"'Twas a beautifully fine night, clear aloft, and the moon rising large on our larboard bow, out of a delicate pale sort of haze, as the ship headed south'ard with the breeze; for I marked the haze particularly, as well as the colour of the sky, that lay high over it, like a deep-blue hollow going away down beyond, and filling up with the light. There was no living below for heat, and the showers of cockroaches that went whirring at the lamps, and marching, with their horrid feelers out, straight up your legs; so, fore and aft, the decks were astir with us all. Talk of moonlight on land! but even in the tropics you have to see it pouring right down, as it was then, the whole sky full of it aloft as the moon drew farther up, till it came raining, as it were, in a single sheet from one bend of the horizon to another, the water scarce rippling to the breeze, only heaving in long low swells that you heard just wash her bends; one track brighter than the rest, shining and glancing like a looking-glass drawn out, for a mile or so across our quarter, and the ship's shadow under her other bow. You saw the men far forward in her head, and clustered in a heap on the bowsprit-heel, enjoying it mightily, and looking out or straight aloft, as if to polish their mahogany faces, and get their bushy whiskers silvered; while the awnings being off the poop, the planks in it came out like so much ivory from the shade of the spanker, which sent down a perfect gush of light on everyone moving past. For the air, again, as all the passengers said, it was balmy, though for my part—perhaps it might be a fancy of mine—but now and then I thought it sniffed a little too much that way to be altogether pleasant in the circumstances.
"Of course, no sooner had I caught sight of Sir Charles Hyde than I looked for his daughter, and at last saw someone talking to a young lady seated near the after-gratings, with her head turned round seaward, whom it didn't require much guessing for me to name. Not having seen her at all since the affair of the boats, I strolled aft, when I was rather surprised to find that her companion was Tom Westwood, and they seemed in the thick of an interesting discourse. The instant I got near, however, they broke it off; the young lady turned her head—and never, I'd swear, was woman's face seen fairer than I thought hers at that moment—when the bright moonlight, that had seemed trying to steal round her loose bonnet and peep in, fell straight down at once from her forehead to her chin, appearing, as it were, to dance in under her long eyelashes to meet her eyes: while one fall of her brown hair hung bright in it, glistening against the shadow round her cheek, that drew the charming line of her nose and lip as clear as the horizon on the sky! The very moment, in fact, that a bitter thought flashed into my mind, for to my fancy she looked vexed at seeing me, and a colour seemed mounting up to her cheek, even through the fairy sort of glimmer on it. Could Tom Westwood have been acting no more than the clerical near such a creature? and if a fellow like him took it in his head, what chance had I? The next minute, accordingly, she rose off her seat, and gave me a slight bow in answer to mine, and walked direct to the gallery stair, where she disappeared.
"'We were talking of that unlucky adventure the other day,' said Westwood, glancing at me, but rather taken aback, as I thought. 'Ay?' said I, carelessly. 'Yes,' continued he; 'Miss Hyde had no idea you and I were particularly acquainted, and seems to think me a respectable clergyman, but I must tell you, Ned, she has rather a suspicious opinion of yourself!' 'Oh, indeed!' said I, suddenly. 'Fact, Ned,' said he; 'she even remembers having seen you before, somewhere or other—I hope, my dear fellow, it wasn't on the stage?' 'Ha! ha! how amusing!' I said, with the best laugh I could get up. 'At any rate, Collins,' he went on, 'she sees through your feigned way of carrying on, and knows you're neither griffin nor land-lubber, but a sailor, for I fancy this is not the first time the young lady has met with the cloth! What do you suppose she asked me now, quite seriously?' 'Oh, I couldn't guess, of course,' replied I, almost with a sneer; 'pray don't——' 'Why, she inquired what could be the design of one concealing his profession so carefully—and actually appearing to be on a secret understanding with some of the sailors! Directly after, she asked whether that brig mightn't really have been a pirate, and taken off the poor general, Miss Fortescue, and the rest?' 'Ah,' said I, coldly, 'and if I might venture to ask, what did you——' 'Oh, of course,' replied Westwood, laughing, 'I could only hide my amusement and profess doubts, you know, Ned!' 'Very good joke, Mr Westwood,' thought I to myself, 'but at least you can't weather on me quite so innocently, my fine fellow! I didn't think it of him, after all! By Heaven, I did not!'
"'By-the-by, Collins,' exclaimed Westwood in a little, as he kept his eye astern, 'there's something away yonder on our lee quarter that I've been watching for these last ten minutes—what do you think it may be? Look! just in the tail of the moonshine yonder!' What it might be, I cared little enough at the time, but I did give a glance, and saw a little black dot, as it were, rising and falling with the long run of the water, apparently making way before the breeze. 'Only a bit of wood, I daresay,' remarked I; 'but whatever it is, at any rate, the drift will take it far to leeward of us, so you needn't mind.' Here we heard a steward come up and say to the first officer, who was waiting with the rest to take a lunar observation, that Captain Williamson had turned in unwell, but he wanted to hear when they found the longitude; accordingly they got their altitude, and went on making the calculations on deck. 'Well, steward,' said the mate, after a little humming and hawing, 'go down and tell the captain, in the meantime, about five east; but I think it's a good deal over the mark—say I'll be down myself directly.'
"'A long sight below the mark, rather!' said I, walking aft again, where Westwood kept still looking out for the black dot. 'You'll see it nearer now, Ned,' said he; 'more like a negro's head, or his hand, than a bit of wood—eh?' 'Curious!' I said; 'it lies well up for our beam still, 'spite of the breeze. Must be a shark's back fin, I think, making for convoy.' In ten minutes longer the light swell in the distance gave it a lift up fair into the moonshine; it gleamed for a moment, and then seemed to roll across into the blue glimmer of the sea. 'I say, Collins,' said Westwood, gazing eagerly at it, ''tis more like a bottle, to my sight!' We walked back and forward, looking each time over the taffrail, till at length the affair in question could be seen dipping and creeping ahead in the smooth shining wash of the surface, just like to go bobbing across our bows and be missed to windward. 'Crossing our hause I do declare!—Hanged if that ain't fore-reaching on us, with a witness!' exclaimed the two of us together: 'And a bottle it is!' said Westwood.
"I slipped down the poop-stair, and along to the forecastle, where I told Jacobs; when two or three of the men went out on the martingale-stays, with the bight of a line and a couple of blocks in it, ready to throw round this said floating oddity, and haul it alongside as it surged past. Shortly after, we had it safe in our hands; a square-built old Dutchman it was, tight corked, with a red rag round the neck, and crusted over with salt—almost like one of Vanderdecken's messages home, coming up as it did from the wide glittering sea, of a tropical moonlight night, seven weeks or so after our leaving land. The men who had got it seemed afraid of their prize, so Westwood and I had no difficulty in smuggling it away below to our berth, where we both sat down on a locker and looked at one another. 'What poor wretch hove this overboard, I wonder, now?' said he; 'I daresay it may have knocked about, God knows how long, since his affair was settled.' 'Why, for that matter, Westwood,' replied I, 'I fancy it's much more important to find there's a strong easterly current hereabouts just now.' [20]
"Here Westwood got a corkscrew, and pulled out the cork with a true parson-like gravity; as we had expected, there was a paper tacked to it, crumpled up, and scrawled over in what we could only suppose was blood.
"'No. 20,' read he, 'what does that mean?' 'The twentieth bottle launched, perhaps,' said I, and he went on—'For God's sake, if you find this, keep to the south-west—we are going that way, we think—we've fallen amongst regular Thugs, I fear—just from the folly of these three griffins—(they're looking over my shoulder, though)—we are not ill-treated yet, but kept below and watched—yours in haste——' 'What this signature is I can't say for the life of me, Ned; no date either.' 'Did the fellow think he was writing by post, I wonder?' said I, trying to make it out. 'By the powers, Westwood, though,' and I jumped up, 'that bottle might have come from the Pacific, 'tis true—but what if it were old Rollock, after all! Thugs, did you say? Why, I shouldn't wonder if the jolly old planter were on the hooks still. That rascally brig!' And accordingly, on trying the scrawl at the end, over and over, we both agreed that it was nothing but 'T. Rollock.'"