“Every man to his trade, captain,” said I. “You’re a sailor, and you’ve given me plenty of points; but I am an artist, and allow me to inform you this is quite as strange as all the rest. The knife is a palette-knife; the pencil a Winsor and Newton, and a B B B at that. A palette-knife and a B B B on a tramp brig! It’s against the laws of Nature.”
“It would sicken a dog, wouldn’t it?” said Nares.
“Yes,” I continued; “it’s been used by an artist, too: see how it’s sharpened—not for writing—no man could write with that. An artist, and straight from Sydney? How can he come in?”
“O, that’s natural enough,” sneered Nares. “They cabled him to come up and illustrate this dime novel.”
We fell a while silent.
“Captain,” I said at last, “there is something deuced underhand about this brig. You tell me you’ve been to sea a good part of your life. You must have seen shady things done on ships, and heard of more. Well, what is this? is it insurance? is it piracy? what is it about? what can it be for?”
“Mr. Dodd,” returned Nares, “you’re right about me having been to sea the bigger part of my life. And you’re right again when you think I know a good many ways in which a dishonest captain mayn’t be on the square, nor do exactly the right thing by his owners, and altogether be just a little too smart by ninety-nine and three-quarters. There’s a good many ways, but not so many as you’d think; and not one that has any mortal thing to do with Trent. Trent and his whole racket has got to do with nothing—that’s the bed-rock fact; there’s no sense to it, and no use in it, and no story to it—it’s a beastly dream. And don’t you run away with that notion that landsmen take about ships. A society actress don’t go around more publicly than what a ship does, nor is more interviewed, nor more humbugged, nor more run after by all sorts of little fussinesses in brass buttons. And more than an actress, a ship has a deal to lose; she’s capital, and the actress only character—if she’s that. The ports of the world are thick with people ready to kick a captain into the penitentiary if he’s not as bright as a dollar and as honest as the morning star; and what with Lloyd keeping watch and watch in every corner of the three oceans, and the insurance leeches, and the consuls, and the Customs bugs, and the medicos, you can only get the idea by thinking of a landsman watched by a hundred and fifty detectives, or a stranger in a village Down East.”
“Well, but at sea?” I said.
“You make me tired,” retorted the captain. “What’s the use—at sea? Everything’s got to come to bearings at some port, hasn’t it? You can’t stop at sea for ever, can you?—No; the Flying Scud is rubbish; if it meant anything, it would have to mean something so almighty intricate that James G. Blaine hasn’t got the brains to engineer it; and I vote for more axeing, pioneering, and opening up the resources of this phenomenal brig, and less general fuss,” he added, arising. “The dime-museum symptoms will drop in of themselves, I guess, to keep us cheery.”
But it appeared we were at the end of discoveries for the day; and we left the brig about sundown, without being further puzzled or further enlightened. The best of the cabin spoils—books, instruments, papers, silks, and curiosities—we carried along with us in a blanket, however, to divert the evening hours; and when supper was over, and the table cleared, and Johnson set down to a dreary game of cribbage between his right hand and his left, the captain and I turned out our blanket on the floor, and sat side by side to examine and appraise the spoils.