Well versed in French, Sophia could follow the Italian patois known to most Maltese. Without much trouble she informed our Jehu that he was to let us out at the carnival, take his stand with other carriages until shortly before midnight, then return to Valletta by a roundabout route. If in the meantime anyone asked for us, he was to say only that he was waiting our return. For this I would pay him two shillings extra, but if he disobeyed orders, I would report him to Ernesto, king of the carriage drivers and a name to conjure with.
"What will we be doing in the meantime?" Sophia asked me, big-eyed.
"I've arranged for another carriage to be waiting out of sight of the crowds. As soon as we can slip off, we'll make for Valletta."
"What then?"
"We'll take a shore gig out to my ship."
"And then sail away?" Sophia laughed raucously.
"Did you bring your passport?"
She sobered instantly. "Yes, but you said you wouldn't sail at least until tomorrow."
"We won't weigh anchor tonight. I intend to bring you home before dawn. Is that all right?"
"Yes, provided someone doesn't come for me before then. I've danced all night more than once. No one will kill me—no one will even hit me. Tomorrow night—"
"It may be tomorrow night you won't leave me at all."
"Has my passport anything to do with that?"
"Yes, and I'll tell you later."
"Homer, it's incredible. The whole thing is. Yet when you're with me, I believe it. You plan something—and it comes true."
"I've got to ask you something. Is your father going to look for us soon, or late, or not at all?"
"If at all, it will be late. His present intention is to indulge my whims. He thinks I know what side my bread is buttered on, and if he doesn't bear down too hard, I'll obey his wishes. If he kept me at home tonight, I might run off and marry you. He couldn't conceive of it himself, but I believe Dick told him so. Harvey will be furious but he won't do anything—he's under Papa's thumb. And none of them believe that I'll do anything very serious."
We were drawing close to the carnival. Fiddles shrilled, drums beat, clowns shouted, and crowds laughed.
"Sophia, do you think he'll guess I've taken you to my ship?"
She mused a moment, then shook her head.
"I believe it's the last place he'd look. You see, there's a certain pattern to his thinking—if I look far enough, it always fits. No English captain would let one of his crew bring a girl aboard. Not even an American would be crude enough to invite a young English gentlewoman on to his dirty hooker. If he did, of course she wouldn't come."
While hooker could mean a two-masted Dutchman as clean as a whistle, usually it meant an old, disreputable trader swarming with rats and roaches. All hands but Captain Phillips applied it affectionately, along with "The Old Bitch," to our trig lady, but never in his hearing or before outsiders. I had not foreseen that Sophia knew the word, though I should be sensible to her wide vocabulary by this time.
When the driver let us out at the carnival, we were hard put to it to leave the happy scene. There was an Italian troupe of jugglers and acrobats, monkeys and dancing bears, a merry-go-round that Sophia called a carousel, and peep and puppet shows. But great urgencies confronted us. Sophia faced them as squarely as I did; and her straits were worse than mine because she must make the desperate decision. But even if we could have spared an hour from our night of trial, the presence of some English man-of-war's men with pretty, vital-looking Maltese girls hurried us off. Quite possibly they knew Sophia by sight. Anyhow, they quieted her laughter.
When we were out of sound of the merrymaking, she took note of the closed carriage, better sprung and more luxurious than the other, and the spanking team that took the highroad at a good eight miles an hour.
"Homer, isn't the hiring of two carriages, and a boat, and I don't know what else, rather expensive?"
"I had sixty dollars when I hit Malta. I've still got almost ten,"
"That's a lot to spend out of six guineas'—thirty dollars—pay."
"I rather thought Sir Godwine wouldn't tell you that."
"Why not?"
"Wouldn't 'pittance' do well enough? I guess I thought that giving exact figures would be beneath his dignity."
"Nothing is. That's a strange thing to say. He feels so high he can do anything. Anyway, aristocracy is rooted in money somewhere along the line—cut the root, and it dies."
"I told him that instead of luxury, I could give you adventure."
"He told me you said that—and he didn't smile over it. He even acted quite impressed by it. In that he was very clever."
"That's too subtle for me."
"Did he tell you that I have a little money from my mother? I can draw it all after I'm twenty-one, and it might be enough to buy a small ship. It yields fifty pounds a year."
"I'd think that would buy a fine sloop. And until then, we could live well and keep a hired girl."
I began to tell her about America—little things that English travelers would hardly notice. I described our clambakes and lobster-boilings on the beach, to which every youth and maiden in the town could come and be welcome; husking-bees and cider-pressings and apple-butter making, with kisses for prizes; excursions to the snowy woods when word went forth of sap a-running; quilting parties in the winter and barn dances in the fall and kissing games at Christmas. In Charleston and Richmond people asked who your grandpa was, and the question was beginning to be put in Boston, but if you did not want to answer, you only had to move a ways west, where no one cared and life was even livelier than on the seacoast. I tried to make her understand the bigness of the land—room for nine Englands in the part already settled, while over the mountains it ran on and on, forest and prairie, deep black soil, corn land and pasture to come, and cities and towns to be, clear to the Father of Waters.
But I could not tell her how it felt to be an American—the inwardness of it. Very rarely a sharp feeling, hardly ever thought upon, yet it was with all of us, all the time. It made us different from every other people in the world. It worked upon our minds and changed our souls.
She listened almost in silence. Her hand in mine sometimes opened and closed. Once she stopped me with a kiss. Once she wiped away tears.
So we came into Valletta, and got out of the carriage not far off the Strad Reale; then we made our way down the half-mile staircase to the harbor. A short and breezy sail brought us alongside the Vindictive; and since she was no great ship o' the line, Sophia needed no Jacob's-ladder to gain her deck. I handed her up; Storky Wilmot's long lean arms reached down. After the light hoist, he touched his cap to her and vanished in the fo'c'sle.
"She's not as big as I thought," Sophia said, looking fore and aft.
"No, you can pitch a stone from knightheads to taffrail."
"She's very low to the water."
"Yes, the Yankee traders have low freeboard, which makes her get wet decks when the green seas roll, but helps her spank along in fair weather."
Sophia looked up. "She's quite tall."
"That she is. Foreigners say that Yankees carry too much sail."
"Does 'foreigners' include the English?"
"I reckon it does—until they come to live in America."
I showed her all parts of the ship that were fitting for her to visit, and told her the use and meaning of the gear. Lastly, I led her to my cabin and lighted the lantern bracketed to the wall.
She saw a room about six feet by five, containing a bunker cot with my chest pushed underneath, a bench, a washbasin hung on a nail, and a draw bucket. The dead light gave plenty of air on cool nights like this, and in tropic heat I could open the hatch. I could stand erect, although Storky Wilmot would have to bend his head. The room smelled clean, and there were no bugs in the bed, roaches in the boards, or rats in the walls.