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child, were conveyed in terms, to her quite unintelligible. The
difference was finally adjusted, by the man who had come out of the
cabin knocking the other into it head first, and taking the helm into
his own hands, without evincing the least discomposure himself, or
causing any in his friend, who, being of a tolerably strong constitution
and perfectly inured to such trifles, went to sleep as he was, with his
heels upwards, and in a couple of minutes or so was snoring
comfortably.
By this time it was night again, and though the child felt cold, being
but poorly clad, her anxious thoughts were far removed from her own
suffering or uneasiness, and busily engaged in endeavouring to devise
some scheme for their joint subsistence. The same spirit which had
supported her on the previous night, upheld and sustained her now.
Her grandfather lay sleeping safely at her side, and the crime to which
his madness urged him, was not committed. That was her comfort.
How every circumstance of her short, eventful life, came thronging
into her mind, as they travelled on! Slight incidents, never thought of
or remembered until now; faces, seen once and ever since forgotten;
words scarcely heeded at the time; scenes, of a year ago and those of
yesterday, mixing up and linking themselves together; familiar places
shaping themselves out in the darkness from things which, when
approached, were, of all others, the most remote and most unlike
them; sometimes, a strange confusion in her mind relative to the
occasion of her being there, and the place to which she was going, and
the people she was with; and imagination suggesting remarks and
questions which sounded so plainly in her ears, that she would start,
and turn, and be almost tempted to reply; - all the fancies and
contradictions common in watching and excitement and restless
change of place, beset the child.
She happened, while she was thus engaged, to encounter the face of
the man on deck, in whom the sentimental stage of drunkenness had
now succeeded to the boisterous, and who, taking from his mouth a
short pipe, quilted over with string for its longer preservation,
requested that she would oblige him with a song.
'You've got a very pretty voice, a very soft eye, and a very strong
memory,' said this gentleman; 'the voice and eye I've got evidence for,
and the memory's an opinion of my own. And I'm never wrong. Let me
hear a song this minute.'
'
'
I don't think I know one, sir,' returned Nell.
You know forty-seven songs,' said the man, with a gravity which
admitted of no altercation on the subject. 'Forty-seven's your number.
Let me hear one of 'em - the best. Give me a song this minute.'
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