‘What are they going to do, do you think, Mr. Dugdale?’
‘It looks to me as if the whole body of them were going ashore to dig.’
‘Are they not taking a deal of provisions with them?’
‘They may mean to make merry. After months of shipboard life, the touch of the land will be grateful to the soles of their feet. Let them find the gold! their transports will know no bounds; there will be some wild skylarking amongst them before they come off, or I am greatly mistaken. Would to God they would make themselves drunk, that I might run away with the ship.’
‘Cannot that be done when they are on shore?’ she cried with an air of exultant entreaty in her sudden leaning towards me as she spoke.
‘Yes, were an off-shore gale to come on to blow, I might contrive to slip and let the barque storm out to sea before it. But in this weather! They would be after me in a jiffy in their boat, and then God help me when they got hold of me!’
A shade of paleness overspread her face, and she regarded me with a look of consternation, as though violently affected by the fancies my simple sentence had put before her. I sprang on the top of the hencoop to sweep the sea-line with the telescope, but could nowhere discern the least shadow of land. As I put down the glass, the carpenter came off the quarter-deck, where, at the gangway, he had been busily shouting out instructions and overseeing the work of preparing the boat, and approached me. He held Captain Braine’s parchment chart, at which he stopped to look for a moment when he was yet some paces distant.
‘Will ye tell me what’s your opinion of the weather, sir?’ he exclaimed, in a voice whose natural gruffness and surliness were not to be sweetened by the satisfaction that was merely visible in a small symptom of respectfulness in his bearing.
‘I do not know, I am sure. This cloudless sky should be full of promise. The mercury in the captain’s cabin promises fair weather.’
‘What do ‘ee think of letting them sails hang?’ said he, sending his malevolent gaze aloft; ‘or shall we tarn to and roll ’em up afore we go ashore?—though it’ll be a long job,’ he added, directing his eyes thirstily at the island.