“Shall you buy a ship?” said she, smiling.
“No,” said I, looking earnestly at her; “I will marry a wife and settle down.”
She clapped her hands, threw her head back, and laughed aloud. “Qué disperate. Cannot you make a better use of your money than purchasing a wife with it? Señor Fielding, you shall buy a fine ship and trade to the Indies and grow immensely rich. Marry! Qué disperate.” She threw back her head again, and laughed out.
“I’ll buy no ship,” said I. “I will marry a handsome woman, and live happily with her on the seashore. She and I will go a-fishing for pleasure. You are not a sailor: were you a sailor, you would think of nothing but a wife and a home of your own and money enough for meat, tobacco, and the rest.”
“Your wife,” said she, “shall be another Perfecta Casada: she shall make you more money than any woman can bring you. You’ll die a Catholic, and your fortune shall build a magnificent cathedral;” and now, without another word, she abruptly rose, made me a low, strange bow, as though forsooth we had met for the first time in our brig five minutes before, and went to her cabin.
She was frequently puzzling me in this way. She’d abandon herself, so to speak; be all charm, naïveté, smiles, and graciousness, then abruptly look poniards and corkscrews, and with a sweep of her fine figure make off. Was it her theory of coquetry?
I went on deck with a half smile in my thought of her odd, abrupt, capricious withdrawal, and amused, too, with thinking of how I now managed to make out a clear conversation with a girl who, a few weeks before, pointed at things with her finger and talked to me with her eyes. The time was about twenty minutes before two. John Wirtz was at the wheel. Bol, whose watch it was, talked with Travers and Teach in the gangway. Travers and Teach were in Galen’s watch. I was surprised to find them aft; further aft, I mean, than that they had a right to be, talking with Bol, whose business it was to keep a lookout. Galen was on the forecastle pacing to and fro, under the yawn of the fore-course, with Henry Call and James Meehan; Friend and the two Spaniards were squatted upon a sail in the waist, stitching at it. Both watches then were on deck, and all hands saving Jim Vinten, the cabin boy, visible.
I found something strange in this: yet had I taken time to reflect I might have seen that the strangeness lay rather in the bearing of the men than in the circumstance of all the crew being in sight. I looked aloft: every cloth was doing its work; the whiteness of the sails overflowed the boundaries of the bolt-ropes with light, and the azure of the sky was a pale silver against the edges of the canvas. The foam spitting from the nimble thrust of the cut-water shot by fast alongside; the brig was sailing well. I stood with my hands upon one of the shrouds of the main, my eyes upon the sea line: turning a minute or two later I saw Yan Bol corning to me.
“Mr. Fielding,” said he, “I likes to have a quiet talk mit you.”
Travers and Teach in the gangway held their stations looking at us. Galen came to a halt on the forecastle with his face aft; Friend looked at us with his needle poised; the Spaniards went on stitching.