He then went up the companion steps with some biscuit and tea for the captain. I laughed out.
‘Not so good as the Indiaman’s dinner-table, Miss Temple, but better than the hull’s entertainment. We must wait till supper’s served. Meanwhile, I’ll blunt my appetite on a biscuit. Will you give me a cup of tea?’
It was genuine forecastle liquor, such as might have been boiled in a copper, of the hue of ink, and full of fragments of stalk. However, the mere looking at it was something to do, and we sat toying with our cups, making-pretend, as it were, to be drinking tea and talking.
‘I wonder,’ I exclaimed in the course of our conversation, ‘whether the cutter was picked up by one of the ships? If she lost both of them, will she have lived in the weather that followed? Anyway, the corvette is certain to make a long hunt for her, with the hope also of falling in with the Indiaman, for Sir Edward will think it possible that Keeling has his men aboard, and will want to make sure. I fear this business of the cutter may have led to such manœuvring on the part of the two ships as must render our falling-in with one or the other of them very unlikely.’
‘Oh, why do you say that?’ she cried.
‘It is but a surmise,’ said I; ‘anyhow, I heartily hope the cutter has been picked up, if only for Colledge’s sake. The sudden loss of the lieutenant will have dreadfully scared him.’
‘I earnestly wish that Mr. Colledge may have been saved,’ said she with a faint glitter of temper in her gaze; ‘but I could wish ten times more earnestly that he had never been born, or that he had sailed in any other ship than the Countess Ida; for then I should not be here.’
‘Your aunt endeavoured to dissuade you.’
‘She did; and I am rightly served for not obeying her.’
‘You are very high-spirited, Miss Temple; it is your nature, and you cannot help yourself. You are a young lady to insist upon having your own way, and you always get it.’