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"Well, all that night it blew a soft, quiet wind, but for hours next
day 'twas all dead calm, a light swell, the sunlight coming off the
water hot as steam, and the yacht slewing round and round as if, like
the rest of us, she was trying to find out where the wind meant to
come from next. I never saw any man fret more over a calm than Mr.
Robinson did over that. The lady didn't appear discomposed; she sat
under the awning reading, and once when Mr. Robinson turned to look at
her she ran her shining black eyes with a smiling roll around the sea,
that was just the same as if she had said, 'Isn't it big enough?' for
hang me if even I couldn't read the language in them sparklers of hers
when she chose to lift the eyelashes off their meaning, unaccustomed
as Jacob Williams ever was to female ways and the customs they pursue!
But Mr. Robinson couldn't keep quiet. He kept on asking of me when I
thought the wind was coming, and he was constantly getting up and
staring round, and I'd notice he was always letting his cigar go out,
which is a sure sign that either a man don't care about smoking, or
else he's got something weighing upon his spirits. P'raps, thought I,
it's stipulated that he's not to get married anywhere but in the port
we're bound to, and that the license don't run so long as to allow for
calms; but this I said to myself, with a wink at my own thoughts, for,
though there's a good many things in this 'ere yearth that I don't
understand, I must tell you Jacob Williams wasn't born without a mind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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