above, a wet black horn came right out of it, and two devilish round eyes glared up at us ahead of it, as we leant over the quarter, set wide in a broad black snout, shaped like a gravedigger's shovel; then it sank away into the next wave. Ford shivered, in spite of the heat. "The devil?" inquired one of the writers, coolly, to the surgeon. "Not just him," said the Scotchman; "it's only the first _shark_!" The young ladies, in their white dresses, now made you think of angels gliding about: as to the only one I had an eye for, by this time it wasn't of not seeing her often enough I had to complain, as she seemed to delight in nothing else but being somewhere or other upon deck; first one part of the ship, then another, as if to see how different the look-out could be made, or to watch something in the waves or the horizon. Instead of sitting with a needle or a book, like the rest, with the corner of one eye toward the gentlemen, or talking and giggling away at no allowance, she would be noticing a man aloft as if she were there herself, or trying to see past a sail, as if she fancied there was something strange on the other side of it. The rest of the girls appeared shy of her at first, no doubt on account of the Judge's separate quarters and his grandee style; next, they made acquaintance, she speaking and smiling just as if she had known them before; then, again, most of them seemingly got jealous because the cadets squinted after her; while old Rollock said Miss Hyde would be the beauty on Chowringee Course, and the first officer was eternally pointing out things to her, like a showman at a fair. However, she seemed not to mind it at all, either way: those that did talk to her would scarce hear her answer ere they lost her, and there she was, looking quietly down by herself into the ripples alongside; a minute after, she would be half-playing with little Tommy, and making companions of Tommy's young sisters, to see the sheep, the pigs, and the cow, or feed the poultry. As for the handsome "first officer," when he caught occasion for his politeness, she took it graciously enough, and listened to all he said; till, of a sudden, a smile would break over her face, and she seemed to me to put him off as easy as a duchess--on the score, it might be, of the Judge's looking for her off the poop, or something else of the kind. 'Twas the more curious how much at home she seemed amongst the men at work, when she chanced to go "forward" with Tommy and his sisters, as they skipped hither and thither: the rough, blue-shirted fellows took the quids out of their cheeks as soon as they saw the party coming from aft, and began to smirk, shoving the tar-buckets and ropes aside. One forenoon, an old lady under the poop awning, where she and her daughter were sewing together at a bright strip of needlework, asked me to hold her woollen yarns for her as she balled them off--being the red coat for a sepoy killing a tiger, which her daughter was making in yellow.