“There, miss,” he observed, “I think you will be able, more at your ease, to sit and look at the little island we are leaving behind us. It’s always a pleasure to take the last look at the place we are going from.”
Ada thanked him with a sweet smile for the chair which he had judiciously placed on the starboard side of the poop, and looking partly aft, so that she could command a full view of the harbour, where the Ione lay, and of the fortifications of Valetta. The Zodiac was now running out between forts Saint Elmo and Ricasoli; and as she cleared the former, she felt the wind drawing rather more to the northward. Her yards were, therefore, braced forward, and her mainsail hauled out; and now with the wind on her quarter, a point in which every sail a square-rigged vessel can carry draws best, with a fine rattling breeze she rapidly left the shores of Malta astern.
Chapter Seven.
Never did a vessel leave port under more propitious circumstances than did the Zodiac, with a fair, steady breeze, a smooth sea, and at a time of the year when there was every prospect of the continuance of fine weather.
As Bowse walked the deck with a spy-glass under his arm in man-of-war fashion, a smile of contentment lit up his honest countenance, and glistened in his eye; and as he felt the freshening breeze fanning his cheek, and lifting his vessel, as it were, he began to laugh at his momentary suspicions about the character of the speronara and her crew. Every now and then he would stop in his walk, and would look over the side to judge how fast the vessel was going through the water, or he would examine the compasses to assure himself that they were true, or he would cast his eye aloft to see how his sails drew, or his clear, full voice would be heard issuing some necessary order for the government of the ship.
Even Colonel Gauntlett could not help expressing his satisfaction at the propitious commencement of their voyage, as he stopped in his short and otherwise silent walk on the poop to address a few words to the master.
Ada sat silently in her chair, gazing on the fast-receding shore; and it is not surprising that her thoughts were fixed on him who was, she felt sure, even then watching, from its most extreme point, the bark which bore her away. Her little Maltese maid, Marianna, stood by her side with tears in her bright eyes, and gazing her last for an indefinite time on the land of her birth, and where all her affections were centred, except those which had lately arisen for her young mistress.
The colonel’s man, not knowing exactly where he ought to be, being too dignified, at first, to mix with the men forward, and astonished and confused at manoeuvres which he could not comprehend, as is generally the case with his class, always managed to get exactly where he was most in the way.