“Sam,” he shouted to someone in the next room, “come and look at this.”
Sam came. He also walked unsteadily. He was nearly as big as his companion and was similarly dressed.
“Well, Sam,—what do you make of it?”
“It gets over me, Cap’n,” said Sam, after a pause of anxious scrutiny.
“Well,—I’ve been round the world and I’ve never seen hair like that—Say, my lass, where do you hail from?”
Kanu replied in Dutch, asking if the Governor lived there, and if he were at home.
“Dry up with that monkey-chatter, or I’ll wring your neck,” rasped the irate Captain. Kanu shrank back in dread, pressing Elsie behind him. The Captain lurched over to the child and laid his hand on her shoulder.
“My lass,—I’ve a little girl at Southampton who looks like you, but you can show her your heels as far as hair goes.—Why—Sam—the child’s blind.”
The Captain had sat down on a chair, drawn Elsie towards him by the shoulders, and looked into her face at close quarters. When his eyes met hers something penetrated to his perceptions through the fumes of the liquor he had drunk and told him she was blind. Sam came forward and had a look. He did not believe the child was blind, and said so. She was just a beggar, shamming. He had often seen the same kind of thing on London Bridge.
The Captain roughly, but kindly, drew the child again towards him. Elsie kept passive and silent in his hands. Perhaps this was one of the Governor’s friends,—or even the Governor himself. She read his character by his touch, and trusted him, but she had shrunk away from Sam.