"Land dangerous, sir!" answered he carelessly, as he went on wiping his quadrant again; "who put _that_ into your head?" "Oh, well," returned I, just as carelessly, "if it's to leeward of course,--or with a current taking you towards it,--only then. But I've no doubt, Mr Finch, if this wind _were_ to--ah--you know, heave more abaft, that's to say, get stronger, the craft would at least stand still, till you got her--" "What on earth _are_ you talking about, Mr Ford--Collins, I mean?" asked he sharply. "Really, sir, I've got something more to attend to at present, than such trash about a current, and the devil knows what else!" "How, why, Mr Finch!" said I, seemingly surprised in my turn, "_are_ we not in a current just now, then?" "Current!" replied Finch, almost laughing outright, "what _does_ the man mean?" "Why every one thinks so, in the cuddy," said I, as if rather taken aback, and venturing what you fair ladies call a 'fib,'--"ever since we picked up the bottle last night." This, by the bye, had got spread through some of the men to the passengers, though, of course, nobody knew what had been in it yet. "_There_, I declare now," continued I, pointing to our lee-bow, where I'd had my eyes fixed during the five minutes we spoke, "we can try it again; do you see that bird yonder on the water?" The mate turned his head impatiently, and "Look, watch him, sir," said I. This was a tired man-o'-war bird afloat about twenty fathoms off, with its sharp white wings stretched just clear of the water, and its black eye sparkling in the sunlight, as it came dipping on the long smooth hot-blue swell into the lee of the ship's lofty hull, till you saw its very shadow in the glitter below it. The Indiaman seemed to pass him as if he rode there at anchor; only the curious thing was, that the bird apparently neared her up from leeward, crossing her larboard quarter within a fathom or two, when all of a sudden he got becalmed, as it were, in the wake right astern, and by the time either of us could walk to the ship's taffrail, she was close over him; as if, whenever her hull was end-on, it took his surface-drift away from him, and, what was more, as if the _ship_ kept hold of it--her eighteen feet or so to his little inch of a draught--for it couldn't be owing to the wind. However, the man-o'-war bird took offer of the next swell to get air in his wings, and rose off the heave of it with a sharp bit of a scream, away after some black boobies diving for fish, which no doubt he would catch, as they dropped them at sight of him.