‘By heaven! then,’ he roared, ‘I’m glad to see ye! Welcome aboard the Lady Blanche, sir. And you, mem, I am sure.’ Here he pulled off his immense straw hat and gave Miss Temple an unspeakably grotesque bow. ‘What have you got there?’ he bawled to the square man.
‘A blanket full of wines and cheeses and ’ams,’ answered the man, who was helping to manœuvre the bundle inboards over the side.
‘All right, all right!’ shouted the captain. ‘Now put ’em down, do, and get your boat hooked on and hoisted, d’ye hear? and get your topsail yard swung. Why, who’s been and set that wreck on fire?’
‘The flare’s burnt through her deck,’ cried the square man in a surly tone, ‘and I allow she’ll be ablowing up in a few minutes.’
But she was too far distant to suffer this conjecture to alarm the captain.
‘Let her blow up,’ said he; ‘there’s room enough for her,’ and then giving Miss Temple another convulsive bow, he invited us to step into the cabin.
This was a little state-room under the short after-deck, and, with its bulkheaded berths abaft, a miniature likeness in its way of the Countess Ida’s saloon. It was a cosy little place, with a square table amidships, a bench on either hand of it screwed to the deck, a flat skylight overhead, a couple of old-fashioned lamps, a small stove near to the trunk of the mizzenmast, a rack full of tumblers, and so forth.
‘Sit ye down, mem,’ said the captain, pointing to a bench. ‘Sir, be seated. I heard Mr. Lush just now talk of wines, and cheeses, and hams; but what d’ye say to a cut of boiled beef and a bottle of London stout? Drifting about in a wreck ain’t wholesome for the soul, I believe; but I never heard that it affected the appetite.’
‘You are very good,’ I exclaimed; ‘our food for the last three days has been no more than ship’s bread and marmalade—poor fare for the lady, fresh from the comforts and luxuries of an Indiaman’s cuddy.’
He went to the cabin door and bawled; and a young fellow, whom I afterwards found out was his servant, came running aft. He gave him certain directions, then returned to the table, where he sat for a long two minutes first staring at me and then at Miss Temple without a wink of his eyes. I observed that my companion shrunk from this extraordinary silent scrutiny. I had never witnessed in any other human head such eyes as that fellow had. They were a deformity by their size, being about twice too big for the width and length of his face, of a deep ink-black, resembling discs of ebony gummed upon china. There was no glow, no mind in them, that I could distinguish, scarcely anything of vitality outside their preternatural capacity of staring, that was yet immeasurably heightened by the steadiness of the lids, which I never once beheld blinking. His face was long and yellow, closely shorn, and of an indigo blue down the cheeks, upon the chin, and upon the upper lip. He had a very long aquiline nose with large nostrils, which constantly dilated, as though he snuffed up rather than breathed the air. His eyebrows were extraordinarily thick, and met in a peculiar tuft in the indent of the skull above the nose; whilst his hair, black as his eyes, and smooth and gleaming as the back of a raven, lay combed over his ears down upon his back. He was dressed in a suit of white drill, the flowing extremities of his trousers rounding to his feet in the shape of the mouth of a bell, from which protruded a pair of long square-toed shoes of yellow leather. I should instantly have put him down as a Yankee but for his accent, that was cockney beyond the endurance of a polite ear.