Captain Bradstreet’s stories were always worth hearing, and the evening being warm and still, the little company was beguiled into remaining up until a late hour to listen to some of his thrilling experiences at sea.
“What delightful people these are!” thought the lonely Miss Evans. “It is such a solace to be with them. And I had not expected to speak with a soul on board.”
CHAPTER VII
TEN AND ONE
The next day the weather continued fine. The ship passed schools of porpoises sporting in the sun and splashing the water like swimming children at play.
Captain Bradstreet told Weezy that these porpoises were sometimes called fish-hogs. They not only drive shoals of herrings and salmon and mackerel before them, but they sometimes dive to the bottom of the sea and root for eels and sea-worms, as pigs on land root for acorns buried under leaves.
The second morning Paul descried a sporting whale to leeward, and an hour later an ocean steamer. When the vessels were near each other, La Bretagne ran up several small flags.
“Those flags ask, ‘Have you seen any icebergs?’” said Captain Bradstreet.
And when the other vessel signalled by flags that the passage was clear, he seemed greatly pleased.
“I always dread to meet icebergs in a fog,” he remarked.
“But there isn’t a speck of fog to-day, Captain Bradstreet,” put in Weezy.