I broke in, somewhat alarmed by these airs: ‘Oh, by all means, Miss Temple. Choose the cabin you best like. Captain Braine is all kindness in furnishing us with such excellent accommodation. This stuff can be put into my berth, if you please, captain. I shall merely need room enough to get into my bunk.’
‘I’ll make that all right,’ he answered somewhat sulkily. ‘How about bedding? The lady’s a trifle particular, I fear. She wouldn’t be satisfied to roll herself up in a dead man’s blanket, I guess.’
‘Leave me to manage,’ said I, forcing a note of cheerfulness into my voice, though I was greatly vexed by Miss Temple’s want of tact. ‘There’s more bedding than either of us will require in less than a bolt of your canvas. We are fresh from an experience that would make a paradise of your forepeak, captain. And so,’ said I, plunging from the subject, in the hope of carrying off the ill-humour that showed in his face, ‘you are without a chief-mate?’
‘I’ll tell you about that by-and-by,’ said he. ‘This here crib, then, is to be the lady’s? Now, what have I got that you’ll be wanting, mem? There’s a bit of a looking-glass next door. He used to shave himself in it. You won’t mind that, perhaps? His image ain’t impressed on the plate. It’ll show ye true as you are, for all that he shaved himself in it.’
Miss Temple smiled, and said that she would be glad to have the glass.
‘There’ll be his hairbrush,’ continued Captain Braine, ‘though that might prove objectionable,’ he added doubtfully, talking with his eyes fixed unwinkingly upon her. ‘And yet I don’t know; if it was put to soak in a bucket of salt-water, it ought to come out sweet enough. There’s likewise a comb,’ he proceeded, taking his chin betwixt his thumb and forefinger and stroking it: ‘there’s nothing to hurt in a comb, and it’s at your sarvice, mem. If poor old Chicken were here, he’d be very willing, I’m sure; but he’s gone—gone dead.’
He looked at Miss Temple again. I watched him with attention. He seemed to sink into a fit of musing; then, waking up out of it in a sudden way, he cried: ‘You’ve got no luggage at all, have ye, mem?’
‘No,’ responded Miss Temple with gravity.
‘I’m sorry,’ said he, ‘that I didn’t bring Mrs. Braine along with me this voyage. She wanted to come, poor thing, observing me to be but very ordinary during most of the time I was ashore—very ordinary indeed,’ he repeated, shaking his head. ‘If she was here we could manage.’
‘Pray, give yourself no concern on that head, captain,’ said I; ‘we shall be falling in with the Indiaman presently; and supposing the worst to come to the worst—what time do you give yourself for the run from here to the Mauritius?’