The foremost and biggest of these seemed to be the captain, although, so far as outward appearances went, the only difference between him and his crew lay in a marlin-spike which he wore slung to a thong beside his knife. When I reached the deck he was telling a long story to Mistress Bertram, and telling it very slowly. But the drift of it I soon gathered. While the fog lasted he could not put to sea.
"Nonsense!" cried my masterful companion, chafing at his slowness of speech. "Why not? Would it be dangerous?"
"Well, madam, it would be dangerous," he answered, more slowly than ever. "Yes, it would be dangerous. And to put to sea in a fog? That is not seamanship. And your baggage has not arrived."
"Never mind my baggage!" she answered imperiously. "I have made other arrangements for it. Two or three things I know came on board last night. I want to start--to start at once, do you hear?"
The captain shook his head, and said sluggishly that it was impossible. Spitting on the deck he ground his heel leisurely round in a knothole. "Impossible," he repeated; "it would not be seamanship to start in a fog. When the fog lifts we will go. 'Twill be all the same to-morrow. We shall lie at Leigh to-night, whether we go now or go when the fog lifts."
"And when will you go from Leigh?" she cried indignantly.
"Daybreak to-morrow," he answered. "You leave it to me, mistress," he continued, in a tone of rough patronage, "and you will see your good man before you expect it."
"But, man!" she exclaimed, trembling with impotent rage. "Did not Master Bertram engage you to bring me across whenever I might be ready? Ay, and pay you handsomely for it? Did he not, sirrah?"
"To be sure, to be sure!" replied the giant unmoved. "Using seamanship, and not going to sea in a fog, if it please you."
"It does not please me!" she retorted. "And why stay at Leigh?"
He looked up at the rigging, then down at the deck. He set his heel in the knothole, and ground it round again. Then he looked at his questioner with a broad smile. "Well, mistress, for a very good reason. It is there your good man is waiting for you. Only," added this careful keeper of a secret, "he bade me not tell any one."
She uttered a low cry, which might have been an echo of her baby's cooing, and convulsively clasped the child more tightly to her. "He is at Leigh!" she murmured, flushing and trembling, another woman altogether. Even her voice was wonderfully changed. "He is really at Leigh, you say?"