r Liosha formed the subject of much complicated
argument, at the end of which Captain Maturin undertook to procure them
from marine stores this peaceful Sunday night. Liosha, aglow with
excitement and looking exceedingly beautiful, also mentioned her need of
thick jersey and woollen cap and stout boots not quite so
tempest-defying as the others; and these, too, the foolish and
apparently infatuated mariner promised to provide. We drifted
mechanically, still talking, into the interior of the Cafe-Restaurant,
where we sat down to a dinner which I ordered to please myself, for not
one of the others took the slightest interest in it. Jaffery, like a
schoolboy son of Gargamelle, shovelled food into his mouth--it might
have been tripe, or bullock's heart or chitterlings for all he knew or
cared. His jolly laugh served as a bass for the more treble buzz and
clatter of the pleasant place. I have never seen a man exude such
plentiful happiness. Liosha ate unthinkingly, her elbows on the table,
after the manner of Albania, her hat not straight--I whispered the
information as (through force of training) I should have whispered it to
Barbara, with no other result than an impatient push which rendered it
more piquantly crooked than ever. Captain Maturin went through the
performance with the grave face of another classical devotee to duty;
but his heart--poor fellow!--was not in his food. It was partly in
Pinner, partly in his antediluvian tramp, and partly in the prospect of
having as cook's mate during his voyage the superbly vital young woman
of the stone-age, now accidentally tricked out in twentieth century
finery, who was sitting next to him.

Captain Maturin took an early leave. He had various things to do before
turning in--including, I suppose, the purchase of his cook's mate's
outfit--and he was to sail at five-thirty in the morning. If his new
deck-hand and cook's mate would come alongside at five or thereabouts,
he would see to their adequate reception.

"You wouldn't like to ship along with me, too, Mr. Freeth?" said he,
with a grip like--like any horrible thing that is hard and iron and
clamping in a steamer's machinery--and athwart his green-grey eyes
filled with wind and sea passed a gleam of humour--"There's still
time."

"I would come with pleasure," said I, "were it not for the fact that all
my spare moments are devoted to the translation of a Persian poet."

If I am not urbane, I am nothing.

He went. Liosha