"I stared at him for a moment, and then--'Sir,' said I, coolly, 'it seems the whole matter goes by names; but if my name were the devil or the Apostle Paul, I don't see how it can make a bit of difference in _me_: what's more, sir,' said I, setting my teeth, 'what_ever_ my name may be, depend upon it, I shall never claim acquaintance either with you or--or--Miss Hyde!' With that I flung straight out of the cabin, leaving the old gentleman bolt upright on the floor, and as dumb as a stock-fish, whether with rage or amazement I never stopped to think. "I went right forward on the Indiaman's forecastle, clear of all the awnings, dropped over her head out of sight of the men, and sat with my legs amongst the open woodwork beneath the bowsprit, looking at the calm--nobody in sight but the Hindoo figure, who seemed to be doing the same. _Westwood!_ thought I, bitterly; then in a short time, when the mistake's found out, and he got safe past the Cape, perhaps--it'll be nothing but Westwood! He'll have a clear stage, and all favour; but at any rate, how_ever_ it may be, _I_'ll not be here, by Heaven, to see it. That cursed councillor of his, I suppose, is another nabob--and no doubt he'll marry her, all smooth! Uncles--I little thought, by Jove! when I knocked off that yarn to the mate about _my_ uncle--but, after all, it's strange how often a fellow's paid back in his own coin! "The heat at the time was unbearable--_heat_, indeed! 'twasn't only heat--but a heavy, close, stifling sort of feeling, like in a hot-house, as if you'd got a weight on your head and every other bit of you: the water one time so dead-blue and glassy between the windings of it, that the sky seemed to vanish, and the ship looked floating up into where _it_ was--then again you scarce knew sea from air, except by the wrinkles and eddies running across each other between, toward a sullen blue ring at the horizon--like seeing through a big twisted sieve, or into a round looking-glass all over cracks. I heard them clue up everything aloft, except the topsails--and _they_ fell slapping back and forward to the masts, every now and then with a _thud_ like a thousand spades clapped down at once over a hollow bit of ground--till all seemed as still between as if they'd buried something. I wished to Heaven it were what I _felt_ at the time, and the thought of Violet Hyde, that I might be as if I never had seen her--when on glancing up betwixt the figure-head and the ship's stern, it struck me to notice how much the land on her starboard bow and beam seemed to have risen, even during the last hour, and that without wind; partly on account of its clearing in that quarter, perhaps; but the nearest points looked here and there almost as if you could see into them, roughening barer out through the hue of the distance, like purple blotches spreading in it. Whereas, far away astern of us, when I crossed over her headworks, there were two or