They really were good little things. The little husband took the hammer, and the little wife the nails, and they passed them to me as I asked for them; and she said to me: “Right! left! captain!” laughing because the pitching of the ship made my clock toss about. I can still hear her even now with her little voice: “Left! right! captain!” She was laughing at me.—” Ah!” I said, “you little mischief! I will make your husband scold you, I will!” Then she threw her arms about his neck and kissed him. They really were charming, and that was the way we became acquainted. We were good friends at once.
It was a good crossing too. I always had weather that might have been made for me. As I had never had any but black faces on my ship, I made my two little lovers come to my table every day. It cheered me up. When we had eaten the biscuits and fish, the little wife and her husband kept on looking at each other as if they had never seen each other before. Then I would begin to laugh with all my heart and make fun of them. They laughed too with me. You would have laughed to see us like three lunatics, not knowing what was the matter with us. It was really pleasant to see them loving each other like that! They were happy everywhere; they liked all that was given to them. Yet they were allowanced like all the rest of us; I only added a little Swedish brandy when they dined with me, just a small glass, to keep up my rank. They slept in a hammock, in which the ship rolled them about like those two pears I have there in my wet handkerchief. They were brisk and contented. I was like you, I asked no questions. What need was there for me, a ferryman, to know their name and business? I was carrying them from the other side of the sea, as I would have carried two birds of paradise.
At the end of a month, I had got to look on them as my children. All day long, when I called them, they would come to sit with me. The young man wrote at my table, that is to say on my bed; and, when I wished, he helped me to take my “reckoning.” He soon knew how to do it as well as I; I was sometimes quite amazed at it. The young wife would sit on a little cask and begin to sew.
One day that they were settled like this I said to them:
“Do you know, my little friends, that we make a family picture, as we are now? I don’t want to question you, but probably you haven’t more money than you need, and you are pretty delicate, both of you, to dig and use the pick as the convicts at Cayenne do. It is a wretched country, I can tell you that with all my heart; but I, who am an old wizened tar dried up by the sun, I should live there like a lord. If you had, as it seems to me (without wishing to question you) that you do have, a little liking for me, I should be willing enough to leave my old brig, which is now no better than an old tub, and I would settle there with you, if you like. I have no family but a dog, which is a grief to me; you would be a little company for me. I would help you in many things; and I have got together a good stock of goods honestly enough smuggled, on which we should live, and which I should leave you when I came to turn up my toes, as they say in polite society.”
They sat staring at one another quite amazed, looking as if they thought I was not speaking the truth; and the little woman ran, as she always did, and threw her arms round the other’s neck, and sat on his knees, quite red in the face, and crying. He hugged her tightly, and I saw tears in his eyes as well; he held out his hand to me, and turned paler than usual. She whispered to him, and her long fair locks fell over his shoulder; her hair had come untwisted like a rope suddenly uncoiled, for she was as lively as a fish: that hair, if only you could have seen it! it was like gold. As they kept on whispering, the young man kissing her brow from time to time, and she weeping, I grew impatient:
“Well, would that suit you?” I said to them at last.
“But ... but, captain, you are very kind,” said the husband, “but the fact is ... you could not live with convicts, and....” He looked down.
“I don’t know,” I said, “what you have done to get transported, but you’ll tell me that some day, or not at all, if you’d prefer. You don’t look to me as if your consciences were very heavy, and I’m quite sure that I’ve done many worse things than you in my life, so there, you poor innocents. Of course while you are in my custody, I shall not release you, you mustn’t expect it; I would sooner cut off your heads like two pigeons’. But, the epaulette once laid aside, I no longer know either admiral or anything else.”
“The fact is,” he answered, sadly shaking his dark head, dark, although powdered a little, as was still the fashion at that time, “the fact is I think it would be dangerous for you, captain, to seem to know us. We laugh because we are young; we look happy because we love each other; but I have some bad moments when I think of the future, and cannot tell what will happen to my poor Laura.”