‘But every woman,’ said he, ‘has a way of her own of making love. Some simper themselves into a man’s affection, and some triumph by scorn and contempt. Do you remember how the Duchess of Cleveland made love to Wycherley? She put her head out of the coach window and cried out to him: “Sir, you’re a rascal, you’re a villain!” and Pope tells us that Wycherley from that moment entertained hopes.’
But by this time my pipe was smoked out; and catching sight of Mynheer Hemskirk and a passenger named Adams, a lawyer, coming down the ladder with the notion as I might guess of joining us in the recess that was the one smoking-room of the ship, I bolted forwards, got upon the forecastle, and overhung the rail, where I lay for a long half-hour lazily enjoying the sight of the massive cutwater of the Indiaman rending the brilliant blue surface, with a clear lift of azure water either hand of her, that broke into a little running stream of foam abreast of the cat-heads, and swarmed quietly aft in foam-bells and winking bubbles, that made one think of the froth at the foot of a cascade gliding along the crystal-clear breast of a stream to the murmur of summer leaves and the horn-like hum of insects.
CHAPTER V
A MYSTERIOUS VOICE
Well, all that day the weather held fine and clear; indeed, we might have been on the Madeira parallels; and I said to Mr. Prance that it was enough to make one keep a bright look-out for the flying fish. The sky was of a wonderful softness of blue, piebald in the main, with small snow-like puffs of cloud flying low, as though they were a fog that had broken up. A large black ship passed us in the afternoon. She was close hauled, and, being to leeward, showed to perfection when she came abreast. Her sails seemed to be formed of cotton cloth, and mounted in three spires to little skysails, with a crowd of fleecy jibs curving at the bowsprit and jib-booms, and many stay-sails between the masts softly shadowed like a drawing in pencil. The lustre lifting off the sea was reverberated in a row of scuttles, and the flash of the glass was so like the yellow blaze of a gun that you started to the sight, and strained your ear an instant for the report.
She was too far off to hail. The captain, standing in the midst of a crowd of ladies, said that she was an American, and told the second officer, who had the watch, to make the Countess Ida’s number.
‘Oh, what a lovely string of flags!’ exclaimed Miss Hudson, who stood near me, following with her languishing violet eyes the soaring of the mani-coloured bunting as it rose to the block of the peak signal halliards like the tail of a kite. ‘Is there anybody very important in that ship that we are honouring him with that pretty display?’
‘No,’ said I, laughing, as I let my gaze sink fair into the sweet depths of her wonderful peepers. ‘By means of those flags the Countess Ida is telling yonder craft who she is, so that when she arrives home she may report us.’
‘Oh, how heavenly! Only think of a ship being made to tell her name! Oh mamma,’ she cried, making a step to catch hold of her mother’s gown, and to give it a tweak, as the old lady stood at the rail gazing at the American vessel from the ambush of a large bonnet, shaped like a coal-scuttle; ‘imagine, dear: Mr. Dugdale says that the Countess Ida is telling that ship who she is. How clever men are—particularly sailors. I love sailors.’