“No, miss, I would have you go with Mr Fraser. Sure the poor man must be pining for a sight of your face after so long a deprivation of it.”
This sly hint made me so angry that I was about to say I would not go, but being unwilling to allow Miss Hamlin so much power over me as this would imply, I made shift to dress myself with infinite trouble (although I did not attempt to appear in anything but an undress, as you may imagine), and with my hair huddled into a mob[02] under my capuchin, tottered out into the passage, where I found Mr Fraser awaiting me. He expressed great concern at my altered looks (for you may guess that one’s face is not at its best after three weeks of such misery as we have been enduring), and gave me his hand on deck. There, while I stood holding to a rail, scarce able to keep my feet, he devised a seat for me in a corner sheltered from the wind, and having placed me there covered with a great watch-coat of his own, stood looking at me very kindly, and asked me how I did? I was so much overcome by the sudden return to air and daylight that I could hardly answer him, and perceiving this, he began to point out to me the different parts of the vessel, and tell me their names. The bales and cases which had encumbered the deck when I had last seen it were now removed, and the ship, though her upper works had suffered in places from the violence of the waves, had a much more spacious and agreeable air.
“But pray, sir,” said I, when I had recovered my intellects, “tell me whether you was ever in so terrible a storm in all your life hitherto?”
“So terrible a storm, madam?” says he, as if surprised. “What storm?”
“Why, the storm that is but just subsided, sir?”
“There was no storm, madam. We met with some dirty weather in the Bay, but every seaman looks for that.”
“Dirty weather!” said I. “In what way could a storm be worse, sir?”
Before Mr Fraser could answer, a person who had been walking up and down the deck paused in front of us. He wore a watch-coat and an oil-skin cover to his hat, and carried a marine glass under his arm.
“So, young gentleman!” he said; “dancing attendance on the ladies, hey? More likely work for a King’s officer than soiling his hands with horrid tarry ropes, en’t it? Your servant, madam. Trust a navy gentleman to know a pretty face when he sees one, but when you get tired of your present convoy, you hoist signals, and I’ll find you a fresh consort in no time.”
“Sir,” says Mr Fraser (I was so confounded by this address that I knew not how to reply), “I would think better of you if you kept your insults for company in which I could resent ’em on the spot.”