"I must say, for Finch, he took my last move coolly enough, turning round to give me another look, after glancing at the card. 'Indeed!' said he, as if rather surprised; 'well, sir, I'm your man for _that_, though it can't be just as soon as to-morrow morning! A Company's officer may meet a lieutenant in the Navy any time--ay, and take his ship off the land too, I hope, sir!' and with that he walked off forward. 'Lieutenant!' said I to myself; 'how did he give me my commission so pat, I wonder?' and I pulled out another card, when I found, to my great annoyance, that in my hurry that morning I had happened to put on a coat of Westwood's by mistake, and instead of plain 'Mr Collins,' they were all 'Lieutenant Westwood, R.N.' 'Here's another confounded mess!' thought I, 'and all will be blown in the end!' However, on second thoughts, the notion struck me, that, by sticking to the name, as I must do _now_ at any rate, why, I should keep Westwood clear of all scrapes, which, in _his_ case, might be disagreeable enough; whereas, at present, he was known only as the Reverend Mr Thomas--and, as for _his_ either shamming the griffin, or giving hints how to work the ship, he was one of those men you'd scarce know for a sailor, by aught in his manner, at least: and, indeed, Tom Westwood always seemed to need a whole frigate's ways about him, with perhaps somewhat of a stir, to show what he really was. "Five minutes or so after this, it didn't certainly surprise me much to see the Indiaman laid on the opposite tack, with her head actually north-by-east, or within a few points of where the light haze faded into the sky: the mate seeming by this time to see the matter clearly, and quietly making his own of it. The ship began to stand over towards the outer set of the current, which could now be seen rippling along here and there to the surface, as the breeze fell slowly: you heard nothing save the faint plash of it astern under one counter, the wafting and rustling of her large main-course above the awnings, for she was covered over like a caravan--the slight flap of her jibs far ahead on the bowsprit startled you now and then as distinctly as if you got a fillip on your own nose; the stunsail, high up beside the weather-leech of her fore-topsail, hung slack over the boom, and one felt each useless jolt of the wheel like a foot-slip in loose sand when you want to run--all betwixt the lazy, listless voices of the passengers, dropping and dropping as separate as the last sands in an hour-glass. Still, every minute of air aloft helped her nearer to where you saw the water winding about the horizon in long swathes, as it were, bluer than the rest, and swelling brimful, so to speak, out of a line of light; with the long dents and bits of ripple here and there creeping towards it, till the whole round of the surface, as far as you could see, came out into the smooth, like the wrinkles on a nutmeg.