“All alone, sir.”
“Where do those steerage people take their meals?”
“Why, in the steerage, at the table that stops short abreast of your cabin.”
Nothing in any way memorable happened for a considerable time. The ship drove through the Atlantic impelled by strong beam and quartering winds which sometimes blew with the weight of half a gale and veiled her forecastle with glittering lifts of foam and heeled her till her lee-channels ripped through the seas in flashings fierce as the white water which leaps from the strokes of the thrasher’s flails. The passengers had settled down to the routine of shipboard life. They played the piano, they sang, they hove the deck quoit, they formed themselves into whist parties. Both Captain Norton-Savage and his wife promised to become exceedingly popular with all the people who lived aft. The lady sang sweetly; she sang Spanish, English, and French songs. It was understood that she was a South American, of pure Spanish blood on one side. Captain Norton-Savage told a good story. He smoked excellent cigars and was liberal with them. He came to me one day and talked about his wife, told me there was consumption in her family, and asked what I thought of a sea voyage for her and of the climate of Australia. I could find nothing to object to in the man except his stare. There was something defiant in his manner of looking at you; his speech was significant with it even when nothing more was meant than met the ear. I was misled at first, and sometimes troubled myself to look under his words for his mind; then I found out that it was his stare which was responsible for what his language seemed to carry, and so, with the rest of us, took him as he offered himself.
And still I never felt quite easy with him, though no man laughed louder at his humorous stories.
I was going one morning from my berth to the cuddy when, at the foot of the steps which conducted to the hatch, I met the young man called John Burgess. I had seen nothing of him for days. He came out of his cabin holding his cap. Plenty of light flowed through the hatch; he was very pale, and I thought seemed ill, and his eyes had a wild look. He was handsome, as I have said—at least, to my way of thinking; but there was an evil spirit in the delicate structure and lineaments of his face. I said “Good morning.” He answered “Good morning” in a low voice, but with a manner of impatience, as though he wished me to pass on or get out of his road.
“Are you going to Australia for your health?” said I, for the sake of saying something.
“No,” he answered.
“Are you English?”
“Pray who are you?” he exclaimed with a foreign accent.