'You are no sailor, sah!' continued Nakier, smiling and showing as pearl-white a set of teeth as were ever disclosed by the fairest woman's parted lips; 'and yet you have been shipwreck?'
I briefly related my lifeboat adventure, and in a few words completed the narrative of the raft and of our deliverance by the lugger. Indeed, it pleased me to talk with him: his accent, his looks, were a sort of realization, in their way, of early boyish dreams of travel; they carried me in fancy to the provinces of the sun; I tasted the ripe aromatic odours of tropic vegetation, there seemed a scent as of the hubble-bubble in the blue and sparkling breeze gushing fair over the rail. He begot in me a score of old yearning imaginations—of the elephant richly castellated, of the gloom of palatial structures dedicated to idols, their domes starry with encrustation of gems and the precious ores.
The brief spell was broken by Jacob's gruff, 'longshore voice:
'It don't look, Mr. Tregarthen, as if you and the lady was to git home as fast as ye want to.'
'No,' I replied. 'Do you see anything in sight up there, Jacob?'
He spat, and looked leisurely ahead.
'Nothen, sir.'
'I beg pardon, sah!' broke in Nakier's voice. 'Do you sabbe navigation?'
'I do not,' I answered, struck with a question that recalled Punmeamootty's inquiries that morning.
'But Mr. Vise,' he continued, 'he sabbe navigation?'