The romance of it all! What more romantic as a detail of ocean life would you have? Realize that little moonlighted brig rolling over the black heaven of the sea, Cape Horn not far off, the Cross and the Magellanic dust overhead, nothing in sight, the moon’s wake coiling in hills of silver under her, and in the heart of that lonely speck of brig two young people, again and again nearly rubbing cheeks together over a blank log book: one of them a fine, handsome Spanish woman, with dark eyes of fire and a smile that was like light with its swift disclosure of white teeth, and a beautiful little pale yellow hand that shone with jewels; and the other--and the other---- She looked at the clock, and started, with a Spanish exclamation, and said, “I will sing. You have been good. I will sing to you.” All this she said in English. Then, in dumb show, she played a phantom guitar, gazing at me with one of those asking looks which I could interpret as easily as I took sights. I shook my head to her signification of a guitar, and played on an imaginary fiddle; on which she nodded, crying with vivacity in Spanish, “It will do! It will do!” I put my head into the hatch and called for Jimmy. Galen sent the name forward in a roar, and the boy arrived. “Borrow me a fiddle,” said I. When he returned he held a fiddle and a fiddlestick; but this unusual appeal of the cabin to the forecastle had roused curiosity, and a number of the men followed Jimmy to the quarter-deck. I heard their softened footfalls, and caught a glimpse of their figures as they stood round about the skylight, scarce sensible that they were visible through the black glass. The lady took the fiddle and the bow from the lad, who withdrew. She put the fiddle to her neck, tuned it, and played a short, merry air. I had not known that she played the fiddle. I guessed she had asked for the instrument to twang an accompaniment upon. She played a second sweet and merry air; the melody was full of beauty and humor. Someone overhead tapped the deck in time to it. I took care not to look up, willing that the fellows should listen, though they had no business aft. “How do you like that?” said the lady in Spanish. “It is sweet and good. Give me more.” She put down the bow, and, laying the fiddle across her knees, twanged it. She kept her eyes fastened upon me, and, when she had tweaked the fiddlestrings, she shrugged her shoulders and laughed; then, before the laugh had fairly left her lips, she burst into song, singing with that clear, full-throated richness of voice which poor Greaves had predicted her the possessor of. She filled the cabin with her song. She would have filled the biggest theater in Europe with it. Her voice was thrilling with volume and power, and her eyes were full of a gay triumph as she sang, as though she would say, “This is news to you, my friend.”