Chapter 14

"So foul and fair a day I have not seen."--_Macbeth._

The first watch of the night was marked by no change. Wilder had joined
his passengers, cheerful, and with that air of enjoyment which every
officer of the sea is more or less wont to exhibit, when he has disengaged
his vessel from the dangers of the land, and has fairly launched her on
the trackless and fathomless abyss of the ocean. He no longer alluded to
the hazards of the passage, but strove, by the thousand nameless
assiduities which his station enabled him to man fest, to expel all
recollection of had passed from their minds. Mrs Wyllys lent herself to
his evident efforts to remove their apprehensions and one, ignorant of
what had occurred between them, would have thought the little party,
around the evening's repast, was a contented and unsuspecting group of
travellers, who had commenced their enterprise under the happiest
auguries.

Still there was that, in the thoughtful eye and clouded brow of the
governess, as at times she turned her bewildered look on our adventurer,
which denoted a mind far from being at ease. She listened to the gay and
peculiar, because professional, sallies of the young mariner, with smiles
that were indulgent while they were melancholy, as though his youthful
spirits, exhibited as they were by touches of a humour that was thoroughly
and quaintly nautical recalled familiar, but sad, images to her fancy
Gertrude had less alloy in her pleasure. Home, with a beloved and
indulgent father, were before her; and she felt, while the ship yielded to
each fresh impulse of the wind, as if another of those weary miles which
had so long separated them, was already conquered.

During these short but pleasant hours, the adventurer who had been so
oddly called into the command of the Bristol trader, appeared in a new
character. Though his conversation was characterized by the frank
manliness of a seaman, it was, nevertheless tempered by the delicacy of
perfect breeding. The beautiful mouth of Gertrude often struggled to
conceal the smiles which played around her lips and dimpled her cheeks,
like a soft air ruffling the surface of some limpid spring; and once or
twice, when the humour of Wilder came unexpectedly across her youthful
fancy, she was compelled to yield to the impulses of an irresistible
merriment.

One hour of the free intercourse of a ship can do more towards softening
the cold exterior in which the world encrusts the best of human feelings,
than weeks of the unmeaning ceremonies of the land. He who has not felt
this truth, would do well to distrust his own companionable qualities. It
would seem that man, when he finds himself in the solitude of the ocean,
feels the deepest how great is his