"Well, Master O'Brien, wait a bit, we're not through our voyage yet," said Jenny, oracularly.
"The Ides of March are not gone, she would say," said Hugh.
"I didn't mean to say no such thing, Master Hugh," replied she; "you're so sharp with one. I'm not so daft, but I know March is gone, and May-day ought to be at hand; not that we can see any signs of it, neither leaves nor flowers here, and I cannot see days get any longer. How is it, Master Arthur? Is it because we're atop of the water?"
Arthur endeavored to make Jenny comprehend the natural consequences of their position, now within the tropics, and daily drawing nearer to the equator; but he only succeeded in agitating the mind of the old woman, without enlightening her.
"God help us!" she exclaimed. "Nigher and nigher to the sun! It's downright temptation and wickedness, my dears; and my thought is, one ought to stay where it has pleased Him to plant us. And think ye, Master Arthur, we shall all turn black, like them niggers we saw in London streets."
"No; certainly not, nurse," answered Arthur. "It requires hundreds of years, under a tropical sun, to change the color of Europeans. Besides, the negroes, although we are all children of Adam, are of a distinct race from us. We are certainly not, like the thick-lipped negroes, the descendants of Ham."
"Likely he had been the plainest of Noah's family," said Jenny, "for beauty runs in the blood, that I'll stand to," continued the attached nurse, looking round with complacency on her handsome young nurslings.
To the young voyagers there was an indescribable charm in the novelties which the sea and the air offered to them in the tropical region they had now entered. Now for the first time they beheld the flying-fish rise sparkling from the waves, to descend as quickly; escaping for a short time from its enemies in the waves to expose itself to the voracious tribes of the air, who are ready to dart upon it. And sometimes the elegant little Stormy Petrel, with its slender long legs, seemed to walk the waters, like the fervent St. Peter, from whom it derives its name.
"But is not this bird believed to be the harbinger of storms?" asked Margaret of her father, as he watched with delight the graceful creature he had so often desired to behold.
"Such is the belief of the sailors," answered he, "who have added the ill-omened epithet to its name. It is true that the approach, or the presence, of a gale, has no terror to this intrepid bird, the smallest of the web-footed tribe. It ascends the mountainous wave, and skims along the deep hollows, treading the water, supported by its expanded wings, in search of the food which the troubled sea casts on the surface: