‘That was bad. Many men, too, you lost then. Boats and men Those must have been hard gales, Don Benito.’

‘Past all speech,’ cringed the Spaniard.

‘Tell me, Don Benito,’ continued his companion with increased interest, ‘tell me, were these gales immediately off the pitch of Cape Horn?’

‘Cape Horn?—who spoke of Cape Horn?’

‘Yourself did, when giving me an account of your voyage,’ answered Captain Delano, with almost equal astonishment at this eating of his own words, even as he ever seemed eating his own heart, on the part of the Spaniard. ‘You yourself, Don Benito, spoke of Cape Horn,’ he emphatically repeated.

The Spaniard turned, in a sort of stooping posture, pausing an instant, as one about to make a plunging exchange of elements, as from air to water.

At this moment a messenger-boy, a white, hurried by, in the regular performance of his function carrying the last expired halfhour forward to the forecastle from the cabin time piece, to have it struck at the ship’s large bell.

‘Master,’ said the servant, discontinuing his work on the coat sleeve, and addressing the rapt Spaniard with a sort of timid apprehensiveness, as one charged with a duty, the discharge of which, it was foreseen, would prove irksome to the very person who had imposed it, and for whose benefit it was intended, ‘master told me never mind where he was, or how engaged, always to remind him, to a minute, when shaving-time comes. Miguel has gone to strike the half-hour afternoon. It is now, master. Will master go into the cuddy?’

‘Ah—yes,’ answered the Spaniard, starting, as from dreams into realities; then, turning upon Captain Delano, he said that ere long he would resume the conversation.

‘Then if master means to talk more to Don Amasa,’ said the servant, ‘why not let Don Amasa sit by master in the cuddy, and master can talk, and Don Amasa can listen, while Babo here lathers and strops.’

‘Yes,’ said Captain Delano, not unpleased with this sociable plan, ‘yes, Don Benito, unless you had rather not, I will go with you.’

‘Be it so, señor.’

As the three passed aft, the American could not but think it another strange instance of his host’s capriciousness, this being shaved with such uncommon punctuality in the middle of the day. But he deemed it more than likely that the servant’s anxious fidelity had something to do with the matter; inasmuch as the timely interruption served to rally his master from the mood which had evidently been coming upon him.

The place called the cuddy was a light deck-cabin formed by the poop, a sort of attic to the large cabin below. Part of it had formerly been the quarters of the officers; but since their death all the partitionings had been thrown down, and the whole interior converted into one spacious and airy marine hall; for absence of fine furniture and picturesque disarray of odd appurtenances, somewhat answering to the wide, cluttered hall of some eccentric bachelorsquire in the country, who hangs his shooting-jacket and tobacco-pouch on deer antlers and keeps his fishing-rod, tongs and walking-stick in the same corner.

The similitude was heightened, if not originally suggested, by glimpses of the surrounding sea; since, in one aspect, the country and the ocean seem cousins-german.

The floor of the cuddy was matted. Overhead, four or five old muskets were stuck into horizontal holes along the beams. On one side was a claw-footed old table lashed to the deck; a thumbed missal on it,