He rose to my accost, and saluted me with a respectful sea-bow, that is, by scraping his forehead with his knuckle with a little kick back of his left leg.
‘That’s right enough, sir,’ he answered. ‘I’ve been sailing myself in a ship for six weeks in middling busy waters, too, with ne’er a sight of anything—not so much as the tail of a gull.’
‘Pray sit,’ said I; ‘I’ll keep you company. This is the right spot for a smoke and a yarn; quiet and cool and out of the road of the poop.’
He grinned, and we seated ourselves side by side. I talked to him first about the Countess Ida, explained the circumstance of my being in company with Miss Temple, told him who she was, and spoke of her shipwrecked condition so far as her wardrobe went, and how eager she was to return to England; but the old sailor made very little of her being in want of a change of dress.
‘There is no need, sir,’ said he, ‘for the lady to distress her mind with considerations of a shift o’ vestments. I allow she can use a needle for herself; there’s needles and thread at her sarvice forrads; and how much linnen do she want? Why one of the skipper’s table-cloths ’ud fit her out, I should say.’ He turned his figure-head of a face upon me as he added: ‘’Tain’t the loss of clothes, sir, as should occupy her thoughts, but the feeling that she’s been took off that there wreck and is safe.’
I fully agreed with him, with some inward laughter, wondering what Miss Temple would think if she had overheard his speech. One thing led to another; at last I said:
‘Wetherly, I am going to ask you a plain question; it is one sailor making inquiry of another, and you’ll accept me as a shipmate, I know.’ He nodded. ‘Is not your captain wanting?’ and I touched my head.
‘Well,’ he answered after a pause, ‘I think so, and I’ve been a-thinking so pretty nigh ever since I’ve been along with him.’
‘What caused his mate’s death?’
‘He died in a swound,’ he answered—‘fell dead alongside the wheel as he was looking into the compass.’