‘Oh no, no, no!’
‘But I say yes,’ she exclaimed in her most imperious air, and gazing at me with hot and glowing eyes. ‘It is quite true the wreck was burnt; but if this vessel had not come into sight, you would not have signalled, and then the hull would not have been set on fire. It is maddening to think that perhaps within the next three or four hours the Indiaman or the corvette may sail over the very spot where the wreck blew up.’
‘I heartily hope that one or the other will do so,’ said I; ‘for if she be so close to us as all that, we’re bound to fall in with her.’
She looked at her hands, turning her fingers back and front, as though they were some novel and unexpected sight to her.
‘I wonder, Mr. Dugdale,’ said she, ‘you can doubt that the man is insane. Remember the extraordinary questions he put to you when we first arrived. I believe, had you told him you were ignorant of navigation, he would have sent us back to the wreck. And then how he stares! There is something shocking in the fixed regard of his dreadfully inanimate black eyes. What a very extraordinary face, too! I cannot believe that he is a sailor. He has the appearance of a monk just released from some term of fearful penance and mortification.’
‘On the other hand he has received us very kindly. He would not suffer you to speak of paying him. He promptly set us down to such entertainment as his vessel furnishes. He may be mad half-way round the compass, but all the rest of the points are sound,’
‘I am astonished,’ she cried with a manner of petulant vivacity, ‘to hear you say that we are safer in this ship than had we remained in the hull. There we were alone; but who are the people with whom we must be locked up in this vessel until we sight the Indiaman or some sail that will receive us? A murderer—convicts—mutineers—a crew of men in whose sight a jewel must not be exhibited lest they should be tempted. Tempted to what?’ She violently shuddered. ‘How can you speak of this ship as safer than the wreck?’
‘Because I happen to feel quite certain that she is; but I will not say so, for it vexes you to hear me.’
‘Oh this ridiculous, this horribly ridiculous degrading situation fills me with anger. To think of being reduced to a perfect state of squalor—having to conceal one’s jewelry for fear of—of—something awful, I am sure; and you dare not, though you could name it, Mr. Dugdale.’ I smiled, and her warmth increased. ‘That I should have been ever tempted,’ she proceeded, ‘to undertake the odious voyage to Bombay, for this! To be without a change of dress, to be obliged to sleep in a little dark horrid cabin, and meanwhile not to have the least notion when it is all to end!’
Well, thought I, as I looked at her eyes shining with spirit and temper, and marked the faint hectic of her ill-humour in her cheeks, the expression of mingled pride and fretfulness in her lips, the wrathful rising and falling of her breast, here, to be sure, is a new version of the play of Katharine and Petruchio; only, though she be Kate to the life, it is not I, but old daddy Neptune who is to break her spirit, and unshrew her into somebody’s very humble servant. But is there any magic, I thought, even in ocean’s rough, brutal, unconscionable usage to render docile such a woman as this? Nay, would any man wish it otherwise with her than as it is when he gazes at her eyes and figure, beholds the dignity and haughtiness of her carriage, the assumption of maiden sovereignty visible in every move of her arm, in every curl of her lip, in every motion of her form!