“Bunsby, my lad, how fares it?”
A deep, gruff, husky utterance, which seemed to have no connection with Bunsby, and certainly had not the least effect upon his face, replied, “Ay, ay, shipmet, how goes it?” At the same time Bunsby’s right hand and arm, emerging from a pocket, shook the Captain’s, and went back again.
“Bunsby,” said the Captain, striking home at once, “here you are; a man of mind, and a man as can give an opinion. Here’s a young lady as wants to take that opinion, in regard of my friend Wal’r; likewise my t’other friend, Sol Gills, which is a character for you to come within hail of, being a man of science, which is the mother of invention, and knows no law. Bunsby, will you wear, to oblige me, and come along with us?”
The great commander, who seemed by expression of his visage to be always on the lookout for something in the extremest distance, and to have no ocular knowledge of anything within ten miles, made no reply whatever.
“Here is a man,” said the Captain, addressing himself to his fair auditors, and indicating the commander with his outstretched hook, “that has fell down, more than any man alive; that has had more accidents happen to his own self than the Seamen’s Hospital to all hands; that took as many spars and bars and bolts about the outside of his head when he was young, as you’d want a order for on Chatham-yard to build a pleasure yacht with; and yet that his opinions in that way, it’s my belief, for there ain’t nothing like ’em afloat or ashore.”
The stolid commander appeared by a very slight vibration in his elbows, to express some satisfaction in this encomium; but if his face had been as distant as his gaze was, it could hardly have enlightened the beholders less in reference to anything that was passing in his thoughts.
“Shipmet,” said Bunsby, all of a sudden, and stooping down to look out under some interposing spar, “what’ll the ladies drink?”
Captain Cuttle, whose delicacy was shocked by such an inquiry in connection with Florence, drew the sage aside, and seeming to explain in his ear, accompanied him below; where, that he might not take offence, the Captain drank a dram himself, which Florence and Susan, glancing down the open skylight, saw the sage, with difficulty finding room for himself between his berth and a very little brass fireplace, serve out for self and friend. They soon reappeared on deck, and Captain Cuttle, triumphing in the success of his enterprise, conducted Florence back to the coach, while Bunsby followed, escorting Miss Nipper, whom he hugged upon the way (much to that young lady’s indignation) with his pilot-coated arm, like a blue bear.
The Captain put his oracle inside, and gloried so much in having secured him, and having got that mind into a hackney-coach, that he could not refrain from often peeping in at Florence through the little window behind the driver, and testifying his delight in smiles, and also in taps upon his forehead, to hint to her that the brain of Bunsby was hard at it. In the meantime, Bunsby, still hugging Miss Nipper (for his friend, the Captain, had not exaggerated the softness of his heart), uniformly preserved his gravity of deportment, and showed no other consciousness of her or anything.
Uncle Sol, who had come home, received them at the door, and ushered them immediately into the little back parlour: strangely altered by the absence of Walter. On the table, and about the room, were the charts and maps on which the heavyhearted Instrument-maker had again and again tracked the missing vessel across the sea, and on which, with a pair of compasses that he still had in his hand, he had been measuring, a minute before, how far she must have driven, to have driven here or there: and trying to demonstrate that a long time must elapse before hope was exhausted.
“Whether she can have run,” said Uncle Sol, looking wistfully over the chart; “but no, that’s almost impossible. Or whether she can have been forced by stress of weather—but that’s not reasonably likely. Or whether there is any hope she so far changed her course as—but even I can hardly hope that!” With such broken suggestions, poor old Uncle Sol roamed over the great sheet before him, and could not find a speck of hopeful probability in it large enough to set one small point of the compasses upon.
Florence saw immediately—it would have been difficult to help seeing—that there was a singular, indescribable change in the old man, and that while his manner was far more restless and unsettled than usual, there was yet a curious, contradictory decision in it, that perplexed her very much. She fancied once that he spoke wildly, and at random; for on her saying she regretted not to have seen him when she had been there before that morning, he at first replied that he had been to see her, and directly afterwards seemed to wish to recall that answer.
“You have been to see me?” said Florence. “Today?”
“Yes, my dear young lady,” returned Uncle Sol, looking at her and away from her in a confused manner. “I wished to see you with my own eyes, and to hear you with my own ears, once more before—” There he stopped.
“Before when? Before what?” said Florence, putting her hand upon his arm.
“Did I say ‘before?’ ” replied old Sol. “If I did, I must have meant before we should have news of my dear boy.”
“You are not well,” said Florence, tenderly. “You have been so very anxious I am sure you are not well.”
“I am as well,” returned the old man, shutting up his right hand, and holding it out to show her: “as well and firm as any man at my time of life can hope to be. See! It’s steady. Is its master not as capable of resolution and fortitude as many a
