The captain gave him certain directions. He called to a couple of men, and amongst them--but I am unable to explain their procedure--they rigged up a chair attached by a tackle to a stay; they bound me securely in the chair, and by some machinery of ropes they gently and slowly hauled me on to the bowsprit, the captain and the boatswain sliding out in company. Mrs. Burke watched us with a countenance of fright: I felt excessively nervous whilst I was being drawn to the extremity of the great spar, and held my eyes closed, but did not shriek nor speak. Indeed, somehow I felt safe, though a landsman might have regarded my situation as in the last degree perilous. 'Now look at the ship and tell me what you think of her,' said the captain. They had got me to the end of the bowsprit sitting very comfortably and tightly secured in a chair, and the captain and boatswain were on either hand of me, though what they held on by I don't know. I looked, and what I saw I shall never forget. For there, right in front of me, heeled by the shouting wind, was the whole body of the ship, her milky whiteness, mounting to the royal yards, rounding into violet gloom from the sun, with gleaming half-moons of blue betwixt each yard, and every afterbreast sliding under the netted shadow of rigging. I rose high in my chair above the sea. Under me ran the blue surge sparkling deep and clear to the bows, where it burst into snowstorms. I commanded a clear view of the white decks through the arch of the foresail, a hundred shadows slipped along them as they slanted up and then slanted down with the rhythmic swing of a pendulum; a hundred fiery lights broke from all parts as the ship leaned to the sun. The wind was filled with the music of the rigging: deep organ notes, then a large swelling of fifes and trumpets, coming in a sudden gust or gun of wind, with a drum-like roll trembling out of the taut shrouds and backstays, and a ceaseless bugling in the hollow of the canvas that arched like some vast pinion close beside me. They carefully swayed my chair down the bowsprit and got me on to the forecastle. 'If this don't do you good, Miss Marie,' said my old nurse, extending her hand to help me on to my feet, 'what will?' CHAPTER VI A STRANGE MAN ON BOARD A few mornings after this, whilst we were at breakfast, the mate looked down upon us through the open skylight, and called out: 'There's a sail right ahead.' When we went on deck we found the vessel on the lee bow, within signalling distance. The wind was the tail of the trade, a fiery fanning out of north-north-east, with the loose scud brown as smoke flying down it. The sea was full of violet gleams and blinkings of froth; the billow ran without weight and its volume was small. It seemed as if the heat was sucking the wind out of the sky, and still we were a good many degrees north of the equator, though I cannot recollect the latitude.