"You must surely be tired by this time, ma'am, of this long-winded yarn of mine?" said the commander of the _Gloucester_ to the elder of his fair listeners, next evening they met with the evident expectation of hearing further; "but after all, this voyage must be dull work for you at present, so I daresay you are amused with anything by way of a change. "Well, one morning, when Westwood and I went on deck, it was a stark staring calm; as dead as a mill-pond, save for the long winding heave that seemed to come miles up out of the stale blue water, and get tired with the journey--from the horizon to us in one lazy coil, and on every side, just serving to jerk the wheel a spoke back and forward, with nobody at it. The very bits of pumpkin-paring and fat which the cook had thrown overboard the night before lay still alongside, with an oily track oozing round about them from the 'slush'[14]--the sails hanging from the yards, up and down, like clothes on a screen--and when you looked over the side away from the sun, you saw your own face, like a fellow's that had been long drowned, peering back at you, as it were, round the keel--in fact, there you scarce knew where the water _was_. [14] Cook's grease. "Somehow or other the ship kept sheering round, by little and little, till, although one had chosen a shady spot, all of a sudden the blazing sun came right into his eyes; or the single streak of white cloud lying behind you, to starboard, a while after stuck itself before your face from the very opposite quarter--you fancying, too, you had your eye the whole time on the same bit of water. Being lost in a wood or a fog was nothing to it, especially with the sun at noon drawn up right overhead, so that you couldn't look aloft, and staring down into the sea out of a pool of bright light; 'like one tremendously keen little eye,' as some of the passengers said, 'examining a big blind one.' 'Why,' put in one of the writers, 'I fear he wants to take the _mote_ out of his brother's eye--this vessel, that is to say!' 'Hang it, I hope not!' said Winterton, rather alarmed. 'He promises well to do it, then,' said another young civilian, 'but I wish he'd take the _beam_ out of his own first, ha, Smythe?' However, few men have the spirit to laugh at little in a calm near the Line, so Smythe gave no more than a sickly grin, while Westwood looked the clergyman very properly.