-stem arms of hers, and yet—wal—she was sort o’ pious-like too, and allus askin’ me to tell her about my trips to the East Injies, and whether I see any women a-throwin’ their babies to crocodiles and a-bowin’ down to idols of wood and stone.
“‘I tell you, Cap’n Roberts,’ that little thing ’ud say, a-settin’ there in my boat, when her ma let me take her out,—‘I tell you, when I get to be a grown-up woman I’m goin’ out there and just teach those people better.’
“‘Did you ever hear about Judson?’ says she. ‘No,’ says I; ‘was he a sea-cap’n?’
“‘He was a missionary,’ says she, real solemn; ‘a missionary; and that’s what I’m going to be; and you’ll take me out there in your ship, won’t you, cap’n?’ says she. ‘And oh, I’m goin’ to take a whole trunk full of story-books for all those poor little girls that have to get married and don’t have any.’
“Wal, wal,” he continued, as he filled his pipe, “she begun it young, ’n I warn’t a mite surprised when I heerd she’d got her money and see what she was a-beginnin’ to do for those nasty Italians down to the Mulberry Bend. She never forgits anybody, Millie don’t. Excuse me, I s’pose I orter say Mis’ Everett now. She’s been a-talkin’ to me about the sailors; says when we git out to sea she wants a long talk with me about ’em; wants to know what they read, and everything of that sort.”
“And that is the way she proposes to turn pagan,” I soliloquized.
The last day had come, and we were on board the ship. Mildred, in her long, gray ulster and bright steamer hood, paced the deck arm in arm with me, taking her last look at the bridge, the towers and spires, the bronze goddess looming up against the blue, and all the dear, familiar sights. The sky was cloudless; the soft south-wind gently swelled the white sails overhead; the sea, the fawning, treacherous sea, shone brilliantly in the golden sunlight and seemed to murmur caressingly in our ears, as if to beguile us to forget its cruel power hidden for the time under this shining mask.
We paced up and down in silence, breaking it now and then by trying to say the last words, which were so hard to speak. Ralph had kindly gone below, ostensibly to look after a hamper of fruit. There was a lump in my throat; I could not speak.