I could almost starve with satisfaction, Miss Effingham,
if I saw you free from suffering under the extraordinary circumstances in
which we are placed."
Eve looked grateful, and the emotion excited by this speech restored all
that beauty which had so lately been chilled by fear.
"Did I not hear a dialogue between you and Mr. Saunders touching the
merits of sundry stores that had been left in the ship?" asked John
Effingham, turning to Paul by way of relieving his cousin's distress.
"Indeed you might; he relieved the time we were rousing at the chains with
a beautiful Jeremiad on the calamities of the lockers. I fancy, steward,
that you consider the misfortunes of the pantry as the heaviest disaster
that has befallen the Montauk!"
Saunders seldom smiled. In this particular he resembled Captain Truck; the
one subduing all light emotions from an inveterate habit of serious
comicality, and the responsibility of command; and the other having lost
most of his disposition to merriment, as the cart-horse loses his
propensity to kick, from being overworked. The steward, moreover, had
taken up the conceit that it was indicative of a "nigger" to be merry;
and, between dignity, a proper regard to his colour--which was about
half-way between that of a Gold Coast importation, and a rice-plantation
overseer, down with the fever in his third season--and dodged submission
to unmitigated calls on his time, the prevailing character of the poor
fellow's physiognomy was that of a dolorous sentimentality He believed
himself to be materially refined by having had so much intimate
communication with gentlemen and ladies, suffering under sea-sickness, and
he knew that no man in the ship could use language like that he had always
at his finger's ends.
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