“How does she look?” I almost hoped he would not tell, but he did.

“She’s got hair as black as a coal, kind o’ pushed back, as if she’d been runnin’ her hands through it; she has big shiny eyes, swelled up as she’d been cryin’ a great while; and she’s always got on a gray dress, silvery-like, with a tear in one sleeve.  There ain’t nothin’ more, only a handkerchief tied round her wrist, as if it had been hurt.”

“Is she handsome?”

“Mebbe white folks’d think so.”

“Why does she show herself to you and no one else, do you suppose?”

“Didn’t I tell you the reason before?”

“Of course you didn’t.”

“Well, you see, she looked just so the last time I seen her alive.  I must go and put in the biscuit now, miss.”

I submitted, knowing that white folks may be hurried, but black ones never; and I could not but admire the natural talent which Pedro shared with the authors of continued stories, of always dropping the thread at the most thrilling moment.

“Who was she?” said I, lying in wait for him on his return.

“She was cap’n’s wife, miss—­a young woman, and the cap’n was old, with a blazing kind of temper.  He was dreffle sweet on her for about a month, and mebbe she was happy, mebbe she wa’n’t:  how should I know about white folks’ feelin’s?  All of a suddent he said she was sick and couldn’t go out of the middle state-room.  The old man took in plenty of stuff to eat, but he never let me go near her.  We was on just such a v’y’ge as this, only hotter.  The cap’n would come out of that room lookin’ black as thunder, and everybody scudded out of his sight when he put his head out of the gangway.

“He was always bad enough, but he got wuss and wuss, and nothin’ couldn’t please him.  Sometimes I’d hear the poor thing a-moaning to herself like a baby that’s beat out with loud cryin’ and hain’t got no noise left.  She was always cryin’ in them days.  Once the supercargo (he was a cool hand, any way) give me a bit of paper very private to give to her, and I slipped it under the door, but the old man had nailed somethin’ down inside, an’ he found it afore she did.  Then there was a regular knockdown fight, and the supercargo was put in irons.  The old man was in the middle room a long time that day, talkin’ in a hissin’ kind of a way, and the missus got a blow.  Just after that a sort of a white squall struck the ship, and the old man give just the wrong orders.  You see, he was clean out of his head.  He got so worked up at last that he fell down in a fit, and they bundled him into his state-room and left him, ’cause nobody cared whether he was dead or alive.  The mate took the irons off the supercargo first thing, and broke open the middle room.  The supercargo went in there and stayed a long time, whispering to the missus, and she cried more’n ever, only it sounded different.