I arched my eyebrows at him, and then gave him my back.
“Veil, I vhas sorry. I like gounting money. Dere vhas a shoy in der feel of money if so be ash he vhas gold or silver—I do not love copper—dot makes me happier, Mr. Fielding, dan any odder pleasure. Ox me vhy und I tells you? Because vhen I gounts money she vhas mine own. No man gives me his money to gount. She vhas mine own; but leedle I have, and vhen I counts her it vhas after long years, so dot der pleasure vhas all der same as a pipe und a pot to a man vhen he comes out of der lockoop.”
While I breakfasted I enjoyed some conversation in dumb show with the lady Aurora—dumb show for the most part, I should say—for a number of English words she now possessed, and I was astonished not more by her memory than by the excellence of her pronunciation. Her knowledge of a single word uttered by me seemed to light up the whole phrase to her perception. Her gaze would continue passionately wistful and expectant whenever she listened with a desire to understand, and whenever she seized or thought she had seized the sense of what was said, a flush visited her cheeks, her whole face brightened.
There was a degree of eagerness in this desire of hers to learn English that was a little perplexing. It was an earnestness, call it an enthusiasm if you will, that went beyond my idea of her need. It was intelligible that she should wish to make herself understood. She would now know that she was to be locked up in a ship with a number of Englishmen for three or four months; what more reasonable than that she should desire to make her wants intelligible without being forced upon so disagreeable and ignorant an interpreter as Antonio, and without seeking expression in grimaces and the lunatic language of the eyebrows, shoulders, and hands? What more reasonable, I ask? But her earnestness, her zeal, her satisfaction when she understood, caused me to wonder somewhat when I thought of her in this way. She was on a desert island a few days ago, with small prospect of deliverance from as frightful a fate as could well befall a woman. For all she knew her mother was drowned; she might be an orphan, and who was to tell what property belonging to her and her mother had sunk in the Spaniard from which she had escaped, supposing that vessel to have foundered? And yet spite of all this her spirits were good, her beauty growing as the lingering traces of her suffering died out. She took an interest in everything her eyes rested upon, questioning me like a child, questioning Greaves, nay, walking forward, as I have told you, to ask Antonio for the English names of things, and all the while her troubles, so far as she was able to express them, did not go beyond an anxiety as to clothes for herself and an eagerness to pick up our tongue.
These thoughts ran in my head as I ate my breakfast, while she talked to me by gesticulation, occasionally uttering a word or two in English, and listening with shining eyes to the sentences I let fall in my own speech. Greaves lay upon a locker. He listened, sometimes smiling, but rarely spoke. He complained this morning of an aching in his side where he had hurt himself, and said that he feared he had made a mistake in walking yesterday; he was afraid he had overworked the bruised ribs, but he looked well, and when he spoke there was a heartiness in his voice. It was as likely as not that he had angered the bruise by too much walking about the decks, and I advised him to lie up until the pain went.
However, the brig was to be watched while I went into the lazarette with Bol and the others, so I sent Jimmy on deck with a chair, and when I had breakfasted Greaves got up, put his hand upon my shoulder, and together we ascended the companion ladder.
Yan Bol was carpenter as well as bo’sun and sail-maker. I bade him fetch the necessary tools for opening the cases and securing them again. With us went Henry Call and another—I forget who that man was. We lighted a couple of lanterns, and going into the cabin lifted the lazarette hatch that was just abaft the companion steps. The lady Aurora came to the square hole to look at us, and inquired by signs what we were going to do. I shrugged Spanish fashion, and made a face at her, that she might gather that what we were going to do was entirely beyond the art of my shoulders and arms to communicate.
“Doan she shpeak no English, Mr. Fielding?” said Bol, as he handed down his tools to Call, who was already in the lazarette.
“No,” said I.
“Veil, I, Yan Bol, teaches him herself in a month for von of her rings.”