“I will make you an accomplished cavalier. I will teach you to tell fortunes after the manner of the zingari, and you shall teach me English, and give me your company until I tire, or until the ship calls you from me.” We broke off here that I might fetch my quadrant, for it was drawing on to the hour of noon. Our conversation was not as I have set it down; it took us a long while to work our way through the above; but what you have read is the substance of what was meant and by our methods conveyed. I went on deck puzzled and tickled, amused and astonished by the gay-spirited, fine woman below. Did she mean to make love to me? Did she intend that I should make love to her? What would my teaching her English and her teaching me Spanish, her singing to me, her recital of swelling Spanish rhymes, her gypsy tricks, and the rest of it end in--the rest of it, I say, backed by her impassioned eyes, the many arch and moving and tender and fiery expressions of countenance she was mistress of, her excellent person, and all that sort of sweet rhetoric which is found, the poet tells you, in the laughter and tears, the smiles and gesticulations, of a lady after the pattern of this Spanish maiden? I took my quadrant on deck; the sun did not show himself, and I got at the situation of the brig by dead reckoning. The westerly gale blew fresh and strong, and I needed to keep the vessel under the tall canvas of the topgallant sail to run her free of the huge Horn surge, which chased us as though to the hurl of an earthquake. It was impossible to make too much of such a wind; at any moment might come a greasy Horn calm with a swell like a land of hills; to be swept with horrible suddenness by a black outfly right ahead. I saw no ice; the horizon lay open, distant seven or eight miles from the head of a sea. We were cutting the meridians spankingly, and three days of such sailing would enable me to head the brig northward for England. And very nearly three days of such sailing did we get, during which nothing noteworthy happened, for the plain reason that so heavy and violent were the motions of the brig, the most seasoned among us found it difficult to come and go. Relieving tackles were hooked on; two hands steered day and night, and a third was always near in readiness. I have seen the gigantic feathering curl of the huge sea soar on either hand alongside to half the height of the foremast and fall aboard in froth, making it all sheer dazzle, like snow shone on, from the eyes to the main rigging, till the tilt of the brig aft, courtesying with her bows flat as a spoon upon the roaring smother of the on-rushing sea, sent the water in a cataractal sweep over the head, where it blew up in white smoke and drove away as though we were on fire.