Come, thought I, as I dropped into the ’tweendecks, a short spell of loneliness will do you good, my haughty beauty, by making you realise how it would be with you were you actually alone. This is the first of the homely thrusts I have been preparing for you, and I will not spare you less as I grow to love you more, taking my chance of your abhorring me, though it may not come to that either.
I peeped into the berth that had been prepared for her, and found all the odds and ends which had encumbered it gone; there was a clean mattress on the bunk, and on top of it an old but comely rug and a couple of shawls; a small looking-glass dangled near the porthole. But what an interior for this delicately nurtured, high and mighty young lady of quality to lie in! No carpet, no chest of drawers, nothing beyond the looking-glass and a tin dish for washing in; in short, a mere marine cell, as like as might be to any little whitewashed room with grated window ashore in which a policeman would lock up a pick-pocket!
I entered my own berth. The boatswain’s and sailmaker’s stores were not here, and I found a ‘clean hold,’ as a sailor might say. In fact, all Chicken’s traps being about, caused the berth to present a much more hospitable aspect than the adjacent one afforded. I examined the books, but found most of them to consist of religious literature, as the captain had said, and the rest of them works on the nautical life. Though it was hard to reconcile a fancy of cards with the late Mr. Chicken’s character as portrayed by the skipper, I yet looked into a couple of chests in the hope of meeting with a pack; but neither cards nor any species of object calculated to divert did I come across; and growing weary of hunting, I returned to the cuddy.
I perceived or imagined an air of reproach in Miss Temple; but she had mastered her temper and astonishment.
‘There is nothing belonging to the late Mr. Chicken to entertain us,’ said I.
‘It surely does not signify, Mr. Dugdale. Do you suppose that I have the heart to play at cards or chess? Is not there more wind than there was? I will ask you to take me on deck. Something may be in sight, and it will not be dark for some time yet.’
I gave her my hand, and helped her up the little ladder. There was more wind, as she had said; the skysails had been furled and a studdingsail or two hauled down, and the little barque, with her yards almost square, was sweeping swiftly over the smooth waters, slightly heeling from side to side as she went. The foam in yeasty bubbles and soft cream-hued clouds went spinning and writhing from her bows into her wake, that ran like a path of coral sand over the darkling waters, now complexioned into lividness by the gloomy plain of vaporous sky. The crew were on the forecastle—it was well into the first dog-watch—lounging, sitting, yarning, and smoking. Amidst them I noticed Mr. Lush, leaning against the rail with a short sooty pipe in his mouth, the bowl of which was inverted. He was in his shirt sleeves, and he reclined with his arms folded upon his breast, apparently listening, in that dogged posture, to one of the sailors, who was reciting something with outstretched arm and a long forefinger, with which he seemed to be figuring diagrams upon the air. Upon the slope of the starboard cathead, coming into the deck, sat my friend Joe Wetherly, with a pair of thick-rimmed spectacles on his nose; he pored on a book with moving lips, from which he would expel at intervals great clouds of smoke through a pipe betwixt his teeth. So small was the barque, so seemingly close at hand the forecastle to the break of the poop, that even such minute details as these were perfectly visible to me.
Captain Braine stood near the wheel. He continuously stared at us, but did not shift his attitude nor offer to address us. I swept the sea-line, but to no purpose.
‘How sickeningly wearisome has that bare horizon grown to me!’ exclaimed Miss Temple, with a shuddering sigh; ‘it has just the sort of monotony that would speedily drive me crazy. I am sure; not the wearisomeness of four walls, nor the tiresomeness of a single eternal glimpse of unchanging country to be had through a window; no! there is a mockery in it which you do not find in the most insipid, colourless scene on land. It is not, and still it always is, the same. It recedes to your pursuit, yet it is unalterable, and how cruelly barren is it of suggestions!’
‘Yet a sight of the Indiaman,’ said I, ‘should develop whatever of the picturesque may be hidden in that tiresome girdle.’