The evening was lovely, and the blue waves of the ocean rolled in shining ripples which seemed to flow along with us.
Hislop and I stood on the forecastle leaning over the lee bow, and watching the white foam bubbling under her forefoot, as the sharp cutwater cleft the sea, till the rising spray began to sparkle about the catheads; then the brine-dripping anchors were fished up to the gunwale, and finally hoisted on board.
Fresher came the breeze, and now, as the studding-sail booms were rigged out to port and starboard, the ship flew through an ocean crimsoned by the setting sun, and I heard Hislop, as he sat on the bowsprit, singing in the lightness of his heart,—
Gaily we go o'er the salt blue seas,
And the waves break white before us;
Our canvas aloft swells out in the breeze;
And home points the pennant o'er us.
CHAPTER XLVI.
THE HOMEWARD VOYAGE.
My heart beat happily; I was no longer a lonely maroon, but on the high road to home and Old England.
We had several days of the finest tropical weather, and they passed unmarked by a greater incident than seeing a shoal of dolphins, sparkling as they surged through the brine; the silvery flying-fish leap from one green watery slope to another, while the dark crooked fin of the stealthy shark glided as usual in the trough of the sea between; a piece of weedy drift-wood with Mother Cary's chickens or albatrosses floating near it, or perhaps at the horizon, the topsails of a vessel hull-down, appearing for a time like white or dusky specks, according to the position of the sun.
The captain of the San Ildefonso perceiving that Marc Hislop and I were great friends kindly placed us in the same watch.
As for Antonio the Cubano, we never went near him if we could avoid it. He was placed in the cable tier, and for more complete security, in the bilboes, which are iron shackles that confine the feet. However, we daily heard from the surgeon, and from Fra Anselmo, who was somewhat skilled in surgery, and who undertook his cure bodily and mentally, that the wound under the right armpit had proved slight, though the lung had escaped narrowly, but that the other in the breast had penetrated the fleshy portion of the heart, and was a very dangerous one. The friar added, "that the Cubano was not one of those men who are easily killed, and thus he would recover rapidly."