However, the imagination of the passengers would hardly go to these lengths. Their thoughts held to the fire, and their talk chiefly concerned it. When the skipper came below for a glass of grog that night, the ladies so baited him with questions that one pitied him almost for not being able to enjoy the privilege of venting his heated soul in a few strong words.
‘I cannot satisfy myself, Captain Keeling, that the fire is utterly extinguished,’ said Mrs. Bannister.
‘Might it not burst out again, capting?’ cried Mrs. Hudson. ‘There should be plenty of pails kept filled with water ready to empty if smoke is smelt.’
‘Perhaps something may be on fire even now!’ exclaimed Mrs Joliffe, ‘something that doesn’t make a smoke; and how then are the sailors to tell if all is right in the bottom of the ship?’
‘Captain Keeling,’ cried Mrs. Trevor, ‘is it quite safe to go to bed, do you think?’
‘If a fire should break out,’ said Miss Hudson in a trembling voice, as though shudder after shudder were chasing through her, ‘how can we depend upon being called? It is impossible to hear downstairs what is going on on deck.’
Poor old marline-spike made a bolt of it at last, fairly turning tail and rushing up the companion steps when it came to the colonel striking in and topping off the female broadsides by inquiries of a like nature delivered at the very height of his pipes.
However, the night passed quietly; and when next morning came and the people assembled at breakfast, all fear of fire was seemingly gone, and little more was talked about than Crabb and what his designs had been, the topic gathering no mean accentuation from the doctor’s vacant place. Somewhere about ten o’clock I was standing at the taffrail watching the ship’s wake, that was languidly streaming off in a short oily surface, and wondering whether, if we were to fall in with nothing brisker than these faint airs and draughts of wind, all hands would not have grown white-haired and decrepit by the time we were up with the Cape, leaving the Indian Ocean and Bombay out of consideration, when the head-steward came up to me.
‘Captain Keeling’s compliments, sir, and he’ll feel greatly hobliged, providing you’re not hotherwise occupied, by your stepping to his cabin, sir.’
‘Oh yes, with pleasure,’ said I. ‘Is he alone?’