"Ay, ay, sir."
Lanyard then turned to mine host, and followed him towards the round-house, which was built on deck, with a gangway all round it, along which the tiller ropes led; the wheel being situated under the small projecting canopy facing the quarterdeck.
All had been dark when we came on deck—the only light being the one in the binnacle, but now the round-house was very handsomely lit up by two lamps hung from the roof, which shone brilliantly through the open door and the two windows that looked towards the quarterdeck. The wheel, with the sailor who was steering standing by it, was right in the wake of the stream of light from the door. It was striking to see his athletic figure, leaning on the rim of the wheel, his right hand grasping one of the lower spokes, while the left clutched the uppermost, on which his cheek rested; the jerk of the rudder in the calm twitching his head first on this side, then on t'other.
But the scene within—I shall never forget it. The round-house was a room, as near as might be, sixteen feet long, and about fourteen feet broad at the end next the quarterdeck, narrowing to ten feet wide at the aftermost part. On each side there were two sofas, and between each of the sofas two doors, that appeared to open into state-rooms;—two shorter sofas ran across the afterpart, fronting you as you entered; and placed between these two aftermost sofas, there was a neat brass cabin grate, now tastefully filled with a bouquet of artificial flowers. In the centre of the cabin there was a long table, on which stood a tea equipage, the grateful vapour whirling up from a massive tea-pot.
A venerable-looking old man, dressed in a large grey frieze night-gown, with a large velvet cap on his head, from beneath which long white locks escaped and spread over his shoulders, sat directly fronting the door on one of the sofas that ran athwart ships.
He had been reading apparently in a large Bible, that now lay closed before him, with one of his elbows resting on it, and on which his spectacles lay. I had never seen a more benign eye, and his serene high features, whose healthy hue betokened a green old age, were lit up into the most bland and beneficent expression, as with lips apart, disclosing a regular set of teeth, he smiled on a darling little half-naked cherub of a child about two years and a half old, that sat on the table beside him, playing with his white hairs.
He was a lovely little chubby fellow; a most beautiful fair-skinned and fair-haired boy, with no clothing on but a short cambric shift, bound at the waist with a small pink silk handkerchief. His round fat little arms, and little stumpy legs, were entirely naked; even shoes he had none, and in his tumblifications he seemed utterly to have forgotten that he had no drawers on. But the glorious little fellow's head!—his glossy short curling fair hair, that frizzled out all round his head as if it had been a golden halo floating over his sunny features—his noble, wide spreading forehead—his dark blue laughing eyes—his red ripe cheeks, and beautiful mouth, with the glancing ivory within!—Oh, I should weary all hands were I to dilate on the darling little fellow's appearance; for, next to a horse or a Newfoundland dog, I dote on a beautiful child. "Shall I ever have such a magnificent little chap?" burst from my lips against my will. "I hope you may, sir," said a calm, low-pitched female voice, close to me.
The soft musical sounds startled me more, under the circumstances, than a trumpet note would have done. I turned to the quarter from whence they proceeded, and saw two young women seated on one of the sofas at the side. The eldest might have been about five-and-twenty; she was very fair—I ought rather to write pale, all mouth and eyes as it were—I mean no disparagement, because the features were good, but only to convey the impression of them on my mind at the time. Her skin seemed so transparent, that the blue veins were traceable in all directions over her bosom and neck and forehead; while her nose was a little—not red—but fresh looking, as if she had been weeping, which she had not been. A fine mouth, forehead, and strong well-defined dark eyebrows, over-arching such eyes!—black, jet black, and flashing through their long dark fringes.
Oh, what a redeeming virtue there is in a large swimming dark eye—black, if you please, for choice—hazle, if black cannot be had, for effect; but for love! heavens, and all the heathen gods and goddesses, give me the deep deep ethereal blue—such blue, so darkly pure, as you might cut out of the noon-day sky within the tropics, about a pistol-shot from the gaudy sun, which must be at the moment eclipsed by a stray cloud, had up from the depths of old ocean expressly for the nonce. One can look into the very soul of such a woman with such an eye;—ay, and tell whether or no your own beautiful miniature be painted on the retina of her heart—that's a bull, I conceive, but my mother's Kilkenny blood will peep forth in despite, now and then; but your dark fine-flashing black sparklers—oh, Diable! they look into you, my fine fellow, instead of your spying into them, which is sometimes mighty inconvenient; and then the humbug of the "eye of the gazelle!" His lordship's gazelle blinker, so soft and yielding, and all the rest of it!—poo, I would rather that my wife, Mrs Benjie Brail, when I get her, had a glass eye; a regular pair of prisms from old Dolland's in St Paul's Churchyard, than the gazelle eye of his lordship's favourites—such an eye would not long have glowered out of the head of an honest woman, take my word for it.
Where have I got to? where the deuce left I off? Oh—the beautiful eyes of the fair person, whose sweet voice had startled me. Her hair, dark and shining, was shaded off her forehead Madona-like; and she wore a most becoming, but very plain white muslin cap, with two little lace straps, that hung down loose on each side of her face, like the scale defences attached to the helmets of the French grenadiers à cheval. Heaven help me with my similes, a beautiful demure woman, and a horse grenadier! She was dressed in a plain black silk gown, over which she wore a neatly embroidered white apron; but from the ostentatious puffing out of the white cambric handkerchief that she held in her fair clasped hands, with their blue meandering veins, I perceived, if she were the mother of the beautiful boy—and here the murder of my description is out at last—that a second edition of him was printed off, and nearly ready for publication.