"Is here where you live, my dear shark?… Let me see everything. Let me poke around everywhere. Everything of yours interests me. You will not say now that I do not love you. What a boast for Captain Ferragut! The ladies come to seek him on his ship…."
She interrupted her ironic and affectionate chatter in order to defend herself gently from the sailor. He, forgetting the past, and wishing to take advantage of the happiness so suddenly presented to him, was kissing the nape of her neck.
"There,… there!" she sighed. "Now let me look around. I feel the curiosity of a child."
She opened the piano,—the poor piano of the Scotch captain—and some thin and plaintive chords, showing many years' lack of tuning, filled the saloon with the melancholy of resuscitated memories.
The melody was like that of the musical boxes that we find forgotten in the depths of a wardrobe among the clothes of some deceased old lady. Freya declared that it smelled of withered roses.
Then, leaving the piano, she opened one after the other, all the doors of the staterooms surrounding the saloon. She stopped at the captain's sleeping room without wishing to pass the threshold, without loosening her hold on the brass doorknob in her right hand. Ferragut behind her, was pushing her with treacherous gentleness, at the same time repeating his caresses on her neck.
"No; here, no," she said. "Not for anything in the world!… I will be yours, I promise you; I give you my word of honor. But where I will and when it seems best to me…. Very soon, Ulysses!"
He felt complete gratification in all these affirmations made in a caressing and submissive voice, all possible pride in such spontaneous, affectionate address, equivalent to the first surrender.
The arrival of one of Uncle Caragol's acolytes made them recover their composure. He was bringing two enormous glasses filled with a ruddy and foamy cocktail,—an intoxicating and sweet mixture, a composite of all the knowledge acquired by the chef in his intercourse with the drunkards of the principal ports of the world.
She tested the liquid, rolling up her eyes like a greedy tabby. Then she broke forth into praises, lifting up the glass in a solemn manner. She was offering her libation to Eros, the god of Love, the most beautiful of the gods, and Ferragut who always had a certain terror of the infernal and agreeable concoctions of his cook, gulped the glass in one swallow, in order to join in the invocation.