Was it possible that Lucy's situation had driven her out of her mind? Her behaviour throughout the day had been extraordinary. Features of character had appeared in her in the extravagance of her moods and humours which he never could have conceived would, though latent and demanding the summons of insanity to become visible, have formed a part of her nature. She, the gentle, the sweet, the refined, the tender, the sympathetic had exhibited even coarseness. Could she be mad, and yet slumber so soundly? How do the insane sleep?
He contrasted her wretched bed on that cabin floor with her home bedchamber which he figured—he had never entered it; a room sweet-scented with the flowers of the creepers at the windows, white and fair in the apparel of a girl's bower of rest, elegant in its equipment as were all the rooms of the home of the Actons.
He loved her passionately, even to madness, and must win her. But he never would have sought to win her at the price of her reason, had he foreseen the blow his stratagem must deal her. He must turn robber to rescue himself from a life-term of imprisonment as a debtor, and he could not steal his friend's ship without stealing his daughter too, because he knew that his act of piracy would as effectually end all chance of his possessing her as a wife as though she lay as dead as Juliet in her tomb.
He was on deck early in the morning. Daybreak had turned ashen the surface of the sea. The wind was a steady breeze, and the Minorca crowded with every cloth she carried saving her stun-sails, plunged, and pitched, and frothed, and foamed in prodigious fine style as she was swept onwards by the wind that was a point abaft the beam. The sun rose in wet pink splendour on the larboard quarter, and by his light, which threw out the sea-line like the crystal rim of a tumbler against the heavens which were full of travelling clouds, Mr Lawrence swept with his glass the whole brimming circle. There was nothing in sight.
Mr Pledge walked the deck in charge of the watch. When Mr Lawrence appeared Pledge saluted him in man-o'-war style, but Mr Lawrence's policy towards Pledge was the same as his policy towards Eagle. He would not sit at meals with him, or have anything to say to him outside the necessities of strict discipline and the ship's routine. Pledge saw pride, haughtiness, and contempt in the handsome face that was turned to him when Mr Lawrence condescended to ask a few questions about the ship's rate of going, and the like. But this much the Captain added: "Did you ever serve in a man-o'-war, sir?"
"Yes, sir," answered Pledge.
"British?"
"American, your honour."
"Well, the Yankee's discipline is taut, though not so taut as ours by the length of a log-line to a lead-line. You therefore understand the necessity of obeying orders?"