"My watch! my watch that was given to me--" and which he had so ignominiously gambled away. No wonder he wept. No wonder he shook from head to foot with the passion of grief, as the conviction of his own folly and infatuation burned like intolerable fire in his soul.
"Dry up, baby!" said Jack, through his teeth. "There comes the captain."
Baby? Poor Frank! It was because he was not altogether given over to recklessness and vice that he cried at the thought of his lost watch, and of his gross ingratitude to the unknown giver. Still he felt that it was weak in him to cry. He who risks his property in order to get possession of another's should be philosopher enough to take with equanimity the loss of his own.
"Don't be childish, Frank; don't be silly!" said his friends.
And, indeed, he had the strongest reason for suppressing his sobs. Captain Edney was approaching. He was the last person to whom he would have wished to betray his guilt and misfortune. He loved and respected him; and we fear most the disapprobation of those we love and respect. Moreover, through him the heart-breaking intelligence of her son's evil courses might reach Mrs. Manly. But no doubt Frank's chief motive for concealing the cause of his grief from Captain Edney was the suspicion he still entertained, notwithstanding that officer's professed ignorance of the entire matter, that he was in reality the secret donor of the watch. So he choked back his sobs, and pretended to be assorting some pebbles, which the boys used as counters, especially when certain officers were passing, who would have reproved them if they had seen money on the board. And Captain Edney, whether he suspected any thing wrong, or not, walked on; and that restraint upon Frank's feelings was removed.
But having once controlled the outburst, he did not suffer them to get the better of him again. With a look of silent and sullen despair, he got up, and went to his bunk, and threw himself upon it, and, turning his face to the wall, refused to be comforted.
It was the wooden wall of the ship's timbers--the same he had looked at in sickness, in storms at sea, by day, and at night by the dim light of the swinging ship's lanterns; and when he lay calmly at rest, in the palm of God, amid the convulsions and dangers of the deep, and when, in the tediousness of long, dull days of waiting, he had lain there, and solaced himself with sweet thoughts of home.