Chapter 3 No.3

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?"