In this quiet, methodical way life went on with the occupants of the saloon for some time; but at length ambition entered into and seized upon the imagination of Miss Stanhope, and she determined to learn to steer. Hour after hour had she watched the helmsmen standing in more or less graceful attitudes at the wheel, with their sinewy hands upon the spokes, now drawing them gently toward them a few inches only to push them as far away again a minute or two later. It looked ridiculously easy; yet there was grandeur in the thought that, by these simple, effortless movements, the destiny of the ship and all within her was to a large extent controlled. There was something almost sublime, to her imagination, in the ability to “guide the furrowing keel on its way along the trackless deep,” as she expressed it to herself; and she determined she would learn how to do it.
At length, making her way up on the poop one glorious evening after dinner—the ship being at the time about in the latitude of Madeira, and close-hauled on the starboard tack, with a nice little eight-knot breeze blowing, and everything set that would draw, from the skysail down, and with the water as smooth as it ever is under such circumstances—she descried Ned standing aft at the wheel, with his left arm resting on its rim, his right hand lightly grasping a spoke at arm’s-length, and his eye on the weather leach of the main-skysail, as he softly hummed to himself the air of a song she had sung a night or two before; and the young lady at once arrived at the conclusion that this afforded an excellent opportunity for her to take her first lesson. So she walked aft, and opened the negotiations by saying:
“Good evening, Ned.” (Everybody on board, fore and aft, called the lad Ned; so she naturally did the same.)
“Good evening, Miss Stanhope,” replied Ned, straightening himself up and doffing his cap with a sweep which would not have disgraced a—a—well, let us say, a Frenchman; “what splendid weather we are having! Here is another glorious evening, with every prospect of the breeze lasting, and perhaps freshening a bit when the sun goes down. If it only holds for forty-eight hours longer I hope it will run us fairly into the trades.”
“I hope it will, I am sure,” said Miss Stanhope, “if ‘running fairly into the trades’ is going to do us any good. I presume you are referring to the trade winds, about which Captain Blyth has been talking during dinner.”
“Precisely,” acknowledged Ned.
“Could you not tie that wheel, and sit down comfortably, instead of standing there holding it as you are doing?” inquired Sibylla, by way of leading up gradually to the proposal she intended to make.
Ned laughed. “It looks as though one might as well do so,” he said. “But you’ve no idea how capricious a ship is. I’ve not moved the wheel for the last ten minutes, and look how straight our wake is. Yet, if I were to lash this wheel exactly as it is now, it would not be half a minute before the ship would be shooting up into the wind.”
“How very curious!” remarked Sibylla. “And yet, so long as you hold the wheel the ship goes perfectly straight. How do you account for that?”
“I watch her,” answered Ned, “and the moment I detect a disposition to deviate from the right course I check her with a movement of the wheel. The slightest touch is sufficient in such fine weather as we are having at present.”