"We must be patient," added the surgeon a moment later, without having looked again at his companion. "'T is just like a cage of beasts here: fierce and harmless are shut in together. Tame creatures are sometimes forced to show their teeth. We must not fret about petty things, either; 't is a great errand we have come out upon, and the honest doing of it is all the business we have in common."
"True, sir," said Dickson, with a touch of insolent flattery. "Shall we take a hand at cards?"
XIV
TO ADD MORE GRIEF
"O garlands, hanging by these doors, now stay,
Nor from your leaves too quickly shake away
My dew of tears. (How many such, ah me!
A lover's eyes must shed!)"
Captain Paul Jones was waiting, a most affable and dignified host, to greet his guest. Wallingford stood before him, with a faint flush of anger brightening his cheeks.
"You commanded me, sir," he said shortly.
"Oh, come, Wallingford!" exclaimed the captain, never so friendly before, and keeping that pleasant voice and manner which at once claimed comradeship from men and admiring affection from women. "I 'll drop the commander when we 're by ourselves, if you 'll consent, and we 'll say what we like. I wanted you to sup with me. I 've got a bottle of good wine for us,—some of Hamilton's Madeira."
Wallingford hesitated; after all, what did it matter? The captain was the captain; there was a vigorous sort of refreshment in this life on shipboard; a man could not judge his associates by the one final test of their being gentlemen, but only expect of each that he should follow after his kind. Outside society there lies humanity.
The lieutenant seated himself under the swinging lamp, and took the glass that was held out to him. They drank together to the flag they carried, and to their lucky landfall on the morrow.