Monday to sherry and champaigne, and the
decision of Mr. Effingham, these persons therefore remained the sole
occupants of the cabins of the Montauk. Of the _oi polloi_ who had left
them, we have hitherto said nothing, because this separation was to remove
them entirely from the interest of our incidents.
If we were to say that Captain Truck did not feel melancholy as the
store-ship sunk beneath the horizon, we should represent that
stout-hearted mariner as more stoical than he actually was. In the course
of a long and adventurous professional life, he had encountered calamities
before, but he had never before been compelled to call in assistance to
deliver his passengers at the stipulated port, since he had commanded a
packet. He felt the necessity, in the present instance, as a sort of stain
upon his character as a seaman, though in fact the accident which had
occurred was chiefly to be attributed to a concealed defect in the
mainmast. The honest master sighed often, smoked nearly double the usual
number of cigars in the course of the afternoon, and when the sun went
down gloriously in the distant west, he stood gazing at the sky in
melancholy silence, as long as any of the magnificent glory that
accompanies the decline of day lingered among the vapours of the horizon.
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