‘Ow you shpell?’ He got the word, and then said, ‘Vere you boun’?’
‘To the Solomon Group,’ I answered.
This I had to spell for him too. He wrote with such imperturbability, with such a ponderosity of phlegmatic manner in his posture, with such whale-like asthmatic wheezings broken only by the trembling notes of his deep, deep voice, that again and again I was nearly exploding with laughter, and indeed, had I caught anybody’s eye but his, I must certainly have whipped out with the merriment that was almost suffocating me. He slowly returned the note-book to his pocket and exclaimed, ‘Goot. You hear more of dis,’ and with that walked to the gangway.
‘Pray forgive me,’ said I, following him and speaking very courteously, ‘will you kindly tell me the name of your ship?’
He regarded me with a kind of scowl as he hung an instant in the gangway—the only expression approaching intelligence that entered his face, and said, ‘Malvina.’
‘And pray where are you bound to, sir?’
‘Curaçoa.’
‘Are you the owner, sir?’
‘Captain,’ he responded with an emphatic nod, and so saying he put his foot on the ladder and entered his boat.
Five minutes later we were breaking the seas afresh, making a more southerly course than was needful by two points, that we might give as wide a berth as soon as possible to the Dutch schooner, that, at the time I went below to the summons of the dinner-bell, was sliding away west-south-west a league distant under every cloth that she had to hoist.