The food I had no great fancy to, although I had not tasted a morsel since six o’clock in the morning, and it was now eight in the evening; but the offer of the grog sounded gratefully in mine ear, and I was about tackling to a stout rummer of the same, when a smart dandified shaver, with gay mother-of-pearl buttons on his jacket, as thick set as peas, presented his tallow chops at the door.
“Captain Transom desires me to say, that he will be glad of your company in the cabin, Mr Cringle.”
“My compliments—I will wait on him so soon as I have had a snack. We have had no dinner in the gunroom to-day yet, you know, Mafame.”
“Why, it was in the knowledge of that the Captain sent me, sir. He has not had any dinner either; but it is now on the table, and he waits for you.”
I was but little in spirits, and, to say sooth, was fitter for my bed than society; but the Captain’s advances had been made with so much kindliness, that I got up, and made a strong endeavour to rouse myself; and, having made my toilet as well as my slender means admitted, I followed the Captain’s steward into the cabin.
I started—why, I could not well tell—as the sentry at the door stood to his arms when I passed in; and, as if I had been actually possessed by some wandering spirit, who had taken the small liberty of using my faculties and tongue without my concurrence, I hastily asked the man if he was an American?—He stared in great astonishment for a short space, turned his quid—and then rapped out, as angrily as respect for a commissioned officer would let him,—“No, by ——, sir!”
This startled me as much as the question I had almost unconsciously—and, I may say, involuntarily—put to the marine had surprised him, and I made a full stop, and leant back against the door-post. The Captain, who was walking up and down the cabin, had heard me speak, but without comprehending the nature of my question, and now recalled me in some measure to myself, by enquiring if I wanted any thing. I replied, hurriedly, that I did not.
“Well, Mr Cringle, dinner is ready—so take that chair at the foot of the table, will you?”
I sat down, mechanically, as it appeared to me—for a strange swimming dizzy sort of sensation had suddenly overtaken me, accompanied by a whoreson tingling, as Shakespeare hath it, in my ears. I was unable to eat a morsel; but I could have drunk the ocean, had it been claret or vin-de-grave-to both of which I helped myself as largely as good manners would allow, or a little beyond, mayhap. All this while the Captain was stowing his cargo with great zeal, and tifting away at the fluids as became an honest sailor after so long a fast, interlarding his operations with a civil word to me now and then, without any especial regard as to the answer I made him, or, indeed, caring greatly whether I answered him or not.
“Sharp work you must have had, Mr Cringle—should have liked to have been with you myself. Help yourself, before passing that bottle—zounds, man, never take a bottle by the bilge—grasp the neck, man, at least in this fervent climate—thank you. Pity you had not caught the captain though. What you told me of that man very much interested me, coupled with the prevailing reports regarding him in the ship—daring dog he must have been—can’t forget how gallantly he weathered us when we chased him.”