So day after day passed wearily on, and you could not have told one day from the other. But when, at six o’clock, the sun hurriedly capped the great heaving waves with crimson, leaving the hollows in deepest purple shade, and soon after sank, then, in the gloaming that for a brief spell hung over the ocean, the stars came out; and very brightly did they shine, so that night was even more pleasant than day.
Banks of clouds sometimes lay along the horizon. By day they appeared like far-off, snow-capped, serrated mountains; at night they were dark, but lit up every few moments by flashes of lightning, which spread out behind them and revealed their form and shape.
No thunder ever followed this lightning; it brought no wind; nor did the clouds ever rise or bring a drop of rain.
Phantom lightning; phantom clouds!
There were times on nights like these when Ransey took his sister on deck to look at the sky, and wonder at the lightning and that strange mountain-range of clouds.
She was not afraid when Ransey was with her. But she would not have gone “upstairs,” as she called it, with even the stewardess herself.
Ransey, I may mention, lived in the saloon with his father and the captain, the second and third mates having comfortable quarters in the midship decks.
A stewardess only was carried on the Sea Flower, and she acted in another capacity—that of maid to Nelda. A black girl she was, but clean, smart, and tidy and trim, full of merriment and good-nature. Her assistant was Fitz, and with him alone she deemed it her duty to be a little harsh now and then. Because Fitz wouldn’t keep his place, so she said.
Poor Janeira, she always forgot she was a nigger herself, seeing so many white faces all around her. But when she looked into the little mirror that hung in her pantry, she used to go into fits of laughter at her face therein displayed. She was a funny girl.
Ransey used to take Nelda up on these nights, and hoist her on to the grating abaft the quarterdeck, and she would cling to his arm, while he held on to the bulwark.