“I see that craft,” cried Ben; “she’s a fore and after, sails down, and sweeping along the land. She hasn’t got a breath of wind, sir.”
“Very well,” said Mr. Binks, speaking into the tin pot with a sound like a sheet-iron organ; “come down.”
As Ben wriggled himself off the fore-yard and caught hold of the futtock shrouds to swing into the standing rigging, he suddenly paused, and putting the glass again to his eye, he sang out:
“I say, sir! here is a big chap away off on the other quarter, under top-sails. There! Perhaps ye can see him from the deck, about a handspike clear of the sun”––pointing with the spy-glass as he spoke in the proper direction.
“All right!” said the mate, as he began again the cymbal pot and spoon music; “becalmed, ain’t he?”
“Yes, sir; not enough air to raise a hair on my old grandmother’s wig!” muttered Ben, as he slowly trotted down the rigging.
The sun came up glowing like a ball of fire. The land wind died away long before it fluttered far off from the island, and, saving the uneasy clatter at times of the loose sails and running gear, all remained as before. It was getting on toward eight o’clock, and while the cook was dishing the breakfast mess for the crew beneath an awning forward of the quarter-deck, the captain came up from his cabin below. The stalwart old seaman stepped to the bulwarks, and, shading his eyes with his hand from the glare, he took a broad glance over the water to seaward, nodded to the mate, and said, in a cheerful voice,
“Dull times, matey! No signs of a breeze yet, eh?”
“No, captain,” said Mr. Binks; “dead as ditch water; not been enough air to lift a feather since you went below at four o’clock. But we have sagged inshore by the current a few leagues during the night, and here’s old Jamaica plain in sight broad off the bow.”