“Ay, ay, sir—it's that which puzzles me; I think I see one light-house, and I'm not certain but I see two.”
“If there is anything like a second, it must be a sail. Montauk has but one light.”
Mulford sprang into the fore-rigging, and in a minute was on the yard. He soon came down, and reported the lighthouse in sight, with the afternoon's sun shining on it, but no sail near.
“My poor, dear Mr. Budd used to tell a story of his being cast away on a light-house, in the East Indies,” put in the relict, as soon as the mate had ended his report, “which always affected me. It seems there were three ships of them together, in an awful tempest directly off the land—”
“That was comfortable, any how,” cried Spike;—“if it must blow hard, let it come off the land, say I.”
“Yes, sir, it was directly off the land, as my poor husband always said, which made it so much the worse you must know, Rosy; though Captain Spike's gallant spirit would rather encounter danger than not. It blew what they call a Hyson, in the Chinese seas—”
“A what, aunty?—Hyson is the name of a tea, you know.”
“A Hyson, I'm pretty sure it was; and I suppose the wind is named after the tea, or the tea after the wind.”
“The ladies do get in a gale, sometimes, over their tea,” said Spike gallantly. “But I rather think Madam Budd must mean a Typhoon.”
“That's it—a Typhoon, or a Hyson—there is not much difference between them, you see. Well, it blew a Typhoon, and they are always mortal to somebody. This my poor Mr. Budd well knew, and he had set his chronometer for that Typhoon—”