As for Mr Zachariah Lathrope, he was too busy with the ham and eggs to do much talking; although, like the monkeys, he probably thought the more, for ever and anon he would pass encomiums on the viands and pass up his plate for a fresh helping, the steward having enough to do in supplying his wants quickly enough.
After breakfast, a visit was paid to "Snowball," the darkey Stowaway, who was found much better and progressing so favourably that the captain ordered his removal to the "fokesail," to complete his convalescence; which it may be here added he satisfactorily accomplished in a few days, when he was installed in the galley as cook, in the place of a Maltese sailor who was glad to get forward again before the mast. The negro had slept continually from the time he had been released from durance vile in the after-hold, neither the racket below nor the turmoil on deck during the storm having disturbed his slumbers. This, no doubt, had hastened his recovery, for Mr McCarthy was positive that three of his ribs at least had been broken.
"Why is Snowball like a worm, Miss Meldrum?" said Captain Dinks to Kate, after telling her that he intended installing the darkey in the galley as cook; "do you know, eh!"
"Oh, if that's a conundrum, captain," replied she with a piquant laugh that lit up her whole face, making it quite beautiful, Frank Harness thought, "I give it up at once. I'm a bad hand at guessing riddles."
"Well, you see," said Captain Dinks, with that cheery "ho, ho!" of a laugh of his, which always preceded any of his good things, "the worm or grub develops into the butterfly; but Snowball made the butter fly when he tumbled over that cask in the steerage, and now he is going to develop into the grub line and turn cook!"
"That's too bad!" said Kate laughing. "I never heard a worse sort of pun in my life."
"Then it's all the better, my dear," replied he; and as everybody else laughed too, they possibly shared the captain's opinion.
After this, there was a move on deck--not before it was needed perhaps!
At noon, Captain Dinks, after manipulating his sextant and adjusting the sights, seemed to be much longer taking his observation than usual; and when he went below to his cabin to work out the reckoning he certainly remained a most unconscionable time.
By and by, however, he came up the companion again, his face beaming with delight.
"What do you think, Mr Meldrum?" said he, somewhat excitedly, to that gentleman, who, along with the remainder of the saloon party, was standing on the poop leaning over the taffrail to windward, looking over the apparently limit less expanse of water, that stretched away to the horizon, and basking in the sunshine, which was tempered by a mellow breeze that seemed just sufficient to keep the sails of the _Nancy Bell_ full--and that was all.
"I'm sure I can't say," replied Mr Meldrum good-humouredly. "Found another ghost in the cabin, eh?"
"No, no; couldn't have two in one voyage," said the skipper.
"Made another conundrum?" again inquired the other slily, poking fun at the captain's previous attempt in the riddle line.
"Oh, no," said Captain Dinks, laughing out at this. "That was too good to be repeated: I've got better news than that, Mr Meldrum--something really to surprise you!"
"I'm all attention," said Mr Meldrum, "but pray do not keep us long in suspense. Don't you see we're all anxious!"
"Why," exclaimed Captain Dinks triumphantly, "the _Nancy Bell_ has made nearly five degrees of latitude since I last took the sun, there!"
"Oh dear!" said Florry ruefully; "I thought you were going to tell us something funny!" and she looked so disappointed that Kate laughed at her and Master Maurice Negus grinned; whereupon Florry, in a pet, smacked the young gentleman's face, for which she was reproved by her father and ordered below, although the sentence of banishment was remitted later on at Mrs Major Negus's especial request.
This little interlude over, the captain proceeded with his explanation.
"Yes," said he, "we're now in latitude 44 degrees 56 minutes north, and longitude 9 degrees 42 minutes west; so that we've run pretty close on four hundred miles since yesterday at noon. Just think of that, now!"
"A pretty good distance," said Mr Meldrum; "but, you must recollect we had the gale to drive us on."
"Aye, sorr," said Mr McCarthy, joining in the conversation, "and didn't it droive us too! Begorrah, there was some times that the wind tuck the ship clane out of the wather and carried us along in the air like one of them flying-fish you'll say when we gits down to the line!"
"It was fortunate it was in our favour," observed the captain reflectively. "We couldn't have tried to beat against it; and, heavily- laden as we are, it would have been madness to have tried to lay-to!"
"You're right," said Mr Meldrum, "and it was equally fortunate that the gale carried us so far and no further! Another twelve hours of it and we would have been high and dry ashore on the Spanish coast."
"I think you're not far out," replied the captain, scratching his head and pondering over the matter, "for we'll only just shave past Cape Finisterre now keeping our course; and if we hadn't made so much westing when we got out of the Channel I don't know where we should have been!"
"Faix and it was grumbling at it you were all the toime, cap'en!" said McCarthy with a knowing wink; "though you do now say it was all for the best, as the man said when they buried his wife's grandmother!"
"Aye, you're right," said Captain Dinks more seriously, "all is for the best, if we could only know it at the time!"
Thenceforward, the weather kept fine; and the fates seemed favourable to the _Nancy Bell_ in her pilgrimage across the sea.
There was no lack of incident in the voyage, however.
One day, about a week after they had bidden farewell to the Bay of Biscay with all its terrors and troubled waters, as the ship was approaching that region of calms which lies adjacent to the Tropic of Cancer, her rate of progression had grown so "small by degrees and beautifully less," that she barely drifted southward with the current, until at length she came to a dead stop, so far as those on board could judge, lying motionless on the surface of the water "like a painted ship upon a painted ocean," as the situation is described in Coleridge's _Ancient Mariner_.
Round about the vessel, dolphins disported themselves, and "Portuguese men-of-war" floated over the sea with their gelatinous sails unfurled, and everything seemed lazy and enjoyable to the passengers--although the captain and crew did not evidently relish the state of inaction which the calm brought about, for they were looking out in all quarters for the wished-for wind.
Not a ship was in sight--nothing happening to break the peaceful repose of the deep for hours.
The captain was "having a stretch" below; the men snoozing away on the deck forwards in all sorts of odd corners; the officer of the watch blinking as he squinted aloft to see if the dog-vane stirred with any passing breath of air; even the steersman was nodding over the helm, as the wheel rotated round to port or starboard as it listed, according as the ship rose or fell on the long heavy rolling swell that undulated over the bosom of the deep; and most of the passengers were in the same somnolent state--when all at once an event occurred that soon broke the monotony of the afternoon, waking up the sleepy ones to fresh vitality, for an object of interest had at last arisen in the uneventful day sufficient for the moment to enchain their attention.
The listless lotus eaters had to thank Master Negus for the excitement, in the first instance.
That young gentleman was possessed of a keen desire for knowledge, which his more prosaic seniors were in the habit of misconstruing, deeming it to arise, as they said, from an insatiable and impertinent curiosity combined with an inherent love of mischief. Be that as it may, this desire for knowledge on Master Maurice's part frequently led him into places where, to put it delicately, his presence was undesirable in many ways; his love for investigation taking him especially to certain dangerous localities whither he was peremptorily forbidden to go both by his mother and the captain.
Among such tabooed spots in the ship was the forecastle; and here, consequently, as a matter of course, Master Maurice most delighted to steal away when neither the maternal eye of Mrs Major Negus was upon him nor any of the other people aft were watching him. He did not mind the sailors, for they made a point of encouraging him forward and took much pleasure in developing his propensities for mischief.
This afternoon, he was enjoying himself after the desire of his heart- climbing about the rigging in a way that would have made his mother faint, when, in one of his scrambles up to the foretop, he saw something in the water which was hidden from the sight of the others on board, through the head-sails of the ship shutting out their line of view.
"Oh, crickey," shouted out Master Negus at the top of his voice, at once betraying his whereabouts in his excitement, "there's a fight going on in the water, and two whales are leathering each other like fun!"
CHAPTER SIX.
THE BLACK FISH AND THE THRESHER.
"Good gracious me!" exclaimed Mrs Major Negus, jumping up in a fright from the comfortable nap which she had been taking in a lean-back chair on the poop; "where is that unhappy boy? He'll be the death of me some day!"
"I'm here, ma!" shouted out Maurice from the forecastle. "Do come, everybody. It's such fun! Ah, there, the big one has just got such a whack and is in a terrible wax. He's hunting about for the little one, who has dived away from him out of reach!"
"Fokesall, ahoy!" hailed Mr Adams, who had charge of the deck; "what's the matter forward!"
"Only a fight, sir, between a black-fish and a thresher," answered Ben Boltrope, the carpenter, an old man-o'-war's man, and one of the most efficient hands of the _Nancy Bell's_ crew.
"A fit!" exclaimed Mr Zachariah Lathrope, drawing his long telescopic legs together and rising into a sitting posture on the top of the cabin skylight, where he had been taking his usual afternoon siesta instead of putting himself to the trouble of going below and turning into his bunk, as was his usual wont after luncheon. "A fit! Wa-al I guess I'm on. I allers likes to hitch in with a muss!" and, so saying, the lanky American was soon scrambling down the poop-ladder and making his way forward, followed by all the remainder of the passengers--Mrs Major Negus, of course, going to look after her darling boy, while Frank Harness accompanied Kate Meldrum, as he said, to "take care of her,"
although, as her father was not far distant, it might have been supposed that his protecting arm was not so absolutely necessary as he thought!
A very strange spectacle was seen, when the party, after diving beneath the slackened sheets of the mainsail, that flapped about an inert mess of canvas above their heads, and picking their way past the galley and windlass, at last climbed up into the bows of the ship, where the majority of the crew had already assembled and taken up vantage points in the rigging, half-way up which was Master Maurice, waving his hat wildly in a great state of excitement, and the master as it were of the situation.
"There they are!" said he pointing to where the water was lashed up and broken into foam, about half a mile ahead of the ship, amidst which a couple of dark bodies could be seen tumbling about--one occasionally jumping up high in the air and coming down on the other with a thud, and a smack that sounded like the crack of a whip, or report of a rifle.
"There they are, Miss Meldrum, I saw them first!"
"Come down out of that, sir, at once!" screamed out his mother, with a pant and a puff between each word, her breath having been almost taken away by her unusually quick movements in getting forwards. "Have I not ordered you never to go up those ropes?"