An Ocean Waif.
“Wa-al, Cap,” said Mr Lathrope after dinner that day, when he was sipping his coffee on top of the skylight, which he had selected for his favourite seat when on the poop, the “location,” as he expressed it, having the advantage of possessing plenty of “stowage room” for his long legs—“I guess we’ve had a long spell o’ calms, and a tarnation slitheration of a del-uge, ’sides being now a’most chawed up by a fire; so I kalkerlate its ’bout time we hed sunthen’ of a breeze. Thunder, mister, it’s kinder gettin’ played out, I reckon, knocking about in these air latitoods, without nary going ahead even once in a blue moon!”
“Oh, the wind isn’t far off now,” replied Captain Dinks, “you see those porpoises there, passing us now and playing astern? Well, they are a certain sign of a breeze soon coming from the quarter towards which they’re swimming.”
“Wa-al, I dew hope so,” drawled the American, with a sigh and a yawn of weariness, “guess I shall snooze till it comes;” and he proceeded to carry his thought into execution.
Captain Dinks turned out a true prophet.
A little later on in the day a breeze sprang up, that subsequently developed into the long-wished-for south-east trade-wind, thus enabling the good ship to bid adieu to the Doldrums and cross the equator, which feat she accomplished two days after the fire.
From the line—which Master Negus was able to see distinctly with the aid of one of Mr McCarthy’s fine red hairs neatly adjusted across the object-glass of his telescope—the ship had a splendid run over to the South American coast, following the usual western course adopted by vessels going round the Cape of Good Hope, in order to have the advantage afterwards of the westerly winds and get well to the south; and, when she had reached the thirty-fourth parallel of longitude and latitude 18 degrees 22 minutes south—that is, about midway between Bahia and Rio Janeiro, her head was turned to the south-east with light winds from the northward and eastward, and she began to make way towards the “Cape of Storms,” after getting to the southward of which she would have a straight run due east to New Zealand.
The Nancy Bell’s bows, however, were not long pointed in the direction of the rising sun, when another incident occurred to vary the monotony of the voyage—although, fortunately, this time not a second fire, nor any peril from the sea to those on board.
It was the second day of her south-easterly course; and from the wind blowing fresh from the north-east, right on her port quarter, with fine bright weather, the ship was running pretty free, all sail being set, at the rate of over twelve knots an hour, leaving a wake behind her like a mill-race.
“Arrah, sure, and I call, that goin’!” exclaimed the first mate exultantly, as he walked up and down the poop quickly—just as if his doing so helped the vessel along, in the same way as one sees the coxswain of a boat bending backwards and forwards to keep time with the rowers!