CHAPTER VIII

A STRANGE CARGO

We took the north-east trades on the Canary parallels; but they blew a very light breeze, occasionally failing us, indeed, with more than once a positive hint of a shift in the western sky, though no change happened. Captain Keeling declared that in all his time he never remembered the like of so faint a trade-wind. Indeed, it threatened us with a long passage to the equator, and again and again I would feel as vexed as if I had had command of the ship, and my reputation depended upon her progress, when I’d come on deck and find the long blue heave of the swell gushing to our port quarter, just freckled by the delicate soft wind, with scarce a ripple of weight enough to run into foam, the weather clew of the mainsail swinging in and out, and the big topsails, to the curtseying of the ship upon the swell, coming into the masts with short slaps, which made each sheet hum like a twanged harp-wire through its yard-arm sheave-hole. Very different was all this from my own experience of the trades when, for days and days, from twenty-seven degrees north down to within thirty leagues of the equator, it had been one long wild thunderous spell of sailing, foam to the hawse-pipes, every yard and studdingsail boom straining at its brace as a racer at its bridle, the white water to leeward flashing past in a dazzle, like foam from the sponsons of a paddle-steamer, and all day long a fine noise of wind roaring between the masts, and on high the wool-like clouds of the trades blowing, charged with prismatic hues, transversely across the line of our course.

Yet we managed to kill the time with some degree of entertainment to ourselves. Mr. Greenhew and Mr. Riley were head over ears in love with Miss Hudson, and were beginning to talk sarcasm at each other when there were people near to listen to their conversation. Mr. Fairthorne was paying very marked attention to Miss Mary Joliffe. Mynheer Peter Hemskirk seemed to find something agreeable in the company of Miss Helen Trevor, an exceedingly fat, blue-eyed girl, with a bunch of flaxen ringlets falling before each ear, and her hair behind dragged up to a tall comb that sat in an odd staring way upon her head. There was some sport in all this for quiet observation. Then there was always a rubber of whist to be had. Though Colonel Bannister was often in too peppery a humour to play, his aristocratic falcon-beaked wife was ever ready and eager to take a hand, and partners were never to be wanting when Mr. Adam or Mr. Saunders or Mr. Hodder was about.

Colledge and I were good friends, and had long yarns together in our cabin and on deck. It was, maybe, because we shared a berth that I was more with him than with the others, though Mr. Johnson once attempted a stroke of irony by saying that of course my intimacy with Mr. Colledge had nothing whatever to do with the circumstance of his being the son of a lord, ‘which,’ added he, ‘speaks well for your heart, Dugdale, for he has very many excellent qualities.’

‘Mr. Johnson,’ said I, ‘I do not think you very brilliant as a genius, and I am sure you are not very richly stocked in gifts of satire. I would advise you to dedicate all you have in that way to your profession, lest, when you come to set up as a book-critic, you will find yourself _gastados_, as the Spaniards say--expended.’

But to return to Mr. Colledge: the characteristic I liked him best for was a certain naïveté. He would speak of his engagement with Fanny Crawley as a schoolboy might of a like experience, and not seem to know what to make of it. One day he was lying in his bunk smoking a pipe, with his leg over the edge, his head propped by his arm, his handsome face flushed, by the heat, and his soft dark-blue eyes shining as with wine. I had come warm and fatigued from the poop, and lay stretched upon the deck on my mattress. We had been talking of Miss Crawley, and he had lugged her portrait from his breast-pocket to have a look at it; which indeed was a habit of his when he spoke of her, as though he could hardly persuade himself that he was engaged without first taking a peep.

‘Upon my word, Dugdale,’ said he languidly, ‘hang me now, if it was not for Fanny here, I’d propose to Louise Temple. She’s a ripping girl, and the sort of woman my father would like; a fine stately presence for a drawing-room, eh? Figure the dignity with which she would kiss the hand of a sovereign, making the business quite the other way about by her salutation, and queening it to the confusion of every eye. My father doesn’t very much care about Fanny--has no style, he thinks--nothing distinguished about her.’

‘But you are engaged to her with his sanction, I presume?’

‘I don’t know,’ he answered.

I laughed, and said: ‘Has Miss Temple heard that you’re engaged to be married?’

‘No,’ he answered with a small air of confusion; ‘there was no need to tell her. What should there be in such a confession to interest her? You’re the only person on board the ship that I have mentioned the thing to. Of course I can trust to _you_,’ said he, soothingly.

‘Trust me!’ I exclaimed, laughing again. ‘There is nothing wrong surely in this engagement that you should fear the betrayal of the secret of it? But since it _is_ a secret, it is perfectly safe in my keeping.’

‘Do you think I ought to tell Miss Temple that I’m engaged?’ said he.

‘Well, if you are making love to her,’ said I, ‘it might be as well to give her a hint that you’re not in earnest.’

‘Oh, but, confound it, I _am_!’ he cried. ‘I mean,’ he added, catching himself up, ‘I think her a doocidly charming girl, and the most delightful creature to flirt with that ever I met in my life; but if I go and tell her I’m engaged’----

‘Well?’

‘It would knock my association with her on the head. It is not as if Fanny were within reach of an early post. Even if I were disposed to break off my engagement with her, it must take me some months to do it. D’ye understand me?’

‘You mean, of course,’ said I, ‘that no letter can reach her under seven or eight months, unless, indeed, you conveyed one to her by a homeward-bound ship.’

‘Ay; but putting the homeward-bound ship aside, Fanny could not knew of my resolution--were it ever to come to _that_--until she received the