“I sent you a letter written at sea weeks and weeks ago.”
“This is the only letter I have received from you,” said he; and, trembling with agitation and excitement, he pulled out the letter that I had sent ashore that morning.
The sailors were watching us, and my uncle, now that he had his voice, shouted; so, taking the dear old fellow by the arm, I carried him into the cabin, where sat the lady Aurora occupied in furbishing up her hat to fit her for going ashore. My uncle started and stared at her. He looked plump and and well kept, with his bottle-green coat, broad brimmed, low crowned hat, and boots like a postillion’s of that time. His face was jolly and rosy, despite the blueness of his lips; he seemed, indeed, more weather-stained and sea-going than I, as though it was the uncle and not the nephew who was just returned from three years of the ocean. He stared at the lady Aurora, and whipped his hat off and bent his back in a bow quick with nerve. The lady rose and courtesyed.
“Your wife, Bill?” said he.
“No, a shipwrecked lady. We took her off a rock in the South Pacific.”
“Off a rock! Lord love you all! What’s next to come?”
“Often have I heard Señor Fielding speak of you, Captain Round,” said Miss Aurora.
“Yes, I will believe that of Bill, ma’am.”
“I am shipwrecked, indeed,” she exclaimed with a fine arch smile and flashing look that carried me deep into the heart of the Atlantic and Southern Oceans ere Gerald Maxwell was, or when, if he had been aboard, he’d have seen us sitting very close side by side over a lesson in English; “judge by my gown.” She swept it at the knees. “I am not fit to be seen.”
“But ye are then, believe me,” said my uncle; and he sidled up to me and, rubbing my arm with his elbow, muttered, “handsomest woman I ever saw in my life, Bill; if she aint the Queen of Spain.”