'How do you know that?' said I, struck by the question.
'Yes,' said I, 'I believe she can navigate a ship.' He tossed his hands and rolled up his eyes in ludicrous imitation, as I thought, of his Captain's behaviour when he desired to express admiration. 'She beautiful young lady,' he exclaimed, 'and werry good--kind smile, and berry sorry for poor Mussulmans, sah.'
'I know what you mean, Punmeamootty,' said I. 'We are both very sorry, believe me! The Captain means well'--the man's teeth met in a sudden snap as I said this--'the man means well,' I repeated, eyeing him steadily; 'but it is a mistaken kindness. The lady and I will endeavour to influence him; though, at the same time, we trust to be out of the ship very soon, possibly too soon to be of any use. Anything in sight?'
He loitered still, as though he had more to say. Finding me silent, he made an odd sort of obeisance and disappeared.
Helga's cabin-door was shut. I listened, but could not collect amid the creaking noises that she was stirring within. It was likely she had passed an uneasy night and was now sleeping, and in that belief I gained the hatchway and mounted on deck.
The first person I saw was Helga. She was talking to the two boatmen at the foot of the little poop ladder, under the lee of the bulwarks, which were very nearly the height of a man. The decks were still dark with the swabbing-up of the brine with which they had been scoured. The galley chimney was hospitably smoking. A group of the coloured seamen lounged to leeward of the galley, with steaming pannikins and biscuits in their hands, and, as they ate and drank, they talked incessantly. The fellow named Nakier stood on the forecastle with his arms folded, persistently staring aft, as it seemed to me, at Helga and the boatmen. The sun was about half an hour above the horizon; the sky was very delicately shaded with a frosty network of cloud, full of choice and tender tints, as though the sun were a prism flooding the heavens with many-coloured radiance. Over the lee-rail the sea was running in a fine rich blue streaked with foam, and the wind was a moderate breeze from which the completely clothed masts of the barque were leaning with the yards braced forward, for, so far as I could tell by the sun, the wind was about south-east.