I did not much like to give her my hand; it was coarse and horny with the toil of the sea. I extended the palms at a safe distance, and by motions informed her that the lines of the hand had been worn out—smoothed to the quality of the sole of an old boot by many years of pulling and hauling, by grasping the spokes of wheels, by the fingering of canvas, and the handling of capstan bars.
“No, no,” she cried, “give me your hand, Señor Fielding.”
So I went round the table and sat beside her. I winced when she took my hand; the contrast between my square-ended fist and her delicate fingers was a shock. She held my hand and pored upon it. The skylight was shut, and Galen probably thought that I did not observe him looking down at us. Holding my hand, her dark and shining eyes sometimes bent upon the palm of it, sometimes lifted full of archness and quiet mirth to my face, the lady Aurora told me my fortune. I comprehended but little of what she said; she spoke much in Spanish, motioned with one arm—always retaining my hand—viewed me with a face that was forever changing its expression, and occasionally she let fall certain English words. I guessed from what she said that I was to be rich, marry a handsome lady without money, have six children, and live to be a very old man.
Jimmy came into the cabin while she held my hand, and gaped at us from the bottom of the companion ladder. I bade him put wine, biscuits, and the material for grog upon the table and then clear out. When the lady was done with my hand she went to her berth and returned with a log book—a new volume of blank leaves headed for entries—which I had given to her out of several in Greaves’ cabin.
“Now, Señor Fielding,” said she in English, “you shall give me a lesson;” and, sitting down, she examined the point of her pencil and adjusted herself with the air of a lady who means business.
I glanced at the clock, poured out a glass of wine, and placed it on a swing tray in front of her, mixed myself a tumbler of grog, and took a seat over against her. The lesson consisted of dictation. I’d pronounce a sentence deliberately; she’d take it down: hand me the book; then our faces would meet across the table over the book, while I pointed out the blunders in spelling, and explained the meaning of such words as she did not know. She had filled several pages of the book on her own account, and some pages on mine.
The romance of it all! What more romantic as a detail of ocean life would you have? Realize that little moonlighted brig rolling over the black heaven of the sea, Cape Horn not far off, the Cross and the Magellanic dust overhead, nothing in sight, the moon’s wake coiling in hills of silver under her, and in the heart of that lonely speck of brig two young people, again and again nearly rubbing cheeks together over a blank log book: one of them a fine, handsome Spanish woman, with dark eyes of fire and a smile that was like light with its swift disclosure of white teeth, and a beautiful little pale yellow hand that shone with jewels; and the other—and the other——
She looked at the clock, and started, with a Spanish exclamation, and said, “I will sing. You have been good. I will sing to you.” All this she said in English. Then, in dumb show, she played a phantom guitar, gazing at me with one of those asking looks which I could interpret as easily as I took sights. I shook my head to her signification of a guitar, and played on an imaginary fiddle; on which she nodded, crying with vivacity in Spanish, “It will do! It will do!”
I put my head into the hatch and called for Jimmy. Galen sent the name forward in a roar, and the boy arrived.
“Borrow me a fiddle,” said I.