“Oh! I come to know where you come from,” said the Greek stranger, casting his eyes furtively round the deck, as if to discover the state of defence in which we might be.
The look of our sturdy fellows, with their cutlasses by their sides, might possibly have surprised him, and at all events he must have seen that there was little chance of surprising us.
“We come from England,” answered Porpoise, bluntly. “A civil question requires a civil answer, but I don’t know by what right you ask it.”
“Where you bound for?” continued the Greek, not noticing the last remark it seemed.
“Malta, Alexandria, Smyrna, and a few other places up the Levant,” said Porpoise.
“Ah! will you take letter for me? You do me great favour,” said the Greek, putting his hand in his bosom.
While the Greek was speaking, I had been eyeing him narrowly from the after-part of the vessel, where I had placed myself. Most of my readers have heard of the famed Vanderdecken, the terrible Flying Dutchman, who in his phantom ship goes cruising about to the southward of the Cape of Good Hope, sailing right into the eye of the heaviest gale. When he falls in with a vessel, he comes aboard, and requests a packet he presents may be taken on shore. Just such another as Vanderdecken did our present visitor appear, except that the Dutchman is habited in a somewhat different costume to the Greek, in broad-brimmed hat, big-buttoned waistcoat, and wide breeches. By the way Porpoise looked at him, I had a notion some such idea was passing through his mind. Perhaps he suspected that the gentleman had a pistol instead of a letter inside the folds of his vest. The boat’s crew meantime sat scowling at us, and surveying the vessel with a no friendly look; I guessed, indeed, that nothing would have given them greater pleasure than to have been able to jump on board, and to cut all our throats.
“We shall be happy to take your letter or any commands on shore,” answered Porpoise, putting his hand in his pocket in imitation of the Greek.
The stranger furtively eyed the movement of his hand, as much as to say, “Why, have you got a pistol there likewise?”
However, withdrawing his own hand from his bosom, he exclaimed, “Ah! I have by some omission left my letter on board.”