‘Is your father a sailor?’
‘No; my father is dead. He was captain in the 38th Regiment of Foot, and was killed at Burmah.’
There was a kind of dawning of interest in her eyes, an expression I had not noticed when she talked of Colledge and his engagement.
‘My father was in the army, too,’ said she; ‘but he saw very little service. Is your mother living?’
‘She is.’
She sighed bitterly, and hid her face whilst she exclaimed:
‘Oh, my poor mother! my poor mother! How little she knows! And she was so reluctant to let me leave her.’ She sighed again deeply, and let her hands fall, and then sank into silence.
I quitted the deck-house to take another look round. Just then rain began to fall, and the sea became shrouded with the discharge. So oil smooth now was the swell that each drop as it fell pitted the lead-coloured rounds with a black point, and the water alongside looked to be spotted with ink. As I had met with no fresh water in the little room that I call the pantry, and as there might be none in the hold, or none that with my single pair of hands I should be able to come at, I resolved to take advantage of the wet that was pouring down, and dived into the cabin to search for any vessel that would catch and hold it. The flour and sugar casks in the pantry would not do. I peered into the other berths, but could see nothing to answer the purpose. It was of the first consequence, however, to us that we should possess a store of drinking water to mix with our wine, for we were in the tropics; the atmosphere was heavy with heat, even under a shrouded heaven; it was easy to figure what the temperature would rise to when the sun should shine forth; and the mere fancy of days of stagnation and of vertical suns, of this hull roasting; under the central broiling eye, of the breathless sea, stretching in feverish breathings into the dim, blue distance, unbroken by any tip of sail, and no fresh water to drink, was horribly oppressive, and rendered me half crazy to find some contrivance to catch the rain, which might at any moment cease. The thought of the lockers in the deck-house occurred to me. I mounted the ladder and searched them, and to my unspeakable joy, found in the locker upon which Miss Temple had been seated during the night, four canvas buckets, apparently brand new, as I might judge, from the cloth and from the rope handles. The rain fell heavily, and the water gushed in streams from the roof of the deck-house at many points of it. In a very short time the buckets were filled, but they were of a permeable substance, and it was necessary to decant them as soon as possible. There was no difficulty in doing this, for there were several empty bottles in the shelves below along with a couple of large jars, some tin pannikins, and so forth. These I brought up, washed them in the rain, and then filled them, and in this manner contrived to store away a good number of gallons, not to mention the contents of the buckets, which I left hanging outside to fill up afresh, meaning to use them first, and taking my chance of loss through the water soaking through them.
All this, that is to be described in a few lines of writing, signified a lengthy occupation, that broke well into the day. Miss Temple watched my labours with interest, and begged to be of service; but she could be of little use to me, nor would I suffer her to expose herself to the wet.
‘Will not this rain fill the hull,’ she exclaimed, ‘and sink her?’