Shortly before six o’clock the sky cleared somewhat to windward. The wide pall of leaden cloud lifted there, as though it were some huge carpet a corner of which was being rolled up, and there looked to flow a very lagoon of pure blue ether, moist and rich with the evening shadow, into the space betwixt the rim of the sea and the edge of the cloud. A clearer, more penetrating light broadened out; and going to the companion hatch, I took the telescope that lay in brackets there and carefully searched the horizon. But the sea washed bare to the sky on all sides.
I did not observe that the men gathered together on the forecastle seemed to notice the captain’s absence, though I expected they would come to stare a bit when the fellow who stood at the wheel should go forward and tell them that I had been acting as mate of the watch. For my part this queer duty coming upon me made the whole experience more wild and improbable to my imagination than had been any other feature of it since we quitted the Indiaman. Never was there such a forcing of adventures, as it were, upon a man. It was like dreaming to reflect that a little time ago I was a passenger, an easy-going, smoking, drinking, chess-playing young fellow, without a care, with plenty of clothes and money enough in my cabin, and that now I was a half-starved, shipwrecked wretch, without the value of a straw in the shape of possessions, outside of what I stood up in and had in my pockets, keeping a lookout as though, faith, I was some poor, struggling, hungry second mate, newly enlarged from an odious term of apprenticeship! like dreaming, I say, to think that a little time ago the young lady by my side was a reserved, disdainful creature, with scarcely a word betwixt her lips to throw at me, and that now she could not speak of her future without making me a sharer in it, that she could not see enough of me, nor have my arm too close for her hand; whilst in point of destitution she, the most richly clad of the Indiaman’s lady passengers, she, who had seemed to me to appear in a new dress nearly every day, was out and away more beggared than I; for so far as I was concerned there was always the barque’s slop chest to come upon; or, failing that, there would be jackets and breeches and ‘housewives’ enough forward to serve my turn if the push grew severe; whereas Miss Temple was as badly off as if she had been cast away upon a desert island!
CHAPTER XXVI
I AM QUESTIONED
The captain did not again return on deck. At six o’clock Mr. Lush’s white jacket was forked up to him through the forecastle hatch: he slipped it on and came aft to relieve the watch; but though he looked about a little for the skipper, I could not find in his wooden face that he made anything of not perceiving him. By seven o’clock the sky had cleared; the wide stretch of vapour which had all day long obscured the sky had settled away down beyond the southern rim, and the soft violet of the tropic evening heaven was made beautiful by spaces at wide intervals of a delicate filigree-work of white cloud, dainty and fine to the eye as frost on a meadow. The setting sun glowed in the west like a golden target, rayless, palpitating, and a cone-shaped wake of flame hung under him. There was a pleasant whipping of wind over the sea, a merry air that whitened the heads of the ripples, and it blew sweet and warm.
Lush had loosed the skysails again and sent the royal studdingsails up, and the barque went nimbly floating through it in the resemblance of some golden-tinctured fabric of silver hull and sails of cloth of silver; indeed, from the point of view of the space of deck abaft the wheel, she showed like some fairy creation in that atmosphere that was brimful of scarlet light, and upon that sapphire plain whose tender long-drawn undulations seemed to wave a faint golden hue through, the blue of the brine, as though there were dyes of a westering sun-colour rising from the heart of the deep, and then subsiding.
On looking through the skylight I perceived Wilkins placing supper on the table. This was an unusual meal at sea, at least aboard of a homely trader of the pattern of the Lady Blanche, and was a distinct illustration in its way, to my recollections of seafaring life, of the odd character of the man who commanded the barque. He came out of his cabin as we seated ourselves, giving Miss Temple a grotesque bow before taking his place.
‘Sorry, mem,’ said he, casting his slow eye over the table, ‘that there’s nothing choicer in the way of victuals to offer you. I find that the wine brought aboard from the wreck is a middling good quality of liquor, and it is to be saved for you, mem. Wilkins, open a bottle, and give it to the lady. Pity that shore-going folks who take interest in the nautical calling don’t turn to and invent something better for the likes of me than salt pork and beef and biscuit, and peas which are only fit to load a blunderbuss with. There have been times when a singular longing’s come upon me for a cut of prime sirloin and a floury potato, as Jack says. But the sea-life’s a hard calling, look at it from which end of the ship ye may. How did you get on in your watch on deck, Mr. Dugdale?’ he added with a gaunt smile, in which I could not distinguish the least complexion of mirth.
‘There was nothing to be done,’ said I, working away at a piece of salt beef, for I was exceedingly hungry.