and fascinating in her beauty. Her
eyes seemed to fill her face, subduing every lineament to the full
spiritual light and meaning in them, till her countenance looked sheer
intellect, the very quality and spirit of mind itself. This effect, I
think, was largely achieved by the uncommon hue of her skin. It
accentuated colour, casting a deeper dye into the blackness of her
hair, sharpening the fires in her eyes, painting her lips with a more
fiery tinge of carnation through which, when she smiled, her white
teeth shone like light itself.

I noticed even on this first day, during my cautious occasional peeps,
that the captain was particularly attentive to the young lady; in
which, indeed, I should have found nothing significant--for she had in
a special degree been committed to his trust--but for the circumstance
of his being a bachelor. Even then, early and fresh as the time was
for thinking of such things, I guessed when I looked at the girl that
the hardy mariner alongside of her would not keep his heart whole a
week, if indeed, for the matter of that, he was not already head over
ears. He was a good-looking man in his way; not everybody's type of
manly beauty, perhaps, but certain of admiration from those who relish
a strong sea flavour and the colour of many years and countless
leagues of ocean in looks, speech, and deportment. He was about
thirty-five, the heartiest laugher that ever strained a rib in
merriment, a genial, kindly man, with a keen, seawardly blue eye,
weather-coloured face, short whiskers, and rising in his socks to near
six feet. I believe he was of Welsh blood. This was my first voyage
with him. The rigorous discipline of the quarter-deck had held us
apart, and all that I could have told of him I have here written.

For some time after we left Sydney nothing whatever noteworthy
happened. One quiet evening I came on deck at eight o'clock to take
charge of the ship till midnight. We were still in the temperate
parallels, the weather of a true Pacific sweetness, and, by day, the
ocean a dark blue rolling breast of water, feathering on every round
of swell in sea-flashes, out of which would sparkle the flying-fish to
sail down the bright mild wind for a space, then vanish in some brow
of brine with the flight of a silver arrow.

This night the moon was dark, the weather somewhat thick, the stars
pale over the trucks, and hidden in the obscurity a little way down
the dusky slope of firmament. Windsails