‘You mean, of course,’ said I, ‘that no letter can reach her under seven or eight months, unless, indeed, you conveyed one to her by a homeward-bound ship.’ ‘Ay; but putting the homeward-bound ship aside, Fanny could not knew of my resolution--were it ever to come to _that_--until she received the letter I posted to her in India; therefore, I should have to consider myself engaged to her all that time.’ ‘No doubt,’ said I, beginning to feel bored. ‘Miss Temple would take that view,’ said he, ‘and that’s why I don’t choose to tell her the truth.’ ‘I don’t quite follow your logic,’ I exclaimed; ‘but no matter. It may be that you want too much in the way of sweethearts. But so far as your secret goes, you can trust me to hold my tongue. Possibly, I may admire Miss Temple as warmly as you do; see qualities in her superior even to her excellence as a mistress of postures; but I do not yet love her so passionately as not to wish to see her chastened a bit by the lesson she is likely to learn from your delight in her society.’ ‘I don’t understand,’ he exclaimed, lazily knocking the ashes of his pipe out through the open porthole. ‘Neither do I,’ cried I, springing to my legs with a loud yawn. ‘Heaven bless us, my dear Colledge! here are we now, I daresay, a fair thousand miles from the nearest African headland. Surely we are distant enough from all civilisation, then, to be clear of the influence of the girls! Take my advice, and keep your heart whole till you get to India. There may be a Princess waiting for you there, more likely to value a tiger-hide offering than Miss Temple; whilst Miss Crawley’s broken heart will mend apace when she learns that your wife has a black skin.’ ‘Oh, hang it all!’ I heard him begin; but I was sick of the subject, and sauntered forth to see what was doing on deck. There was very little wind; indeed, here and there about the sea were glass-like swathes riding the quiet pulse of the long slow swell in scythe-shaped horns, as though, in fact, there was to be a dead calm anon. Only the topmost and lightest canvas was asleep; the heavier cloths hung up and down with no more of life in them than what they got out of the heave of the ship; and deep as we yet were in the heart of the North Atlantic, there was, it seemed to me, a true tropic touch in the aspect of things--in the clear pale blue of the sky; in the sluggish crawling of the clouds, with their rounded brows stealing out in a copperish hue; in the wavering of the atmosphere over the hot line of the bulwarks, as though there was a sort of steam going up from the wood; in the parched look of the running-gear, and in the salt glistening of the white planks; in the figures of crimson-faced men, their feet naked, their arms and chests bare, again and again coming to the great scuttle butt, lashed a bit forward of the gangway, and drinking from the metal dipper.