It seemed like paradise to me, sailing on and on before the genial western wind over the wide blue sea, with an azure sky above unflecked by a cloud in the daytime and studded with a glorious galaxy of stars at night that made the heavens look like a casket of jewels.
Before long, I became quite a sailor too, being able to make my way aloft to the cross-trees without help, and I was learning by familiarity every rope whose name Moggridge had before taught me; for, when the captain saw that I was careful through his repeated cautions, and also had Jackson to look after me, he withdrew the embargo he had placed on my mounting the rigging. Indeed, he was kind enough to let me do duty as an “extra hand,” as I loved to consider myself, in Mr Marline’s watch, or when he himself was on deck.
Another great delight I had consisted in going out on the bowsprit and fishing for bonitoes and dolphins with a bit of red or white cloth tied to a hook, in the same way as one goes “reeling” for mackerel in the Channel; and many a savoury supper, cooked surreptitiously by Jake in his friend the cook’s caboose, had I on the sly at night in the fo’c’s’le, when Captain Miles thought I had turned in and was snug asleep in my bunk!
Day after day passed alike, with the exception, of course, of Sundays, when the captain read prayers on the poop to the hands clustered round, all dressed out in their best shore clothes, and with the decks especially holystoned in honour of the day—the ship the while making some couple of hundred miles every twenty-four hours on her onward way, while scarcely shifting a sail or altering a brace from week’s end to week’s end.
It was getting on towards the end of August, the wind having continued fair from about the middle of the month and the weather being all that could be desired; when, one morning, that of our fifteenth day out from Grenada, I recollect, I noticed that Captain Miles looked rather anxious after coming on deck, shortly before our breakfast hour, “eight bells,” according to his usual custom when everything was going on all right.
He first glanced aloft, sailor-like, to see that everything was correct with the rigging and the sails all drawing, and then he cast an eye forward, noting the orderly arrangements there; finally, walking across to the binnacle in order to observe what course the ship was steering, and asking Mr Marline, who had charge of the morning watch, how she was going.
“Eight knots good, sir, last heave of the log,” promptly said the mate.
“That’s all right,” observed the captain; “but, I don’t like the look ahead. It seems to me as if there’s going to be a change.”
“Indeed?” replied Mr Marline; “I haven’t noticed anything at all unusual. The wind has kept steady from the westwards ever since I came on the poop at four bells, the same as we left it overnight.”
“But, the glass is going down, Marline,” rejoined Captain Miles; “and don’t you notice the sea is getting a bit cross off our port bow? It strikes me we’ll have a shift of wind presently from the eastwards, if nothing more. However, we oughtn’t to grumble, for ten days of such fine weather is rather unusual in these latitudes, you know, at this time of year.”