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, the horizon rose and fell. As unsteady as that, the day left behind its sunny comfort and brought clouds and chillier air. I saw the navigators passing on their business, but I could not emulate their equipoise; I attached myself to a rail or fixture to watch them, this one coiling a rope, that trailing a coco-nut mat in the sea--a capital cleanser; to watch the gulls also, so easily keeping up with the plunging brows, amid all their side-shows of wheeling and darting flights. Inured, I presently joined in at dinner in the saloon; ate, and had no serious trouble. A framework, which was described as a "fiddle," covered the table and checked the more mobile crockery; but it could not prevent an accident in the steward's own department, which caused his tone of private feud with Neptune to sound clearly in the apostrophe, "Break 'em all, then, so we shall have none for the fine weather." But fine weather was expected now. V My prospect brightened with the weather. "Things are looking bad," observed the chief engineer with an anxious glance at me. "Why?" I said more anxiously. "There's three teaspoons missing," he answered, satisfied at having played his joke. The morning, though the wind blew hard against us, was sunny and cheerful; the light blue sky flying here and there the streamer of a shining cloud, the moon going down ahead of us, the drove of gulls still pleasing themselves in glistening whims of flight among the waves. Warmer it was, but not yet warm enough for me: and going out on the deck I often sheltered behind the cabins with fingers as of old turning waxen for want of blood. I found the ancient sea a new pleasure in its aspects: I liked to see the wave-tops suddenly become crystalline with a clear green glow. Such a greenness immediately associated itself with, and, I even thought, comprehended, the curious emanation of the old mermaid stories. It is a light wherein the sudden arising of a supernatural might seem natural. Aboard, less remote interests revealed themselves. The cook, that lean aproned figure, walked slowly between the stores and his stronghold the galley, carrying perhaps a couple of large onions; and the smell of cooking might rise above that of the Atlantic. The tawny firemen emptied their buckets of cinders in long series through the iron chute over the side; or found, by request, work for an oilcan round the funnel. Everything said, in its manner, "No blind hurry, no delay."
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