"No, Captain, I was only saying breakfast is ready."
"You're a sly one ... do you like that tune? The Sunshine of Paradise Alley? It's my favorite Yankee hymn."
And it must have been; every morning for eighty-nine days the gaudy music box faithfully played the tune over and over again.
The ship drifted slowly through the Sargasso Sea—that dead, sweltering area of smooth waters and endless leagues of drifting seaweed.... Or we lifted and sank on great, smooth swells ... the last disturbance of a storm far off where there were honest winds that blew.
The prickly heat assailed us ... hundreds of little red, biting pimples on our bodies ... the cook's fresh-baked bread grew fuzz in twenty-four hours after baking ... the forecastle and cabin jangled and snarled irritably, like tortured animals....
It was with a shout, one day, that we welcomed a good wind, and shot clear of this dead sea of vegetable matter.