Page:Dickens - A Child s History of England, 1900.djvu/641

Rh that he was a sordid and selfish character, and that he had warped further and further out of the straight with, time. Not but what he was on his best behavior with us, as everybody was; for we had no bickering among us, for'ard or aft. I only mean to say, he was not the man one would have chosen for a messmate. If choice there had been one might even have gone a few points out of one's course, to say, "No! Not him!" But there was one curious inconsistency in Mr. Rarx. That was, that he took an astonishing interest in the child. He looked, and I may add, he was, one of the last of men to care at all for a child, or to care much for any human creature. Still, he went so far as to be habitually uneasy, if the child was long on deck, out of his sight. He was always afraid of her falling overboard, or falling down a hatchway, or of a block or what not coming down upon her from the ligging in the working of the ship, or of her getting some hurt or other. He used to look at her and touch her, as if she was something precious to him. He was always solicitous about her not injuring her health, and constantly entreated her mother to be careful of it. This was so much the more curious, because the child did not like him, but used to shrink away from him, and would not even put out her hand to him wihout coaxing from others. I believe that every soul on board frequently noticed this, and not one of us understood it. However, it was such a plain fact, that John Steadiman said more than once when old Mr. Rarx was not within earshot, that if the Golden Mary felt a tenderness for the dear ols gentleman she carried in her lap, she must be bitterly jealous of the Golden Lucy.

Before I go any further with this narrative, I will state that our ship was a bark of three hundred tons, carrying a crew of eighteen men, a second mate in addition to John, a carpenter, an armorer or smith, and two little apprentices (one a Scotch boy, poor little fellow). We had three boats; the long-boat, capable of carrying twenty-five men; the cutter, capable of carrying fifteen; and the surf boat, capable of carrying ton. I put down the capacity of these boats according to the numbers they were really meant to hold.

We had tastes of bad weather and head-winds, of course but on the whole, we had as fine a run as any