Miss Temple wanted me to ask Captain Braine to run the _Lady Blanche_ into speaking distance of the brig, that we might ascertain where she was bound to and get on board of her. ‘For she may be sailing,’ she said, ‘to some South American port that will be, comparatively speaking, close at hand, where we shall be easily able to find a ship to convey us home.’ But after thinking a little, I decided to keep quiet. It would not sound very graciously to request Captain Braine to tranship us into an outward-bound vessel: nor would it be wise to put him to the trouble of deviating from his course merely, perhaps, to ascertain that the brig was bound round the Horn to parts more distant than the Mauritius. Besides, I had no wish to court a blunt refusal from Captain Braine to put his vessel within hailing distance of another until a real opportunity to get to England should present itself by some homeward-bound ship passing close; when, of course, I should take my chance of his assent or refusal. So I suffered the brig to veer away out of sight without speaking to the captain about her, or even appearing to again heed her after I had come down from aloft. It was a terribly dull, anxious, weary time; I am speaking of those two uneventful days. The hot breeze had drawn abeam, and blew feverishly under a cloudless sky that was a dazzle of brass all about the sun from morn till evening. We showed royals and a foretopmast-studdingsail to it, and drove along over the smooth plain with half a fathom’s height of foam at the cutwater, and a spin and hurry of snow alongside that made the eyes which watched it reel. I entered the day’s work and the necessary observations, and so forth, in the log-book in compliance with the captain’s request. He was delighted with my handwriting, sat contemplating it with his unwinking gaze for some considerable time, as though it were a picture, and then, drawing a deep breath, exclaimed: ‘There’s no question but that eddication’s a first-class article. Look at your writing alongside of mine, and at mine alongside of Chicken’s. Chicken and me was brought up in the same college—a ship’s forecastle, and so far from standing amazed at my own fist and that there spelling, I’m only astonished that I’m able to read or write at all.”