We took the north-east trades on the Canary parallels; but they blew a very light breeze, occasionally failing us, indeed, with more than once a positive hint of a shift in the western sky, though no change happened. Captain Keeling declared that in all his time he never remembered the like of so faint a trade-wind. Indeed, it threatened us with a long passage to the equator, and again and again I would feel as vexed as if I had had command of the ship, and my reputation depended upon her progress, when I’d come on deck and find the long blue heave of the swell gushing to our port quarter, just freckled by the delicate soft wind, with scarce a ripple of weight enough to run into foam, the weather clew of the mainsail swinging in and out, and the big topsails, to the curtseying of the ship upon the swell, coming into the masts with short slaps, which made each sheet hum like a twanged harp-wire through its yard-arm sheave-hole. Very different was all this from my own experience of the trades when, for days and days, from twenty-seven degrees north down to within thirty leagues of the equator, it had been one long wild thunderous spell of sailing, foam to the hawse-pipes, every yard and studdingsail boom straining at its brace as a racer at its bridle, the white water to leeward flashing past in a dazzle, like foam from the sponsons of a paddle-steamer, and all day long a fine noise of wind roaring between the masts, and on high the wool-like clouds of the trades blowing, charged with prismatic hues, transversely across the line of our course. Yet we managed to kill the time with some degree of entertainment to ourselves. Mr. Greenhew and Mr. Riley were head over ears in love with Miss Hudson, and were beginning to talk sarcasm at each other when there were people near to listen to their conversation. Mr. Fairthorne was paying very marked attention to Miss Mary Joliffe. Mynheer Peter Hemskirk seemed to find something agreeable in the company of Miss Helen Trevor, an exceedingly fat, blue-eyed girl, with a bunch of flaxen ringlets falling before each ear, and her hair behind dragged up to a tall comb that sat in an odd staring way upon her head. There was some sport in all this for quiet observation. Then there was always a rubber of whist to be had. Though Colonel Bannister was often in too peppery a humour to play, his aristocratic falcon-beaked wife was ever ready and eager to take a hand, and partners were never to be wanting when Mr. Adam or Mr. Saunders or Mr. Hodder was about. Colledge and I were good friends, and had long yarns together in our cabin and on deck. It was, maybe, because we shared a berth that I was more with him than with the others, though Mr. Johnson once attempted a stroke of irony by saying that of course my intimacy with Mr. Colledge had nothing whatever to do with the circumstance of his being the son of a lord, ‘which,’ added he, ‘speaks well for your heart, Dugdale, for he has very many excellent qualities.’