with yards square, main-sail hauled up, and the jib and trysail in the brails, lay listlessly rolling on the easy swell of the water, giving a gentle send forward every minute or so, when the sluggish sails would come with a thundering slap against the masts, and the loose cordage would rattle like a drum-major’s ratan on a spree. The sea was one glassy mirror of undulations, shimmering out into full blaze as the rising sun just threw its rays along the crest of the ocean swell; and then, dipping down into the rolling mass, the hue would change to a dark green, and, coming up again under the brig’s black counter, would swish out into a little shower of bubbles, and sparkle again joyously.
Away off in the distance lay the island of Jamaica––the early haze about the mountain tops rising like a white lace veil from the deep valleys below, with here and there a white dot of a cluster of buildings gleaming out from the sombre land like the flicker of a heliotrope, and at intervals the base of the coast bursting forth in a long, heavy fringe of foam, as the lazy breakers chafed idly about the rocks of some projecting headland. Nearer, too, were the dark succession of waving blue lines in parallel bars and patches of the young land wind, tipping the backs of the rollers in a fluttering ripple of cats’-paws, and then wandering sportively away out to sea.
On board the brig, forward, were three or four barefooted sailors, in loose frocks and trowsers, moving lazily about the decks, drawing buckets of water over the side and dashing it against the bulwarks, while others were scrubbing and clearing up the vessel for the day. The caboose, too, began to show signs of life, and a thin column of smoke rose gracefully up in the calm morning air until it came within the eddying influence of the sails and top-hamper, when a bit of roll would puff it away in blue curls beyond.
8
Abaft stood a low, squat-built sailor at the wheel, his striped Guernsey cap hanging on one of the spokes, and his body leaning, half asleep, over the barrel, which gave him a sharp twitch every now and then when the sea caught the rudder on the wrong side. Near at hand, with an arm around an after top-mast backstay, and head resting over the rail, was the mate, Mr. Binks, with a spy-glass to his eye, through which he was peering at the distant hills of Jamaica. Presently, as he was about to withdraw the brass tube, and as the old brig yawed with her head inshore, something appeared to arrest his attention; for, changing his position, and climbing up to the break of the deck cabin, he steadied himself by the shrouds, and rubbing his eye with the sleeve of his shirt, he gave a long look through the glass, muttering to himself the while. At last, having apparently made up his mind, he sang out to the man at the wheel in this strain:
“Ben, my lad, look alive; catch a turn with them halliards over the lee wheel; and just take this ’ere glass and trip up to the fore-yard, and see what ye make of that fellow, here away under the eastermost headland.”
Ben, without more ado, secured the spokes of the wheel, clapped his cap on his head, hitched up his trowsers, and, taking the glass from the mate, rolled away up the fore-rigging. Meanwhile Mr. Binks walked forward, stopping a moment at the caboose to take a tin pot of coffee from the cook, and then, going on to the topsail-sheet bitts, he carefully seated himself, and leisurely began to stir up the sugar in his beverage with an iron spoon, making a little cymbal music with it on the outside while he gulped it down. He had not been many minutes occupied in this way when Ben hailed the deck from the fore-yard.
“On deck there!”
“Hallo!” ejaculated Mr. Binks.
“I see that craft,” cried Ben; “she’s a fore and after, sails down, and sweeping along the land. She hasn’t got a breath of wind, sir.”
“Very well,” said Mr. Binks, speaking into the tin pot with a sound like a sheet-iron organ; “come down.”
As Ben wriggled himself off the fore-yard and caught hold of the futtock shrouds to swing into the standing rigging, he suddenly paused, and putting the glass again to his eye, he sang out:
“I say, sir! here is a big chap away off on the other quarter, under top-sails. There! Perhaps ye can see him from the deck, about a handspike clear of the sun”––pointing with the spy-glass as he spoke in the proper direction.
“All right!” said the mate, as he began again the cymbal pot and spoon music; “becalmed, ain’t he?”
9
“Yes, sir; not enough air to raise a hair on my old grandmother’s wig!” muttered Ben, as he slowly trotted down the rigging.
The sun came up glowing like a ball of fire. The land wind died away long before it fluttered far off from the island, and, saving the uneasy clatter at times of the loose sails and running gear, all remained as before. It was getting on toward eight o’clock, and while the cook was dishing the breakfast mess for the crew beneath an awning forward of the quarter-deck, the captain came up from his cabin below. The stalwart old seaman stepped to the bulwarks, and, shading his eyes with his hand from the glare, he took a broad glance over the water to seaward, nodded to the mate, and said, in a cheerful voice,
“Dull times, matey! No signs of a breeze yet, eh?”
“No, captain,” said Mr. Binks; “dead as ditch water; not been enough air to lift a feather since you went below at four o’clock. But we have sagged inshore by the current a few leagues during the night, and here’s old Jamaica plain in sight broad off the bow.”
“Well, it’s not so bad after all, a forty-four days’ passage––so I’ll tell my Lady Bird passenger.”
Going to the latticed door of the deck cabin, the jolly skipper threw it wide open, clapped his hands together thrice, and then, placing them to his mouth like a speaking-trumpet, he bellowed out, in a deep, low roar,
“Heave out there, all hands! Heave out, Lady Bird and baby! Land ho!”
There came a joyous note from a soft womanly voice within a screen drawn across the after cabin, mingled with a little cooing grunt from a child, and presently an inner door swung back, and the sweetest little tot of a boy came tumbling out into the open space, and sprang at once into the captain’s arms. The little fellow buried his brown curly head into the old skipper’s whiskers, and then, kicking up his fat naked legs, he laughed and chattered like a magpie.
“Aha! you young scamp, this small nose smells the oranges and cinnamon, eh? And dear lazy mamma shuts her pretty eyes, and won’t look for papa, and so near home, too!”
Here Madame Rosalie’s low sweet voice trilled out merrily in a slightly foreign accent, while the contralto tones vibrated on the ear like the note of a harp.
“Ah! bon capitaine, how could you deceive me? Still, I forgive you for telling me last night that we were so far from Kingston. When you know, too,” she went on in her Creole accent, “how I love and want to see my dear husband these last four years, since you carried him away in your good big ship. But never mind, my good friend, I shall pay you off one of these days; and now send, please, for Banou to dress his little boy.”
10
Scarcely had the worthy skipper reached a bell-rope near at hand, and given it one jerk, than the cabin door opened, and in stepped a brawny black, whose bare woolly head and white teeth and eyes glittered with delight. There was that about his face which indicated intelligence, courage, devotion, and humanity––those indescribable marks of expression which Nature sometimes stamps in unmistakable lines on the skin, whether it be white or black. He was below the middle height, but the large head was set with a great swelling throat on the shoulders of a Titan. His loose white and red striped shirt was thrown well back over his black and broad chest; and putting out a pair of muscular arms that seemed as massive and heavy as lignum vitæ, the boy jumped from the captain to meet them; and then sticking his little soft legs down the slack of Banou’s shirt, he ran his rosy fingers in his wool, and shouted with glee.
“Oho!” said the black, as he passed his huge arms around the little fellow, and smoothed down his scanty night-dress as if it were the plumage of a bird, “oho! little Master Henri loves his Banou, eh? Good, he take bath.”
Bearing