Once he endeavoured to prove to Mr. Emmett that he was wanting in an essential qualification of a painter, namely, an eye for atmosphere, by requesting him to say how far the horizon was off, and roaring in triumph because Mr. Emmett answered five miles. Mr. Johnson, after a careful look at the sea, submitted that Mr. Emmett was right. The colonel, pulling out his white whiskers, asked how it was possible that a journalist should know anything about such things. Angry words were averted by Mynheer Hemskirk, who, with a fat face and foolish smile, broke in with a mouldy old puzzle: ‘Answer me dis: here iss a bortrait. I shtands opposite, und I shay, “Brooders und shisters hov I none boot dot man’s farder iss my farder’s soon! Vot relation iss dot man to dot bicture?”’ The colonel had never heard this, and asked the Dutchman to repeat it. Mr. Hodder in a mild voice said: ‘It is himself.’ Little Mr. Saunders, after thinking hard, said it was his father. ‘That’s it, of course!’ shouted the colonel. The Dutchman said no, and repeated the lines with great emphasis, striking one fist into the palm of the other at every syllable. Then sides were taken merely to enrage the colonel. Some agreed with him, and some with the Dutchman. Mr. Emmett, feigning not to catch the point, compelled the stupid good-natured Hemskirk to repeat the question a dozen times over. So loud was the argument, so angry the colonel, so excited the Dutchman, and so demonstrative most of the others of the listeners, that the chief officer came off the poop to look at us.
I give this as an instance of our method of killing that dreary time. The old ladies for the most part kept their cabins; but the girls came into the cuddy as usual, and made the interior comfortable to the eye as they sat here and there with knitting-needles in their hands or a book upon their knees.
On one of these foul-weather afternoons, hearing a strange noise of singing, I entered the cuddy, and found Peter Hemskirk standing with his face to the company and his back upon one of the Miss Joliffes, who was accompanying him at the piano. He was singing a fashionable sentimental song of that day, ‘I’d be a Butterfly, born in a Bower.’ The posture of the man was exquisitely absurd as he stood with his immensely fat figure swaying to the movements of the ship, a ridiculous smile upon his face, whilst he held his arms extended, singing first to one and then to another, so that every one might share in the song. The picture of this great corpulent man, with an overflow of chins between his shirt collars, and a vast surface of green waistcoat arching out like the round of a full topsail, and then curving in again to a pair of legs of the exact resemblance of a pegtop—standing as he was with his feet close together—I say, the sight of this immense man singing ‘I’d be a Booterfly’ in falsetto, proved too much for the company. They listened a little with sober faces; but at last Miss Hudson gave way, and bent her head behind her mother and lay shaking in an hysterical fit of laughter; then another girl laughed out; then followed a general chorus of merriment. But the undaunted Dutchman persevered. He would not let us off a single syllable, but worked his way without the least alteration of posture right through the song, making us a low bow when he had come to an end; whilst Miss Joliffe, darting from the piano stool, fled through the saloon and disappeared down the hatchway with a face as red as a powder-flag.
Miss Temple was the only one of us unmoved by this ridiculous exhibition. She kept her eyes bent on a book in her lap for the most part whilst Mynheer sang, now and then glancing round her with a face of cold wonder. Once our eyes met, when she instantly sent her gaze flashing to her book again. Indeed, it was already possible to see the sort of opinion in which she was held by her fellow-passengers by their manner of holding off from her as from a person who considered herself much too good to be of them, though the obligation of going to India forced her to be with them. Yet one easily guessed that the other girls hugely admired her. I’d notice them running their eyes over her dress, watching her face and bearing at table, following her motions about the deck; and again and again I would overhear them speaking in careful whispers about her when she was out of sight. In short, she might have been a woman of distinguished title amongst us; and if the passengers gave her a respectful berth, it was certainly not, I think, because they would not have felt themselves flattered by an unbending or friendly behaviour in her.
On the following Thursday the wind slackened, the weather cleared, and midway of the forenoon it was already a hot sparkling morning, with a high heaven of delicate clouds like a silver frosting of the blue vault, a wide sea of flowing sapphire, and the Indiaman swaying along under studdingsails to the royal yards. I had been spending an hour in my bunk reading. As I passed through the cuddy on my way to the poop I heard the report of firearms, and on going on deck found Mr. Colledge and Miss Temple shooting with pistols at a bottle that dangled from the lee main-yard-arm. Most of the passengers sat about watching them; but the couple were alone in the pastime. The pistols were very elegant weapons, mounted in silver, with long gleaming barrels. Colledge loaded and handed them to his companion, occasionally taking aim himself.
She could not have lighted upon any practice fitter to exhibit and accentuate the perfections of her figure and face. Her dark glance went sparkling along the line of the levelled barrel; her lips, of a delicate red, lay lightly apart to the sweep of the breeze, that was sweet and warm as new milk; her colourless face under the broad shadow of her hat resembled some faultless carving in marble magically informed by a sort of dumb haughty human vitality. I cannot tell you how she was attired, but her figure was there in its lovely proportions, a full yet maidenly delicate shape against the clear azure over the sea-line, as she stood poised on small firm feet upon the leaning and yielding deck, her head thrown back, her arm extended, and a fire in her deep liquid eyes that anticipated the flash of the pistol.
‘A very noble-looking woman, sir,’ said a voice low down at my side.
Mr. Richard Saunders stood gazing up at me with the eager wistful expression that is somewhat common in dwarfs. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask the poor little chap if he had ever been in love; but he was a man whose sensitiveness and tenderness of heart obliged one to think twice before speaking.
‘Ay, Mr. Saunders. A noble woman indeed, as you say,’ I answered as softly as he had spoken. ‘But how pale is her cheek! It makes you think of the white death that Helena speaks of in “All’s Well that Ends Well.”’
‘What Hemmeridge would term chlorosis,’ said he. ‘No, sir; she is perfectly healthy. It is a very uncommon complexion indeed, and very fit for a throne or some high place from which a woman needs to gaze imperiously and with a countenance that must not change colour.’