‘Sighted no sail at all?’
‘Nothen like un,’ exclaimed the other sailor. ‘Th’ ocean’s gone and growed into a Hafrican desert.’
The square man in white, followed by his attendant seaman, arrived at the side, bearing between them a blanket loaded with the produce of the pantry, to judge by the clinking of bottle glass and the orbicular bulgings of cheeses and rounds of hams.
‘Catch this here bundle now,’ sung out the square man, who, later on, I ascertained was the barque’s carpenter, acting also as the second mate. ‘Handsomely over the bricks. It’s wine, bullies.’
The blanket and its contents were received, and deposited in the bottom of the boat. The men entered her, and we shoved off.
‘Did you make up that there fire, sir?’ inquired the square man, bringing his eyes in a stare of astonishment from Miss Temple to myself.
‘Yes; nobody else. This lady and I are alone.’
‘Then you’ve set the bloomin’ hull on fire,’ said he.
I started, and sent a look at the column of smoke, at which I had never once glanced whilst lying alongside, so distracted was my attention by the multiplicity of emotions which surged in me. There was no need to gaze long to gather that more was going, to the making of the coils of smoke which were now rising in soot than the nearly consumed remains of the mats and rugs which I had stacked and fed.
‘The fire’s burnt clean through the deck,’ said the square man, ‘and there are some casks in flames just forrads of the main hatch. What might they have contained, d’ye know?’