of blood-red radiance flowing down to the ship from the horizon, and making a sparkling scarlet of the fabric’s glossy sides, and putting a crimson star of splendour into every window, with the sweep of the dark-blue sea coursing in long lines into the east, that showed in a liquid softness of violet past the wan spaces of the far overhanging studdingsails. In this same week about which I am writing, Mr. Colledge, inspired possibly by the noise of the fiddles forward and the spectacle of the forecastle jinks, made an effort to get up a dance aft; but to no purpose. Some of the girls looked eagerly when the thing was suggested; and certainly Colledge’s programme was a promising one: there was the wide spread of awning for a ballroom ceiling; there were flags in abundance to stretch between the ridge-rope and the rail, as a wall of radiant colours through which the moon would sift her delicate tender haze without injury to the light of the lanterns, which were to be hung in a row on either side fore and aft; there was the piano to rouse up from its moorings below, and to be secured on some part of the deck where its tinkling could be everywhere heard. There was also a quiet sea, and a deck whose gentle cradling could but serve as a pulse to the joyous revolutions of the waltz. Colledge was enchanted with his scheme, and went about thirstily in the prosecution of it; but, as I have said, to no purpose. Colonel Bannister shouted with derision when asked if he would dance; Greenhew was not yet well of his eye, was extremely sulky, and hung about in retired places; Riley called dancing a bore; Fairthorne pleaded tender feet; little Saunders smote his breast to Colledge’s inquiry and said plaintively: ‘Who would stand up with _me_?’ In short, every man-jack of us aft, saving Mr. Johnson and myself, declined to take any active part in the proposed ball; and Colledge, with a face of loathing, abandoned the idea, vowing to me that he had never met with such a pack of scarecrows in his life, and that we should have been better off in the direction of jollity and companionship had the cargo of monkeys been spared to take the place of our male passengers.