It was a fresh sweet ocean morning, one of the fairest I remember; the wind, a tender fanning from the west, warm enough to make one fancy an odour and balm of the tropics in it, leagues ahead as those parallels yet lay. The sky was one broad surface of curls and feathers of pearl-coloured vapour, an interweaving, as it were, of many-shaped links of silken cloud shot with silver and amber and gold from the early sun. I never beheld a lovelier dome of sky, so tender in glory and rich in delicate perfections of tints. The sea spread in a firm dark line to it like a blue floor under some mighty roof of marble; the sun’s wake came in a misty stream of light to the port bends of the yacht, where it was flashed by the mirror-like wet blackness of the glossy side back deep into the brimming azure of the brine in a great puff of radiance that made one think of a cloud of brightly illuminated steam ascending from the depths. Everything was brilliant and clean and cheerful, the decks of the white softness of foam, brass sparkling, rigging flemish-coiled or festooned as by an artist’s hand upon the pins; forward stood the long cannon radiant as polished jet, a detail that gave an odd significance to the saucy knowing ‘spring,’ as it is called, of the yacht that way. The cocks and hens in the coops were straining their throats and blending with their cheerful voices was a noise of pigs; there was black smoke pouring away from the galley chimney, and now and again you got a whiff of something good frying for the men’s breakfasts, for my cousin fed his sailors well. The ‘Bride’ with erect masts was sliding over the wide folds of water whose undulations were so long drawn and regular as to be scarce perceptible in the motion of the vessel; there was air enough to crisp the sea, and where the sun’s light lay the tremble was blinding; on either bow was a curl of silver and pale eddyings alongside with a line of oil-smooth water going away astern from under the counter; yet we were but creeping, too, spite of the yacht being a pile of white cloths--every stitch she owned abroad to her topgallant studdingsail. The mate had charge, and was stumping the weather side of the quarterdeck in his sour way when I arrived. ‘Good morning, Mr. Crimp.’ ‘Marning,’ he answered. ‘Ugly squall that last night.’ ‘Ugly? ay.’ The fellow gave the word _sir_ to no man, restricting its use when ashore to dogs as Finn once told me; but his surly tricks of speech and manner were so wholly a part of him, so entirely natural, so unconsciously expressed, that it would have been as idle to resent them as to have quarrelled with him for having an askew eye or lost one’s temper because his beard resembled rope yarns. ‘Anything in sight?’ I asked, looking round. ‘Ay,’ he answered. ‘Where?’ I exclaimed, running my eye over the sea. ‘Up yonder,’ he responded, indicating with a gesture of his chin the topgallant-yard where was perched the inevitable figure of a look-out man.