The weather continued beautifully fine. All that while not a yard or boom brace was touched, and the wind-curved sails never stirred. The barque seemed to revel in the glorious sunlight, and 'reeled off' daily runs that astonished Captain Thorne.
'It's grand, Master Jack,' Readyman exclaimed. 'I thought she did a tidy bit of scooting through Torres Strait. This bout fairly knocks the bottom out of that. I hope she'll keep on as she's going, right up to the Golden Gates.'
'You mean the entrance to San Francisco Bay?'
'Ay, ay, my son. The pigtails keep very quiet, and the interpreter chap seems a decent sort—for a heathen.'
'He can speak tolerable English,' Jack said; 'but no one can learn what he really is.'
'Just their way, lad. You can never find out anything about them. They'll smile and flourish their flippers, and in the end swindle you with some trick kept up their sleeves. All the same, sonny, I suppose we mustn't condemn this lot before getting good cause. Keep your weather eye lifting all the time, lad, and directly anything seems to go amiss with those chaps, tell the skipper.'
Day after day, the barque still sped away on a true course, and as she got well out into deep blue water the sunrises and sunsets became of such indescribable magnificence that even the stolid Chinamen were compelled to notice them.
In the early mornings, long before sunrise, small cloud-balls of the purest white ranged themselves all along the western horizon, each apparently separated by a few inches of the loveliest blue, the azure zenith remaining unsullied by the slightest trace of gathering vapour, and in dazzling splendour the huge golden disc suddenly leaped over the eastern sea-rim.
The sunsets, however, were always the most attractive spectacles. Through a haze of gauze-like evaporation, gorgeous combinations of pale blues, delicate emeralds, pinks, vermilions, and ruddy golds, ocean and firmament became indistinguishable. The entire world seemed enveloped in such a flood of tinted light as neither brush nor pen could hope to portray. The barque and its canvas seemed aflame, while the surging foam beneath the bow decorated itself in tiny rainbows.
Never, surely, had men enjoyed such wonderful sailing, and still the 'Alert' raced along in grand style, until, after a fine run of sixteen days, she had almost reached mid-ocean. The wind gradually died away, and with canvas chafing badly against masts and rigging, she lay wholly becalmed on a sea unruffled by the faintest cat's-paw.