"Sir Godwine, I'd like a glass of brandy, but mainly I wish to make a request."
"Then come into my cubby, I've brandy there, and 'baccy and pipes, too, if you've a taste that way."
We climbed steep stone steps where it seemed likely his drinks would hit him. I did not believe it, though, and was not really surprised when he ran up them like a boy. He led me into an eight-sided room that might once have been the top of a battlement, now walled in and furnished like the captain's cabin on a man-of-war. The chairs, chests, and charting table were of massively carved teak-wood; the broad-based cone-shaped decanters, of heavy graven crystal, would not tip over in a heavy sea; a drunken man could fall down without knocking anything down, so well secured was all gear. I admired especially a telescope, two feet long and light as a spyglass, with magnifying power of some fifty diameters. I wondered if it had been used on Sophia and me.
"I'd hazard that your request concerns my daughter," Sir Godwine remarked in a pleasant tone when we were comfortably seated.
"Aye, sir, it does. I wish your permission to pay court to her."
"Now that's a different thing than asking her hand in marriage, yet it could come to the same thing. Suppose I granted your request and then you and she should take a notion to marry, could I refuse you, when I'd given you a clear field? Still, it's a proper request, when you're of a different nationality and station."
"I'm ignorant, sir, in matters of station. But I wish to court Sophia at her home, and in the open, without your forbiddance."
"I'll instruct you somewhat. In practice, only young men whom we call eligible pay court to an English girl of Sophia's station—being her escort at balls, riding with her, and such as that. They'll not ask her father's consent to pay her such attentions, but if one of 'em shows unfit, he'll get the chuck; and should she get thick with one, so it looks serious, her father will either let it go on or try to stop it. If he lets it go on, the young feller need have little fear of being refused when he seeks his consent to marriage."
"Aye, sir."
"I take it Sophia wants your attentions, or you wouldn't pay 'em."
"Aye, sir."
"Has she promised to marry you if I'd let her, or even if I wouldn't?"
I did not feel obliged to answer that question, but I did so, thinking it would be in my favor.
"No, sir."
"Wouldn't I be doing wrong to you both to consent to your courting her, when I could never consent to your marrying her? And the reason why—to put it in a nutshell—both of you would rue the day."
"Sir, I dispute what you say last. I think our chance of happiness would be first rate."
"You'd intend to take her to America?"
"Aye, sir."
"Out of all you've seen tonight, to a little house in some American seaport? For mark you, she has the merest pittance of her own."
"To Bath, on the Kennebec River, where I was born. It would be a small house to start with, but get better as I get on. As for what I saw tonight, Sophia wouldn't miss it as might most young ladies, if I judge aright. In America even the poor sit down to tables laden with meat and game, and as an officer of a good ship, on my way to be a captain, I'd not count myself poor."
"Would you count yourself rich on ten—fifteen—maybe twenty pounds a month?"
"Ten pounds is close to fifty dollars. I'd make thirty dollars to start with, plus my rations. Still I'd be in middle circumstances; and in place of luxury, Sophia could have adventure."
It seemed to me that he blanched a little as from sharp pain; and as he reached for his glass of brandy, he knocked it over. I offered him my cotton kerchief to wipe it up, but instead he used his own, heavy silk with a lace frill, on which a coat of arms had been embroidered. As he mopped, he smiled. It was such a smile as I never knew, making mock of God it seemed to me, and the sweat came out on me in cold beads, for at last I had seen evil.
"I'll go back to my original question," he said softly. "If I let you pay court to her, when on no account would I consent to your marrying her, wouldn't I do you wrong?"
"Nay, sir. You'd do wrong to refuse me, when there's no mark against me, and her knowing the truth about me, and still wanting my attentions."
"Then I'd do wrong to myself. I'd be flying in the face of what's best for her, according to my greater experience and knowledge. Still, it would go hard with me to shut my doors to you, for the reasons you gave, and you a ship's officer of a nation with whom the king made peace. And it would go harder yet to lock her in room, she being of marriageable age and proud."
"Then what do you say, Sir Godwine?"
"Will you give me your promise to take her or leave her when the Vindictive sets sail from Malta?"
"I'll sail with my ship when she leaves here, if that's what you mean, whether or not Sophia will go with me."
"I'll not forbid you—although it's against my wishes and advice— to pay court to her the short time you're here."
While I sat dumb, hardly able to believe my ears, he filled his glass and drained it. The respite allowed me to catch my breath.
"I thank you kindly."
"You've no news of the vessel, I dare say?"
"No, sir."
"Captain Ball gave me some today. Our frigates convoyed her through the Strait two weeks ago. Some days past she was at Palermo, unloading Danish butter, and was due to sail on last night's tide. If this weather holds, she ought to make it in sometime tomorrow."
Battening down my heart, I looked into Sir Godwine's face confronting mine. There should be a gleam of mirth, however sardonic, in his pale eyes. I could even expect a trace of a smile, triumphant but human, such as a winner should give a loser in fellowship's sake. But the blue around the diamond-bright black points was like blue sky in December, and his mouth was slightly pursed, showing the perfect molding of his lips, as his thoughts flew far.
He had dismissed me from his attention. He had not denied my existence—he would not bother to tell the he—but he had become oblivious to it. But I had another night in Malta. I remembered with a rush of joy, a sense of power, and I would not be surprised to hear from him again.
CHAPTER 6
The Ship Comes In
The highest hill overlooking the northwest coast was the hill I climbed. In midmorning I had gained its crest; since the day was clear and fine, I could gaze halfway or thereabouts across the Malta Channel. Besides fishing smacks under lateen or square sail, ketches, and suchlike craft, I marked a Yankee brigantine, an English frigate, a Barbary brig whose heavy bow spelled pirate as sure as a skimming fin spelled shark, and three sloops in a flock making straight east, too far away for me to know their nation.
Amid all this shipping, a white speck on the northwest horizon need not excite me. I thought it a brighter white than any skysails I had seen, but that was a trick of the sun. As all her tops rose into view, they were still too distant to show peculiarities of rigging. Still, I would bet a dollar she was my own ship, and not a dime that she was some other. Maybe she came up with a little different motion than other ships. Perhaps I merely felt it in my bones.
I waited a half hour longer. Her hull hung still below the horizon, but my head was free of doubt. It was no trick to walk down to Valletta in time to see her make her harbor run, or to catch a ride on the first lighter scampering out to meet her. She had hardly finished her first swing upon her cable when I had cleared her rail.
An officer now, as my shipmates kept in mind, I received no banging about, but there was no sea rule against Captain Phillips pumping my arm and turning red in the face with pleasure; or Mate Hedric from jesting broadly about my shore adventures; or the sailors from giving me hearty handshakes and big grins and simple words of welcome to stow in my heart. 'Giny Jim came out of the galley with his black face alight. He had laded a coop of fowls, he said, and tonight there'd be fried chicken for all hands. I did not see Mate Tyler, but no other face was missing from the ring, so all was well with the Vindictive. I had been ashamed to worry about her, it seeming a breach of troth with so stout and brave a ship, but I must have done so regardless, to have such a load off my mind.