"NOW, aunty, tell us about your homeward voyage," said Willie as I made my appearance in the sitting-room at the usual time. So I began:—
Our voyage was a tedious one, for we had a succession of calms all the way. It was very discouraging, for we would be sailing with a good breeze, our sails all filled; then the wind would die away, and the sails would flap lazily against the mast.
Our captain was patient and good-natured, and so were we. That shows you the power of example. If the captain had fumed and fretted, and wondered why we could not have a wind, very likely we should have felt ill-natured and looked cross too, and have had a very unpleasant time. As it was, we made the best of our calms, and hoped for a breeze, and rejoiced even if we were "making haste slowly."
On the ninth day out, we had some variety, for a shoal of fish passed us, called albacoa; we caught a fine large one. A ship hove in sight, too, and we thought she had just the name for our calm sailing, the "All-Serene." She was an English ship, from Sydney, Australia, and had been sixty days out. She wanted fresh provisions and flour; so our captain gave her potatoes, bananas, and turkeys. Being so much becalmed ourselves, our captain did not dare to give them flour, as we might come short, and they had plenty of hard bread. It quite revived our courage, for what were our nine days compared with their sixty days? And we had plenty of provisions and good company.
We saw a great many flying-fish every day. These are small, and have their forward fins so long that they serve them as wings skimming along on the surface of the water. They looked very silvery in the sunlight, and I thought at first they were little white birds.
Several times we saw porpoises, and one day a shoal of whales was in sight. One big black fellow leaped out of the water; we first saw his great head, then his fluked tail thrown up in the air, as he dived down to depths beneath. Some of them were spouting and playing about us, and one had a young whale with her.
A large shoal of "skip jacks" surrounded the ship one morning; there must have been thousands of them!
"What are skip jacks?" asked Willie.
A pretty blue fish between one and two feet long; they were mostly blue, but seemed to change to all colors of the rainbow. The men fished for them with a hook covered with a rag, which the fish were supposed to imagine a flying-fish, and ten of them were silly enough to be deceived; so we had a chowder of fresh fish.
The captain had the galley or cook-room cleared up for us one afternoon, and we boiled sugar for candy. He did everything possible for our comfort, and often sent in a dish of hot roasted peanuts for us. These peanuts grew on the Sandwich Islands. We saw the plant, the leaf of which is very much like a clover-leaf, and the nut grows underground on the roots like artichokes. Kind island friends had given us a large supply of bananas and pine-apples; so we had quite a variety on our bill of fare.