Chapter 9

"Now in the fervid noon the smooth bright sea
Heaves slowly, for the wandering winds are dead
That stirred it into foam. The lonely ship
Rolls wearily, and idly flap the sails
Against the creaking masts. The lightest sound
Is lost not on the ear, and things minute
Attract the observant eye."

RICHARDSON.

Thus terminated the setting-down, like many others that Captain Cuffe
had resolved to give, but which usually ended in a return to good-nature
and reason. The steward was told to set a plate for Mr. Griffin among
the other guests, and then the commander of the frigate followed the
lieutenant on deck. Here he found every officer in the ship, all looking
at le Feu-Follet with longing eyes, and most of them admiring her
appearance, as she lay on the mirrorlike Mediterranean, with the two
light sails just holding her stationary.

"A regular-built snake-in-the-grass!" growled the boatswain, Mr. Strand,
who was taking a look at the lugger over the hammock cloths of the
waist, as he stood on the heel of a spare topmast to do so; "I never
fell in with a scamp that had a more d--n-my-eyes look!"

This was said in a sort of soliloquy, for Strand was not exactly
privileged to address a quarter-deck officer on such an occasion, though
several stood within hearing, and was far too great a man to enlighten
his subordinates with his cogitations. It was overheard by Cuffe,
however, who just at that instant stepped into the gangway to make an
examination for himself.

"It is a snake-_out_-of the grass, rather, Strand," observed the
captain, for _he_ could speak to whom he pleased, without presumption or
degradation. "Had she stayed in port, now, she would have been _in_ the
grass, and we might have scotched her."

"Well, your honor, we can _English_ her, as it is; and that'll be quite
as nat'ral, and quite as much to the purpose, as _Scotching_ her, any
day," answered Strand, who, being a native of London, had a magnificent
sort of feeling toward all the dependencies of the empire, and to whom
the word scotch, in that sense, was Greek, though he well understood
what it meant "to clap a Scotchman on a rope"; "we are likely to have a
flat calm all the morning, and our boats are in capital order; and,
then, nothing will be more agreeable to our gentlemen than a row."

Strand was a gray-headed seaman, and he had served with Captain Cuffe
when the latter was a midshipman, and had even commanded the top of
which the present boatswain had been the captain. He knew the "cut of
the captain's jib" better than any other man in the Proserpine, and
often succeeded with his suggestions, when Winchester and the