‘Ay, never sparing a cloth, sir, and she’s something to jockey, Mr. Monson. You don’t know her yet, sir.’
‘The “Shark”’s a fore-and-aft schooner?’
‘Yes,’ he answered.
‘She carries a square sail, no doubt?’
‘Ay, a big ’un, but good only for running, and we ain’t without that canvas, too, you must know,’ he added with the twinkle of humour in his gaze that I had observed in him when Wilfrid had first made him known to me. ‘Enough of it, Mr. Monson, to hold wind to serve a Dutchman for a week, not to mention a torps’l and a t’gallants’l fit for a line-o’-battle ship to ratch under.’
This was vague talk, but it pleased Wilfrid.
‘Square yards are very well,’ said I; ‘but surely they don’t allow a vessel to look up to it as though her canvas was fore and aft only? I merely ask for information. My marine experiences were limited to square rigs.’
‘There’s nothen to prevent the “Bride” from looking up to it as close as the “Shark,”’ answered Finn. ‘The yards’ll lie fore and aft; what’s to hinder them? There ain’t no spread, sir, like what you get in ships with your futtock rigging and backstays and shrouds in the road of the slings elbowing their way to channels big enough for a ball-room. Besides,’ he added, ‘suppose it should be a matter of a quarter of a pint’s difference, we need but stow the square cloths, and then we ain’t no worse off than the “Shark.”’
‘True,’ said I, thinking more of Miss Jennings than of what Finn was saying: so perfect a picture of girlish beauty did she happen to be at that instant as she leaned on her elbow, supporting her chin with a small white hand, her form in a posture that left one side of her face in shadow, whilst the other side lay bright, golden, and soft in the lamplight over the table. She was listening with charming gravity, and a countenance of sympathy whose tenderness was unimpaired by an appearance of attention that I could not doubt was just a little forced, since our sailor talk could not but be Greek to her. Besides, at intervals, there was a lift of the white lid, a gleam of the violet eye, which was like assuring one that thought was kept in the direction of our conversation only by constraint.
I was beginning to feel the want of a cigar, and I had been sitting long enough now to make me pine for a few turns on deck, but I durst not be abrupt in the face of my cousin’s devouring stare at his skipper and the pathetic spectacle of the contending passions in him as he hearkened, now nodding, now gloomily smiling, now lying back on a sudden with a frown which he made as if to smooth out by pressing his hand to his brow.