I found a handy chink i’ the rock to plant it
in, an’ a rovin’ pain I had in my stomach
while I was fixin’ it. That was the egg,
I dessay. An’ my head in a maze, too:
but I’d sense enough to think now what a fool
I was not to have took Jeff’s shirt off’n,
to serve me for a flag. Hows’ever, my own
bein’ wringin’ wet, an’ the sun pretty
strong just then, I slipped it off an’ hitched
it atop o’ the oar to dry an’ be a flag
at the same time, till I could rig up some kind o’
streamer, out o’ the seaweed. An’
then I was forced to vomit. And that’s about
the last thing, Mister Geake, I can mind doin’.
’Tis all foolishness after that. They tell
me that a ’Merican schooner, the
Shawanee,
sighted my shirt flappin’, an’ sent a
boat an’ took me off an’ landed me at
New Orleens. My head was bad—oh, very
bad—an’ they put me in a ‘sylum
an’ cured me. But they took eight year’
over it, an’ I doubt if ‘tis much of a
job after all. I wasn’ bad all the time,
I must tell you, sir; but ’tis only lately my
mem’ry would work any further back ‘n
the wreck o’ the barque. Everything seemed
to begin an’ end wi’ that. ’Tis
about a year back that some visitors came to the ’sylum.
There was a lady in the party, an’ something
in her face, when she spoke to me, put me in mind
o’ Na’mi, an’ I remembered I was
a married man. Inside of a fortnight, part by
thinkin’—’tis hard work still
for me to think—part by dreamin’,
I’d a-worried it all out. I was betterin’
fast by that. Soon as I was well enough to be
discharged, I worked my passage home in a grain ship,
the
Druid, o’ Liverpool. I was reckonin’
all the way back that Na’mi’d be main glad
to see me agen. But now I s’pose she won’t.”
“It’ll come nigh to killin’ her.”
“I dessay, now, you two have got to be very
fond? She used to be a partic’lar lovin’
sort o’ woman.”
“I love her more ’n heaven!” William
broke out; and then cowered as if he half expected
to be struck with lightning for the words.
“I heard of her havin’ married, down at
the Fifteen Balls, at Troy. I dropped in there
to pick up the news.”
“What! You’ve been tellin’
folks who you be!”
“Not a word. First of all I was minded
to play off a little surprise ‘pon old Toms,
the landlord, who didn’ know me from Adam.
But hearin’ this, just as I was a-leadin’
up to my little joke, I thought maybe ’twould
annoy Na’mi. She used to be very strict
in some of her notions.”
William Geake took two hasty turns up and down the
little parlour. His Bible, in which before breakfast
he had been searching for a text, lay open on the
side table. Behind its place on the shelf was
a small skivet he had let into the wall; and in that
drawer was stored something over twenty-five pounds,
the third of his savings. Geake kept a bank-account,
and the balance lay at interest with Messrs. Climo
and Hodges, of St. Austell. But he had the true
countryman’s aversion to putting all his eggs