"The decks were lively enough to look at; the men working quietly by twos and threes about the bulwarks all day long, and pairs of them to be made out at different points aloft, yarning away comfortably together, as the one passed the ball for the other's serving-mallet, with now a glance at the horizon, and now a grin at the passengers below, or a cautious squint at the top of the mate's cap. White awnings triced over poop and quarter-deck, the cover of the waist hammock-netting clean scrubbed, and the big shady main-course half brailed-up, rustling and bulging above the boats and booms amidships; every hatchway and door with a round funnel of a wind-sail swelling into it, and their bellies moving like so many boa-constrictors come down from aloft, and going in to catch cadets. You saw the bright white sky dazzling along under the awning-cheeks, that glared on it like snow; and the open quarter-deck ports let in so many squares of shifting blue light, with a draught of air into the hot carronade muzzles, that seem to gasp for it, with their red tompions stuck out like tongues. The very look of the lifting blue water on the shady side was refreshing, and the brighter the light got, _it_ grew the darker blue. You listened for every cool splash of it on the bends, and every rustle of the canvas aloft; and instead of thinking, as the landsmen did, of green leaves and a lazy nook for shelter, why to my fancy there's a great deal more satisfaction in good _dark blue_, with a spray over the cathead to show you're going, and with somewhat to go for! For want of better, one would have given his ears to jump in head-foremost, and have a first-rate bathe--the very sea itself kept rising up alongside, to make an easy dive for one, and sinking into little round troughs again, where the surges would have sprinkled over your head. Now and then a bigger wave than ordinary would go swelling up, and out sprang a whole glittering shower of flying-fish, freckling the dark side with drops, and went flittering over into the next, or skimming the crests out of sight into a hollow.