“If you had defied Satan down below there,” said Cary, with a laugh, “I suspect he wouldn’t have broken out on you so boldly, Master Jack.”
“I am innocent—innocent as the babe unborn! Oh! Mr. Cary! this is too bad of you, sir!” quoth Jack indignantly, while Amyas asked what was the matter.
“He looked at me,” said she, sturdily.
“Well, a cat may look at a king.”
“But he sha’n’t look at Ayacanora. Nobody shall but you, or I’ll kill him!”
In vain Jack protested his innocence of having even looked at her. The fancy (and I verily believe it was nothing more) had taken possession of her. She refused to return below to her lesson. Jack went off grumbling, minus his hair, and wore a black eye for a week after.
“At all events,” quoth Cary, re-lighting his cigar, “it’s a fault on the right side.”
“God give me grace, or it may be one on the wrong side for me.”
“He will, old heart-of-oak!” said Cary, laying his arm around Amyas’s neck, to the evident disgust of Ayacanora, who went off to the side, got a fishing-line, and began amusing herself therewith, while the ship slipped on quietly and silently as ever, save when Ayacanora laughed and clapped her hands at the flying-fish scudding from the bonitos. At last, tired of doing nothing, she went forward to the poop-rail to listen to John Squire the armorer, who sat tinkering a headpiece, and humming a song, mutato nomine, concerning his native place—
And the more I look upon it, the more my heart it warms;
For there are fair young lasses, in rows upon the quay,
To welcome gallant mariners, when they come home from say.”
“’Tis Sunderland, John Squire, to the song, and not Bidevor,” said his mate.
“Well, Bidevor’s so good as Sunderland any day, for all there’s no say-coals there blacking a place about; and makes just so good harmonies, Tommy Hamblyn—
Or if I was a say-dove, to fly unto the shoor,
To fly unto my true love, a waiting at the door,
To wed her with a goold ring, and plough the main no moor.”
Here Yeo broke in—
“Aren’t you ashamed, John Squire, to your years, singing such carnal vanities, after all the providences you have seen? Let the songs of Zion be in your mouth, man, if you must needs keep a caterwauling all day like that.”
“You sing ’em yourself then, gunner.”
“Well,” says Yeo, “and why not?” And out he pulled his psalm-book, and began a scrap of the grand old psalm—
Into the seas descend,
Their merchandise through fearful floods
To compass and to end;
The Lord’s works what they be;
And in the dreadful deep the same,
Most marvellous they see.”
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