She searched my face with her glowing eyes. ‘You do not believe this?’ she cried.
‘Certainly I do not,’ I answered. ‘I am only supposing.’
‘I wish I could read your heart; I wish I could be sure that your determination to assent to the men’s wishes is not owing to sympathy with their own ideas.’
I burst into a loud laugh. ‘Of how many sins do you think me capable?’ I exclaimed. ‘How many enormous follies am I equal to? I believe you already secretly regard me as a pirate. Oh, Miss Temple, no man could ever feel ill-tempered in conversing with you, say what you will. But you are a little trying, though, now and again. Why do you wish to read my heart? You might discover sentiments which would render me detestable to you.’
‘I do not understand you,’ she exclaimed, looking somewhat frightened.
‘Admiration for you, in a person whom you dislike, would make you abhor him.’
‘Mr. Dugdale, is this a time for such feeble small-talk as would scarcely be endurable amidst safety and comfort? I should not be so utterly unhappy as I am if I felt that my mother knew where I was, that she was conscious of all that has happened to me, and that we should meet again.’
‘It will all come right,’ said I, looking at my watch. ‘I must make ready now for taking sights, and letting the carpenter know the determination I have arrived at. Back me, Miss Temple, in my efforts by the utmost exertion of your tact. And now, come on deck with me, will you? There is life in the fresh and frothing scene outside, and you will find courage in the mere sight of the wide horizon, with thoughts of what lies behind it, and how time will work all things to your wishes.’
I entered the captain’s cabin to fetch a sextant, and then, with Miss Temple, went on deck. Lush was marching up and down the weather side of the poop. The sailors were sprawling about forward in whatever shadowings of the canvas they could find, most of them smoking, their faces red as powder-flags with the heat. Hot it was, with the sun shining nearly over our mastheads, with a sting like to some fierce bite in every flashing launch of his radiance betwixt the wool-white clouds blowing transversely athwart his path, spite of the strong sweep of the wind as it came splitting in long whistlings upon our rigging from a little forward of the beam, the rush of it feeling almost damp to the flesh to the view of the foaming waters melting into yeast out of the long blue lines of the Atlantic surge. The barque, making a fair breeze of it, was storming through the seas in noble style, shouldering off vast masses of throbbing white from her weather bow with a wake twisting away astern of her of twice her beam in width, a broad path of glittering, leaping, blowing crystals and foam-flakes and creaming eddies rising and falling for a mile astern into the windy blue there, full of fire and snow as it looked with the spume of breaking waves and the splendour of the darting sunlight.
The carpenter came to a stand when I arrived. I went up to him at once, Miss Temple at my side.