Greaves lay in his bunk motionless, on his back, but he was free from pain. Galloon sat on a chest near his head. I reported the affairs of the brig, the distance and bearings of the island, and the like. He asked how the weather looked.
“It is a heavenly night,” said I.
“It is hot in this hole,” said he. “Plague seize the awkwardness that tripped me and has floored me thus! One knows not what to do for a bruise of this sort. But patience—that’s the physic for every sort of bruise, whether of the bones or of the soul. Jim tells me the lady has supped.”
“She has, sir.”
“I am sorry for the poor thing; but where is the woman that does not always want something more than she has? This time yesterday she would have given her hair—angels alive! what would she not have given? to be as she now is, safe aboard such a vessel as this; and now that she is safe aboard—rescued from raw terrapin and the risks of the society of two Spanish sailors (and I must like their looks better before I give them a handsomer name than that)—she craves to be with her mother—very natural, of course—who is, probably, at the bottom of the ocean, and she wants to be put ashore at Lima.”
I delivered the request of the men, as expressed by Yan Bol.
“Oh, yes. Let grog be served out to all hands; and the men may sing, certainly. Disturb me? Not down here. And I like my people to be merry. Fortune has fiddled to-day; let the beggars dance.”
Jimmy was in the cabin. I bade him carry a can of rum to the men, and went on deck, receiving, without knowing how to answer, a look of inquiry from the lady Aurora as I passed her.
“The men may make merry,” said I to Bol. “There is grog gone forward. Tell them that the captain is free from pain; and will you keep a lookout in the waist—or in the head if you like, ’tis all one—while I get a bite in the cabin?”
“Yaw, dot vill I. By der vay, Mr. Fielding, vhas dere von hoondred und dirty, or vhas dere von hoondred und twenty, cases prought on boardt? Vertz swears to von hoondred und dirty; Friendt, von hoondred und twenty. I myself gounts von hoondred und dirty-two. Dere vhas a leedle vager in dis—shoost von day of a man’s grog, dot vhas all.”