‘Hurt his feelings, my dear! O dear, no, not a bit of it. I know them better than you do. My dear Marian, these people haven’t got any feelings; they’ve been too much accustomed to be laughed at from the time they were babies, ever to have had the chance of acquiring any.’
‘Then the more shame,’ Edward interrupted gravely, ‘to those who have laughed them out of all self-respect and natural feeling. But I don’t believe, for my part, there’s anybody on earth who doesn’t feel hurt at being ridiculed.’
‘Ah, that’s so nice of you to think and talk like that, Mr Hawthorn,’ Nora answered frankly; ‘but you won’t think so, you know, I’m quite certain, after you’ve been a month or two on shore over in Trinidad.’
‘Good-morning, ladies and gentlemen,’ the captain of the Severn put in briskly, walking up to them as they lounged in a group on the clean-scrubbed quarter-deck—‘good-morning, ladies and gentlemen. Fine weather to start on a voyage. Are you all going with us?—Why, bless my heart, if this isn’t General Ord! I sailed with you, sir, fifteen years ago now or more, must be, when I was a second officer in the P. and O. service.—You don’t remember me; no, I daresay not; I was only a second officer then, and you sat at the captain’s table. But I remember you, sir—I remember you. There’s more folks know Tom Fool, the proverb says, than Tom Fool knows; and no offence meant, general, nor none be taken. And so you’re going out with us now, are you?—going out with us now? Well, you’ll sit at the captain’s table still, sir, no doubt, you and your party; and as I’m the captain now, you see, why, I shall have a better chance than I used to have of making your acquaintance.’
The captain laughed heartily as he spoke at his own small wit; but General Ord drew himself up rather stiffly, and answered in a somewhat severe tone: ‘No, I’m not going out with you this journey myself; but my daughter, who has lately married, and her husband here, are just setting out to their new home over in Trinidad.’
‘In Trinidad,’ the jolly captain echoed heartily—‘in Trinidad! Well, well, beautiful island, beautiful, beautiful! Must mind they don’t take too much mainsheet, or catch yellow Jack, or live in the marshes, that’s all; otherwise, they’ll find it a delightful residence. I took out a young sub-lieutenant, just gazetted, last voyage but two, when they had the yellow Jack awfully bad up at cantonments. He was in a deadly funk of the fever all the way, and always asking everybody questions about it. The moment he landed, who does he go and meet but an old Irish friend of the family, who was going home by the return steamer. The Irishman rushes up to him and shakes his hand violently and says he—“Me dear fellow,” says he, “ye’ve come in the very nick of time. Promotion’s certain; they’re dying by thousands. Every day, wan of ’em drops off the list; and all ye’ve got to do is to hould yer head up, keep from drinking any brandy, and don’t be frightened; and, be George, ye’ll rise in no time as fast as I have; and I’m going home this morning a colonel.”’
The general shuddered slightly. ‘Not a pleasant introduction to the country, certainly,’ he answered in his driest manner. ‘But I suppose Trinidad’s fairly healthy at present?’
‘Healthy! Well, yes, well enough as the tropics go, general.—But don’t you be afraid of your young people. With health and strength, they’ll pull through decently, not a doubt of it.—Let me see—let me see; I must secure ’em a place at my own table. We’ve got rather an odd lot of passengers this time, mostly; a good many of ’em have got a very decided touch o’ the tar-brush about ’em—a touch o’ the tar-brush. There’s that woolly-headed nigger fellow over there who’s just come aboard; he’s going to Trinidad too; he’s a doctor, he is. We mustn’t let your people get mixed up with all that lot, of course; I’ll keep ’em a place nice and snug at my own table.’
‘Thank you,’ the general said, rather more graciously than before.—‘This is my daughter, captain, Mrs Hawthorn. And this is my son-in-law, Mr Edward Hawthorn, who’s going out to accept a district judgeship over yonder in Trinidad.’
‘Ha!’ the jovial captain answered in his bluff voice, doffing his hat sailor-fashion to Marian and Edward. ‘Going to hang up the niggers out in Trinidad, are you, sir? Going to hang up the niggers! Well, well, they deserve it all, every man-Jack of ’em, the lazy beggars; they all deserve hanging. A pestering set of idle, thieving, hulking vagabonds, as ever came around to coal a ship in harbour! I’d judge ’em, I would—I’d judge ’em.’ And the captain pantomimically expressed the exact nature of his judicial sentiments by pressing his own stout bull-neck, just across the windpipe, with his sturdy right hand, till his red and sunburnt face grew even redder and redder with the suggested suspension.