"Somehow or other the ship kept sheering round, by little and little, till, although one had chosen a shady spot, all of a sudden the blazing sun came right into his eyes; or the single streak of white cloud lying behind you, to starboard, a while after stuck itself before your face from the very opposite quarter—you fancying, too, you had your eye the whole time on the same bit of water. Being lost in a wood or a fog was nothing to it, especially with the sun at noon drawn up right overhead, so that you couldn't look aloft, and staring down into the sea out of a pool of bright light; 'like one tremendously keen little eye,' as some of the passengers said, 'examining a big blind one.' 'Why,' put in one of the writers, 'I fear he wants to take the mote out of his brother's eye—this vessel, that is to say!' 'Hang it, I hope not!' said Winterton, rather alarmed. 'He promises well to do it, then,' said another young civilian, 'but I wish he'd take the beam out of his own first, ha, Smythe?' However, few men have the spirit to laugh at little in a calm near the Line, so Smythe gave no more than a sickly grin, while Westwood looked the clergyman very properly.
"Both passengers and crew, all of us that could swim, gave wistful looks now and then alongside at the water, hot as it seemed, for a bathe; just floating up, as it were, with the mere huge size of it, under a dazzle of light, and so blue and smooth you couldn't see a hair's-breadth below; while, a bit off, the face of it and the very air appeared to dance and quiver like little streams of glass. However, all thoughts of bathing were put out of your head when you saw the black three-cornered affair, with a rake aft, somewhat like the end of a scythe, that went steering slowly round us; then cruising hither and thither, till its infernal horn was as dry as the deck; and at times driving straight off, as if it ran in a groove through the level surface; when back again it came from the other side, creeping lazily towards us, till it sank with a light tip, and a circle or two on the blue water. The hook and chain were hanging up and down over the taffrail, with the piece of rank pork looking green in the shadow near the rudder, where you read the white figures of her draught as plain as in dock; but the shark, a fifteen-feet customer, if he was an inch, was too knowing to have touched it.
"'Pity he's gone, Collins,' said Ford to me, after we had watched him at last out of sight; 'wasn't there any plan of catching him, I wonder! Now we shall have a bathe though, at any rate.' 'Gone?' said I, 'he won't leave us in a hurry, if we don't leave him!' 'Poh, man!' said Ford, 'I tell you he's tired out and gone away!' Five minutes after Ford was leaning over the quarter and wiping his face, while he fanned himself with his straw hat, which fell out of his hand into the water. He had got over into the mizzen-chains to throw a line round it, when he gave a loud shriek, and jumped in-board again. Two or three fathoms of green came up from the keel, balancing on a pair of broad fins under Ford's hat, and a big round snout touched it; then a dozen feet of white belly gleamed in the water, the hat gave a gulp as it was drawn down, and a few small air-bells rose to the top. 'He prefers some flavours to others, you see, Ford,' said I. ''Tis the second hat I've seen you lose: I hope your head won't be in the third; but you mariners, you see——' However, Ford had bolted to his cabin.
"On turning round I perceived Miss Hyde, with the general's lady, under the awning on the other side, where the old lady leant against a cushion, with her hands crossed and her bonnet strings loose—though a strapping raw-boned Irishwoman she was—and kept Miss Hyde's maid fanning her from behind with a large feather punkah. The old lady had started at Ford's cry, and gave a look round at me, half fierce and half orderly, as if she expected to know what was the matter at once. 'Only my friend lost his hat, ma'am,' said I, stepping forward. 'These cadets are so 'tagious, my dear!' said she to the young lady, falling back again without the least more notice of me. 'They plague the life of me, but the brigadier can't drill them as he would if this were a troopship—I wish he could, for the sake of the profession!—now, my dear, you kape out of the s-hun!' However, I stuck where I was, fancying I caught the slightest bit of an arch twinkle in the corner of the young lady's eye, though she didn't look at me. 'Keep going, can't ye!' said the old lady crossly to the maid. 'No, ma'am, indeed!' said the girl, glancing over to her young mistress, 'I'm ready to drop!' 'Send up papa's kitmagar, then, Wilkins,' said Miss Hyde; and the girl went off toward the gallery stair, muttering she 'hoped she didn't come—here to be—made a black Indian slave of—at least to a old'—the remainder being lost in the stair.
"As I leant on the rail-netting, behind the old lady, I happened to tread on her fat pug-dog's tail, whereupon the ugly brute made its teeth meet, without further notice, in the small of my leg, after which it gave a yelp, and ran beneath the chairs. 'What's that, Die?' exclaimed its mistress; 'good hivens! is that same griffin here yet, my dear! Hadn't he ayven the spirit to take a hint?—I say, was it you hurt Dianny, young man?' 'Oh dear no, ma'am, not for the world!' said I, looking at my trousers, hard as the thing was to stand, but thinking to smooth her over, though I wasn't quite up to the old Irishwoman it turned out. 'Ha! ha! so she bit you?' said she, with a flash of her hawk's eye, and leaning back again coolly. 'If he'd only kicked poor Die for it under my chair now, I'd have forgiven him; but he hadn't ayven the heart at the time to drop her a curse—and I thinking all the while, too, by the luke of his eye he was from the County Clare! My heart warms to the County Clare always, because, although I'm not Irish myself, you know, I'd once a schoolfellow was born in it—without counting all my relations! Oh, the smooth spalpeen!' continued she, harder than before, glancing at me as I looked all abroad from one to the other; 'listen, niver you let that fellow spake to you, my dear! he's too——' But here I walked quietly off to put the poop's length betwixt me and the talking old vixen, cursing her and her dog both, quite enough to have pleased her Irish fancy.
"On the quarter-deck, the judge and the general seemed really to enjoy the heat and quiet, sitting with their feet up before the round-house, and smoking their long red twisted hookahs, while they watched the wreaths of smoke go whirling straight up from the bowls to the awning, and listened to the faint bubble of it through the water in the bottles, just dropping a word now and then to each other. A tall, thin 'native' servant with long sooty hair hanging from his snow-white turban, stood behind the judge's chair, bolt upright, with his arms folded, and twice as solemn as Sir Charles himself; you saw a stern-window shining far abaft, through one of the round-house doors, and the fat old fellow of a consumah [15] busy laying the cloth for tiffin, while the sole breath of air there was came out of thereaway.
"Suddenly eight bells struck, and everyone seemed glad of something new; the judge's consumah came out salaaming to say tiffin was ready; the cuddy passengers went below for wine-and-water and biscuit; and the men were at dinner. There being nothing to take care of on deck, and the heat of course getting greater, not a soul stayed up but myself; but I preferred at the moment lighting a cheroot, and going up aft to see clear of the awnings. The cockatoo had been left on the poop-rail, with its silver chain hitched round one of the mizzen back-stays, where it shifted from one leg to the other, hooked itself up the back-stay as far as it could go, then hurried down again, and mused a bit, as wise as Solomon—then screamed out at the top of its voice—'Tip—tip—pr-r-retty cacka—tippoo— cok-ka—whee-yew-ew-ew!' finishing by a whistle of triumph fit to have split one's ears, or brought a gale of wind—though not on account of skill in its books, at any rate. Again it took to swinging quietly head-down, at furious rate, and then slewed upright to plume its feathers, and shake the pink tuft on its head.
"No sooner had I got up the stair, however, than, to my perfect delight, I saw Violet Hyde was still sitting aft, and the old Irishwoman gone; so I stepped to the taffrail at once, and, for something to be about, I hauled up the shark-hook from astern. The moment I caught her eye, the young lady smiled—by way of making up, no doubt, for the old one. 'How very solitary it is!' said she, rising and looking out; 'the ship almost seems deserted, except by us!' 'By Jove! I almost wish it were,' thought I. 'A dead calm, madam,' I said, 'and likely to hold—the under-swell's gone quite down, and a haze growing.' 'Are we sure ever to leave this spot then?' asked she, with a slight look of anxiety. 'Never fear it, ma'am,' said I; 'as soon as the haze melts again, we're near a breeze, I assure you—only, by the length of the calm and the heat together, not to speak of our being so far to east'ard, I'm afraid we mayn't get rid of it without a gale at the end to match.' 'Indeed?' said Miss Hyde.
"The fact was, Westwood and I had been keeping a log, and calculated just now we were somewhere to south-eastward of Ascension; whereas, by the captain and mate's reckoning she was much farther to west.
"'I never thought the sea could appear so dreadful,' said she, as if to herself—'much more than in a storm.' 'Why, madam,' said I, 'you haven't exactly seen one this voyage—one needs to be close-hauled off the Cape for that.'