I have always loved the sea myself, from the hour I first set foot on board a man-of-war and skylarked with the middies, to that sad and memorable day when, under the strong—I might almost say irresistible—influence of my strong-minded wife, I bade adieu to the royal navy for ever, and retired into private life. Alas! But what is the use of sighing? If a man will get born in his wrong century, he ought to lay his account with being obliged to suffer much from the strange, I had almost said childish, fallacies, follies, and inconsistencies peculiar to the more early period in which his lot has been cast by mistake.
You see, reader, I have accepted my position. There is a bare possibility that those who have assigned it to me may be wrong, but I have long ago ceased to dispute that point.
At sea! Haco’s sloop is there now, just out of sight of land, although not far from it, and resting on as glassy a sheet of water as is ever presented by the ocean in a deep dead calm. Haco himself, big, hairy, jovial, ruddy, is seated on the after skylight, the sole occupant of the deck.
To look at him one might fancy that Neptune having found a deserted ship, had clambered upon deck and sat him down to take a complacent view of his wide domains, and enjoy a morning pipe.
It is early morning, and the other inhabitants of that floating house are asleep below.
The “Coal-Coffin,” albeit an unseaworthy vessel, is a picturesque object. Its dirty sails are of a fine rich colour, because of their very dirtiness. Its weather-worn and filthy spars, and hull and rigging, possess a harmony of tone which can only be acquired by age. Its cordage being rotten and very limp, hangs, on that account, all the more gracefully in waving lines of beauty and elegant festoons; the reef points hang quite straight, and patter softly on the sails—in short, the tout ensemble of the little craft is eminently picturesque—draped, as it were, with the mellowness of antiquity; and the whole—hull, spars, sails, cordage, and reef points,—clearly and sharply reflected in the depths below.
“Wot a splendid mornin’!” said Stephen Gaff, putting his head and shoulders out of the after hatchway, and yawning violently.
“So ’tis, shipmet,” responded the skipper, “a’most too butiful for this world.”
Both men spoke in subdued tones, as if unwilling to disturb the delightful stillness of nature. Gaff, having slowly raised himself out of the hole in the deck which served as a door to the bandbox, termed, out of courtesy, the cabin, looked up at the mast-head to see if the vane indicated any wind; then he gazed slowly round the horizon. Meeting with nothing particular there to arrest his eyes, he let them fall on Haco, who was gazing dreamily at the bowl of his German pipe.
“Dead calm,” said Gaff.