"Cap'n Pharo Kobbe," said his wife, as if it were suddenly and startlingly a subject of physics, "whatever is the matter with you?"
"Carn't I be p'lite ef I want to?" roared the captain; but as he surveyed his contemplated burden, who was a good many inches taller than he, and by all odds sprightlier, he paled.
"Ef 't you could get anything, Cap'n Kobbe," said his wife, "I sh'd think you had."
This unblessed dark reminder of a causeless deprivation settled it. Captain Pharo seized Miss Pray, blushing with alarm and amaze at such sudden retributive lightning on the part of her long-delayed charms, and bore her out into the mud.
But he had labored but a few steps with her, giving vent meanwhile to audible, involuntary groans, before it became evident to her, or to them both, that his grasp was failing, his feet sinking. She threw up a hand and partly dislodged his pipe; it was instantly a question of dropping his pipe or Miss Pray; the captain dropped Miss Pray.
Both women were now angry with him; between all that sea and sky Captain Pharo appeared not to have a friend save his pipe and me.
Miss Pray indignantly picked the rest of her steps alone. "Ye'll have to do the rest o' yer co'tin' in yer own way," murmured the captain to me, darkly and vaguely, as he stepped into the boat: "but my 'dvice to ye is, drop it! drop it right whar 'tis!"
"Oh, that is all right," I tried to assure him. "I—I hadn't hardly begun, you know."
We scoured the bottom successfully with the "Eliza Rodgers," but as we got into deep water there fell a perfect calm.
"'T 'd be bad enough," said Captain Pharo, set against the world, and tugging wrathfully at the oars, "t' go on sech idjit contractions as these 'ith a breeze t' set sail to, but when 't comes to pullin' over thar' twenty mile, with the sea as flat as a floor, t' have yer darn fool pictur' took——" He laid down the oars with an undoubted air of permanency, and lit his pipe.