There was another pensioner on board who was the sworn friend and countryman of Macdonald. Hugh Mackenzie was a dragoon, and a fine tall, soldierly-looking man. His wife was a little, chatty, gossiping woman, from Berwickshire; a good creature in her way, but sadly addicted to the use of strong waters, drowning the little sense she had in the fumes of whiskey and brandy. She and her husband spent all their time in eating and drinking, when they were not taking snuff and smoking. They were cooking, or preparing for it, from morning till night; and generally headed the forlorn hope which three times a day besieged the caboose, and defied the valiant Hannibal to his very teeth.
Mrs. Mackenzie was the very reverse of her gude friend, Mrs. Macdonald; for she stood in perpetual fear of her tall husband, who thrashed her soundly when she got drunk. Moreover, she was very jealous of all the young women in the ship, whom she termed, "Lazy, bold, gude for nought hizzies, who wud na led a' bodies ain man alane."
She would sit for hours on the deck smoking a short black pipe, and crooning old border ballads, in a voice anything but musical.
During Flora's long morning promenade upon deck, she more than once caught a pair of yellow, queer-looking eyes peering at her from beneath the shade of one of the boats which were slung to the main-mast, and by-and-by a singularly disagreeable-looking head raised itself from a couch of cloaks, and continued its investigation in a very intrusive manner. The head belonged to a little man in a snuff-coloured suit, whose small, pert, pugnacious face, eyes, hair and complexion, were only a variety of the same shades as the dress in which he had cased his outer man. Flora quietly pointed him out to her husband, and asked in a whisper, "What he thought of the little brown man?"
"His appearance is not at all prepossessing," said Lyndsay. "I will ask the Captain, who is coming this way, who and what he is?"
The question seemed to embarrass old Boreas not a little. He threw a frowning glance towards the spot occupied by the stranger, shrugged his shoulders, whistled a tune, and thrusting his hands into his breeches' pockets, took several turns on the deck before he made any reply. Until, seeing the snuff-coloured individual about to crawl out of his hiding-place, he called out in a gruff voice—
"Keep where you are, Sir—the longer you remain out of sight the better. By exposing yourself to observation, you may cause trouble to more persons than one!"
The person thus unceremoniously addressed, smiled malignantly, and retreating beneath the shade of the boat, snarled out some reply, only audible to the captain; whose advice did not however seem lost upon him, for after the Lyndsays had taken another turn or two, and he had glared at them with his little fiery eyes, sufficiently to gratify his insolent curiosity, he again emerged from under the boat, and succeeded in tumbling into it. Drawing a part of a spare sail over his diminutive person, he vanished as completely from sight, as if the ocean had suddenly swallowed him up.
"I was a d——d fool!" muttered the captain, returning to Lyndsay's side, "to let that fellow, with his ugly, sneering phiz, come on board! But as he is here, I must make the best of a bad bargain. You will not peach, so I'll just give you a bit of his history, and explain the necessity of his keeping close until we are out of the sight of land. Hang him! his ugly phiz is enough to sink the ship. Had I seen him before he came on board, he might have rotted in gaol before I took charge of his carcase. And then, 'tis such a conceited ass, he will take no advice, and cares as little for his own safety as he does for mine."
"Is he a runaway felon?" asked Flora.