No Good Deed 75

We took our seats on the rough wood of the boxes, being most careful to place a cushion between our posterior parts and the splintered surface. Garroway remained standing. This enabled him to look either of us in the eye without straining his neck upward like an ugly swan. He attempted a jut of the jaw, which merely made his effeminate mouth all the more ridiculous,

'Guvnuh's a friend of ma'hn, surprises me, Ah don't recall yoah name, suh!'

I winked at Miss Pardoner,

'Mudsill, John Mudsill.'

'It cain't be! It cain't be!'

The man seemed as overcome as a Baptist on meeting the Messiah, and I reflected that in the actual and hypothetical cases, he indeed had the right of it, and it couldn't be so. Miss Pardoner appeared to be chewing the inside of a cheek and I must admit it cost me dear to stifle my laughter at the sight of our host hopping and skipping like a child in need of his chamber-pot. Perhaps our sight had trumped our other four senses at first, for after a few moments I noted that the perfume exuding from our host was quite unpleasant at close quarters. I exchanged glances with my confederate. Ishmael, about whom I had quite forgotten, chose this moment to enter the parlour,

'Hell, if'n that don't smell worse than the Pequod's bilges!'

Perhaps it did: what was clear was that our host had more than the lingering traces of his horse's ordure about him and that his own diet was surely not all it might have been.

In the interests of politeness toward our host, I gave Ishmael a cuff about the ear, but truly I confess my heart was not in it. In any event, I needed to return my palm to my nose and mouth celeriter, as I was on the point of disgracing myself. Miss Pardoner had turned quite green herself.

I cleared my throat and said at a gallop, without pause for breath,

'Well, Sir, I am - you might say - performing a census not to say an inventory of property portable, vis-a-vis, in particular, slaves in the environs of New Orleans, for and on behalf of the Governor.'

I clasped my palm over my nose and mouth instanter. Miss Pardoner's eyes widened, and she appeared to be in the grip of a choking fit and I guessed she was full of admiration and surprise at my invention. Ishmael, perhaps because of his intimacy with the nether parts of seagoing vessels, was able - without recourse to covering nostrils and mouth - to rush to Miss Pardoner's side in order to aid her recovery.

In the meantime, Garroway had begun to laugh, a high-pitched sound as piercing as something made by some exotic bird. He came to himself betimes, at least sufficiently to cough out,

'Ain't a single slave left here but cain't walk or has a child too small to take with a runaway,
Mistuh.'