“There, young gen’men,” exclaimed my companion, “she’s a willing old mare, ye see. Now bring her to her course again.”
I thrust the spokes over the other way, intently staring at the card.
“Stead-dee!” came a hoarse whisper from behind me: “meet her, my lad, or she’ll be a p’int too high afore you know where you are.”
But he had to show me what he meant by slightly reversing the helm, as the ship came back to her course. I was highly delighted, and should have been glad to steer for the remainder of the night. However, the mate broke into my enjoyment by ordering me to trim the binnacle lamp; but always afterwards I was on the look-out for an opportunity to take the wheel, my experiences creeping cautiously from light airs into smart breezes, until it came to my being as well qualified as any man on board, having regard to my strength, of course, to stand a “trick.”
This reference to my first standing at the wheel of the Lady Violet recalls to my mind another incident of the middle watch a week or two later on. We were nearing the equator, and had already penetrated that glassy belt of baffling airs and sneaking cats-paws extending a degree or two on either hand the Line, and universally spoken of by sailors as the “Doldrums.” I turned out at midnight and went on deck. The sky was very full of large rich trembling stars, yet they seemed to diffuse no light, saving one planet in the south under which there lay in the black breast of the deep a little icy gleam of wake, or reflection; otherwise the ocean stretched as black as thunder to its horizon. There was a gentle wind blowing off the quarter, just enough to give us steerage way, with a long light swell from the westwards, upon which the ship rolled as regularly as the tick of a clock, her topsail sometimes coming in to the mast with a clap that made one think a gun had been fired up aloft.
It was a very hot night; now and again there was a delicate winking of violet lightning in the far north-east. It was about twenty minutes after midnight, and I was walking up and down the poop to leeward with Kennet, hearing him tell of a donkey race that he once rode in, when he suddenly came to a stand holding his breath as it were, and then exclaimed in a mysterious voice, “I thay, Rockafellar, what’th that?”
“What do you mean?” I asked; “anything to see or listen to?”
“To liththen to,” he said.
I strained my ear.