‘But does not association of that sort weaken your control over the men?’
‘I’ve got no control, and don’t want none. The men’ll run if I sing out. And what more’s to be expected of sailors?’
‘It seems queer, though,’ said I, ‘since you undertake the work of a second mate, that you shouldn’t live aft. It must have been lonely eating for the skipper after Mr. Chicken died?’
‘I did live aft afore Mr. Chicken died,’ he exclaimed, biting his tobacco with temper, whilst his weather-stained face gathered a new shade of duskiness to the mounting of the blood into his head; ‘and then when the capt’n and me comes to be alone, he tarns to and finds out that I ain’t choice enough to sit down with—says I ain’t got the art of perlite eatin’, calls me a hog to my face, and tells me that my snout’s for the mess kid and not for knives and forks and crockery. Him!’ He turned his face to the rail and spat again, and looked at me with an expression of anger, but checked himself with violence, and pushed his hands into his breeches pockets with an irritable motion of his whole frame.
I considered that enough had been said; and though I had gained but little information, it was at least made clear to me that there was no love lost between Captain Braine and Mr. Lush. But further conversation would have been rendered impossible in any case, for just then a man struck eight bells on the main-deck, and a minute or two later the wheel was relieved, the captain arrived, and the carpenter went forward in a round-backed sulky walk, his legs bowed, his muscular arms hanging up and down without a swing, each bunch of his fingers curled like fish-hooks.
I had talked enough, and was weary of standing and walking; so, when I spied the skipper, I slipped off the poop and seated myself on a bench abreast of my sleeping companion, where I remained for half an hour, often gazing at her, my mind very busy with a hundred thoughts, foremost amongst which was the shuddering recollection of our late experiences and narrow escape, and deep thankfulness to God for His merciful preservation of us. The entrance of the captain’s servant—a young fellow named Wilkins, to be hereafter so called: a memorable figure in this startlingly eventful passage of my life which I am endeavouring to relate: a veal-faced, red-headed, shambling fellow of some two-and-twenty years, with white eyebrows and lashes, and a dim blue eye—the entrance, I say, of this man with a tray of tea-things aroused Miss Temple, who, after a brief bewildered stare at me, smiled, and sat upright.
‘There is always something new now,’ she exclaimed, ‘to look at when I open my eyes after sleeping. Yesterday it was the wreck; to-day it is this ship. What will it be to-morrow? Is there anything in sight, Mr. Dugdale?’
‘There was nothing when I left the deck half an hour ago,’ said I.
She had awakened with a slight flush of sleep in her face that greatly enriched her eyes; but the delicate glow quickly faded; she was speedily colourless as alabaster. She smoothed her hair and put on her hat, that she had removed when she lay down.
‘It is strange,’ she exclaimed in a low voice, ‘I should not seem able to endure feeling that I am not in a condition to instantly leave this vessel. It was so with me in the wreck. Even without my hat, I feel unready; and then, again, there is the sense of not being exactly as I was when I left the Countess Ida.’