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 forhimself 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 hisenterprise, 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 hispilot-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 atFlorence through the little window behind the driver, and testifiing his delight in smiles, and also in taps upon his forehead, to hint to her that the brain of Bunsby was hardat it' In the meantime, Bunsby, still hugging Miss Nipper (for his friend, the Captain, had not exaggerated the softness of his heart), uniformily preserved his gravity ofdeportment, 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, andabout the room, were the charts and maps on which the heavy-hearted Instrument-maker had again and again tracked the missing vessel across the sea, and on which, with a pair ofcompasses 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 along 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, - butthat'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 Solroamed 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 morerestless 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; foron 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 towish to recall that answer.
'You have been to see me?' said Florence. 'To-day?'