‘I ought to have taken her a voyage some time ago--they tell me so, at least. I have wintered at Madeira with her, and we spent last winter in the south of France. But they say that a voyage is worth all those resorts and refuges put together. Is she not sweet? She suffers so patiently, too.’ I longed to say something soothing, to utter some hope, but my mind gave me no ideas. Mrs. Lee looked at me whilst I stood at her side with my head hung, fruitlessly striving with my mind that I might say something to console her. ‘I am keeping you standing,’ cried she, and without further words we went on deck. It was a little before the hour of noon. The sea was a wide field of throbbing blue, laced with foam, every little billow curling along the course the ship was pursuing, and on high was a wide and sparkling heaven of azure, along which many small clouds, like puffs from musketry, were sailing. Warmth but no heat was in the sunshine. The great ship was travelling along almost upright. She regularly and lightly curtseyed, but did not roll. Her sails shone like satin, and on one side they hung far over the water, hollowing low down to a long pole or boom, and the reflection of them in the water under this boom was as though there was a silver cloud in the sea sweeping along with us. There were no awnings; the sun was not yet hot enough for them. The white planks of the decks sparkled freshly like dry sand, and the shadows of the rigging ruled them with streaks of violet as though drawn by the hand. At the wheel stood a sailor in white trousers and a straw hat; he munched upon a piece of tobacco, and his little reddish eyes were sometimes directed at the compass and sometimes up at the sails, and never at anything else, as though there was nothing more to be seen. Not far from him, at the rail that protected the side, stood the fine tall figure of Captain Ladmore; he held a bright brass sextant, which he occasionally lifted to his eye. Some paces away from him was the short, square, solid form of Mr. Harris, the first officer, and he too held a sextant, though it was not so bright and polished as the captain’s. The raised deck on which I found myself--termed by sailors the poop, and to be henceforth so called by me--seemed to be covered with moving figures, though, after gazing awhile, I observed that they were not so numerous as they at first appeared. They were ladies and gentlemen and a few children; there was much noise of talking, a frequent gay laugh, a constant fluttering of female raiment.