"It’s an old habit of mine, Wal’r," said the Captain, "any time these fifty year. When you see Ned Cuttle bite his nails, Wal’r, then you may know that Ned Cuttle’s aground."
Thereupon the Captain put his iron hook between his teeth, as if it were a hand; and with an air of wisdom and profundity that was the very concentration and sublimation of all philosophical reflection and grave inquiry, applied himself to the consideration of the subject in its various branches.
"There’s a friend of mine," murmured the Captain, in an absent manner, "but he’s at present coasting round to Whitby, that would deliver such an opinion on this subject, or any other that could be named, as would give Parliament six and beat 'em. Been knocked overboard, that man," said the Captain, "twice, and none the worse for it. Was beat in his apprenticeship, for three weeks (off and on), about the head with a ringbolt. And yet a clearer-minded man don’t walk."
In spite of his respect for Captain Cuttle, Walter could not help inwardly rejoicing at the absence of this sage, and devoutly hoping that his limpid intellect might not be brought to bear on his difficulties until they were quite settled.
"If you was to take and show that man the buoy at the Nore," said Captain Cuttle in the same tone, "and ask him his opinion of it, Wal’r, he’d give you an opinion that was no more like that buoy than your Uncle’s buttons are. There ain’t a man that walks—certainly not on two legs—that can come near him. Not near him!"
"What’s his name, Captain Cuttle?" inquired Walter, determined to be interested in the Captain’s friend.
"His name’s Bunsby," said the Captain. "But Lord, it might be anything for the matter of that, with such a mind as his!"
The exact idea which the Captain attached to this concluding piece of praise, he did not further elucidate; neither did Walter seek to draw it forth. For on his beginning to review, with the vivacity natural to himself and to his situation, the leading points in his own affairs, he soon discovered that the Captain had relapsed into his former profound state of mind; and that while he eyed him stedfastly from beneath his bushy eyebrows, he evidently neither saw nor heard him, but remained immersed in cogitation.
In fact, Captain Cuttle was labouring with such great designs, that far from being aground, he soon got off into the deepest of water, and could find no bottom to his penetration. By degrees it became perfectly plain to the Captain that there was some mistake here; that it was undoubtedly much more likely to be Walter’s mistake than his; that if there were really any West India scheme afoot, it was a very different one from what Walter, who was young and rash, supposed; and could only be some new device for making his fortune with unusual celerity. "Or if there should be any little hitch between 'em," thought the Captain, meaning between Walter and Mr. Dombey, "it only wants a word in season from a friend of both parties, to set it right and smooth, and make all taut again." Captain Cuttle’s deduction from these considerations was, that as he already enjoyed the pleasure of knowing Mr. Dombey, from having spent a very agreeable half-hour in his company at Brighton (on the morning when they borrowed the money); and that, as
