[CHAPTER III]
FIRE AT SEA
After this painful episode was over, amidst a succession of calms, varied by light south-west breezes, changing gradually more and more to the east, the Pelican of the North crossed the line, and proceeded upon her way in pleasant weather.
Ralph would have enjoyed this time much but for the pest of cockroaches which now swarmed over them and their belongings. These disgusting insects were of two sorts, one of which had always been troublesome from the first, but were now supplemented by a second, not seen much except by night, but which crawled about then in such immense numbers, through the hours of darkness, as to do great damage. They ran over the cabin floors, up the walls, were shaken out in showers from the rigging when a sail was unfurled; they honeycombed the biscuit, they were found in the boots and shoes, and made life a burden to young Denham, who entertained a particular aversion to creeping insects.
"How I wish we could find anything which would rid us of these beastly things?" sighed he one day to Mr. Gilchrist, when the vermin had been seized with a literary fureur, and eaten out the ink from some notes which he had been at considerable pains to compile from a book of natural history. "Last night I thought we must have some spiritualist on board, or ghosts, or something uncanny. I was wakened up by the noise as if everything in the cabin had taken to dancing about in a frolic, till I discovered it was nothing but thousands of these horrid creatures crawling and rustling about. Some nights I verily believe that they will eat us up bodily."
Mr. Gilchrist laughed.
"Never mind," said he, "we shall be in cooler latitudes soon, and they will become more torpid, and go back to their holes again. We are nearing the Cape."
"Shall we touch at the Cape? Shall we see the Table Mountain, sir, do you think?"
"I rather fancy not. From what the captain said the other day, I believe that there are currents there which are apt to be trying to a heavily-laden ship such as ours. Squalls are very prevalent in rounding the Cape, and I think he will give it a wide berth. We do not need water, nor have we any particular reason for delaying the voyage by putting in at Cape Town."
"We must be near land, I should think, for there are so many birds about now. Some of them are birds that I never saw before."