The mate upon this started and looked round, then aloft. "Confound it!" said he to himself, "if this breeze would only freshen! There _is_ a sort of set on the surface just now," continued he to me, coolly enough, "though how you idlers happened to have an idea of it, puzzles me, unless because you've nothing else to do but watch the water. Currents are pretty frequent hereabouts, however." "Dear me!" said I, "but if we should should--" "Stuff, sir!" said he quickly, "the coast here must be steep-to enough, I should think, since if it weren't for the haze, we'd have sighted it thirty miles off! What we want is wind--wind, to let's cross it." "But then a calm, Mr Finch," I said; "I'm hanged afraid of those calms!" "Well, well, sir," said he, not liking just to shake me off at once, after my proving less of a ninny in sea matters than he had supposed, "these long currents never set right ashore: even if we lose the wind, as we may soon, why, she'll take off into the eddy seaward, sir, if you _must_ know,--the dead-water in-shore, and the ebb-tide, always give it a safe turn!" All this, of course, was as much to satisfy himself as me. "Well, that's delightful!" said I, as if quite contented, and Mr Finch walked away hastily down one of the poop-ladders, no doubt glad to get rid of me in a decent manner, though I saw him next minute glancing in at the compass-boxes. "Keep her up to her course, sirrah; luff, d'ye hear!" said he to Jacobs, who was, perhaps, the best helmsman aboard. "She falls off tremendous bad, sir," answered Jacobs, with another whirl of the spokes; her want of actual headway making the Indiaman _sag_ dead away to leeward, as she shoved into the force of the sea-stream, running more and more direct upon her starboard bow. One minute the courses would sink in with a long sighing fall to the lower-masts, the next her topsails would flutter almost aback, and the heat even in the shadow of her awnings was extreme, yet she still seemed to have a breeze through the white glare aloft. I was determined to bring things to a point somehow or another, so I followed the mate down the steps. "Oh, by the bye, Mr Finch!" said I eagerly, "suppose one of those dreadful--what do you call 'em--ah, tornadoes--were to come on! I understand this is just the way, near Africa--baffling breeze--heat suffocating--hazy atmosphere--long swell--and current rising to the surface!" At this Finch stood up in a perfect fury. "What the devil d'ye mean, sir," said he, "by dodging me about the decks in this fashion, with these infernally foolish questions of yours?" "Oh, my fine fellow," thought I, "you shall settle with me for that." "Tornadoes never blow hereabouts, except off-shore, if you _must_ know, sir!" he rapped out, sticking his hands in his jacket-pockets as he said so, and taking a turn on the quarterdeck. "That's quite a mistake, I assure you, sir!" said I, carried away with the spirit of the thing: