The honest fellows, thoroughly wearied, were soon in the land of dreams. Haunted no more by visions of dancing spars, wet slippery ropes, yards dripping in the waves, and flapping sails struggling wildly for the freedom that must be their own destruction, and the whole ship’s company’s doom. No, their thoughts were of warm sanded parlours, cheerful coal-fires, endless pipes of tobacco, messmates singing, women dancing, the unrestrained festivities and flowing ale-jugs of the Fox and Fiddle. Perhaps, to the imagination of the youngest, a fair pale face, loving and tearful, stood out from all these jovial surroundings, and Slap-Jack felt a purer and a better man while, though but in imagination, he clasped his true and tender Alice to his heart once more. CHAPTER XXIX PORT WELCOME It was a refreshing sight to behold Slap-Jack, “rigged,” as he was pleased to term it, “to the nines,” in the extreme of sea-dandyism, enacting the favourite part of a “liberty-man” ashore. Nothing had been left undone for the brilliancy of his exterior that could be achieved by scrubbing, white linen, and robust health. The smart young captain of the foretop seemed to glow and sparkle in the vertical sun, as he stood on the quay of Port Welcome, and cast a final glance of professional approval on the yards he had lately squared to a nicety and the trim of such gear and tackle aloft as seemed his own especial pride and care. ‘The Bashful Maid,’ after all the buffetings she had sustained, particularly from the late squall, having made her port in one of the smallest and most beautiful of the West India islands, now lay at anchor, fair and motionless, like a living thing sleeping on the glistening sea. It yet wanted some hours of noon, nevertheless the sun had attained a power that seemed to bake the very stones on the quay, and warmed the clear limpid water fathom deep. Even Slap-Jack protested against the heat, as he lounged and rolled into the town, to find it swarming with negroes of both sexes, sparingly clothed, but with such garments as they did wear glowing in the gaudiest colours, and carrying on their hard, woolly heads baskets containing eggs, kids, poultry, fruit, vegetables, and every kind of market produce in the island. That island was indeed one of those jewels of the Caribbean Sea to which no description can do justice.