"Every berth's hoccupied, sir."
"What sort of people are they, do you know? Any swells amongst them?"
"That, depends how they're viewed," he answered, with a cautious look round and a slow smile; "if by themselves, they're all swells; if by others—why!"
"I thought perhaps that you might have had something in the Colonial bishopric way."
"No, sir, there's nothen in that way aboard. Plenty as needs it I dessay. The language of some of them steerage chaps is something to turn the black hairs of a monkey white. Talk of the vulgarity of sailors!"
The glances of this steward were dry and shrewd, and his smile slow and knowing; I chose therefore to ask him no more questions. But then, substantially, he had told me what I wanted to gather, and secretly I felt as much mortified and disappointed as though for days past I had been thinking of nothing else than finding a parson on board ship at sea and being married to Grace by him.
A little later on Mrs. Barstow came into the saloon and asked Grace to accompany her on deck. My sweetheart put on her hat and jacket, and the three of us went on to the poop. My first look was for a ship, and I spied off the starboard bow a square of orange-coloured canvas; but the vessel was going our way and was, therefore, of no use to us. The ocean swept in a blank circle to that solitary point of sun-coloured sail; but it was fine weather at last; whilst we were seated at lunch the breeze had freshened and the sky cleared; the swell left by the gale had sensibly flattened within the past hour, and the sea was trembling and filled with the life of crisp green wrinkles running over the light folds which flowed pleasantly out of the north; the mistiness was gone from the sunshine; the light was brilliant and warm and coloured the atmosphere with a delicate tinge of yellow, though the luminary was yet high in the heavens. The clouds hung in rolls of cream-like vapour, making the noblest and most stately prospect of the sky that could be imagined as they moved slowly over our mastheads in the direction in which we steered.
I had never been aboard a full-rigged ship before—that is to say, at sea, and under canvas—and on quitting the companion-way I stood for some moments heedless of all things in my admiration of the beautiful, in truth, I may say the royal, picture I witnessed. From deck to truck rose three spires of canvas, sail upon sail of a milky softness swelling one above another. The planks of the poop deck were as white as holystoning could make them, with a glitter as of dried salt everywhere, and the shadows of the people and of the rigging, swaying with the heave of the fabric, lay like sketches wrought in pale violet ink. There was a frequent flash of glass; there were star-like glories in polished brass; and there was an odd farmyard smell of hay in the air, with the bleating of sheep forward and a noise of cocks and hens.
"A voyage in such a ship as this, Mrs. Barstow," said I, "should make the most delightful trip of a person's life."
"It is better than yachting," said Grace softly.