‘Oh, you mean Mynheer Hemskirk, the corpulent chap, whose voice sounds like that of a man inside a rum puncheon talking through the bunghole.’
I asked him if he could tell me anything about Miss Temple, the black-eyed lady.
‘Some one told me at Gravesend,’ he answered—‘but I don’t know who it was—that she’s a daughter of Sir Conyers Temple. I think I’ve heard my father speak of him as a man he has hunted with. If he’s that Sir Conyers, he broke his neck four years ago in a steeplechase.’
‘Who accompanies the young lady to India, I wonder?’ said I.
‘Her aunt, I believe; but I don’t know her name. But I say, though, what makes you so inquisitive?’
‘Oh, my dear Colledge,’ said I, ‘one is always inquisitive about one’s fellow-passengers on board ship. The girl came up to me on deck the other night when the row of the collision was in full swing. I see her big eyes now—black as ebony, yet luminous too, with the flame of a flare-tin at the side reflected in each magnificent orb in a spot of crimson which made her pale hooded face as mystical as a vision of the night.’
He turned to stare at me, and broke into a laugh. ‘So! you are the poet amongst the passengers, eh? as Emmett’s the painter? What’s to be my walk? Oh, there goes the first breakfast bell! Heaven bless us, what a delightful thing it is not to feel sea-sick!’
We continued to gabble a bit in this fashion; he then left the berth, and a little later I followed him.
The large cuddy wore an aspect it had not before exhibited. The sunshine sparkled upon the skylights, and the interior was full of the blue and silver radiance of the rich and welcome autumn morning outside. The long table was all aglow with the silver and crystal furniture of the white damask, and through the glazed domes in the upper deck you could see the canvas on the mizzen swelling in a milky softness from yard to yard as the sails mounted to the height of the tender little royal.
The passengers came from the deck or up from below one after another; the change in the weather had acted as a charm, and here now was the whole mob of us, one old lady excepted, with a glimpse to be had of the two ayahs sunning themselves on the quarter-deck. The skipper, looking a bit stale, as with too much of all-night work, but smart enough in the gingerbread trickery of his uniform, made a little speech of compliments to the ladies and gentlemen from the head of the table. There was a courtliness about the old fellow that gained not a little in relish from a sort of deep-sea flavour in his manner and varying expressions of face. I liked the quality of the bow with which he accompanied his answer to any lady who addressed him.