A few moments later the order to square the yards thundered along the deck; the men rushed to the braces. Far off, up from the dusky, wizard south, the wind was coming as they fisted the canvas, and the _Emperor_, heeling over, gathered way and sped once more towards India. She gathered way faster and faster as outer jib and topsails were loosed and sheeted home, fore and main top-gallant sails and spanker yards braced sharp up, and main-sail, main-royal and mizzen top-gallant sails set, as well as jibs and staysails. She talked, as the sailors say, as she went through the water; she hummed and sang beneath the breeze that came up from far down by the Antarctic circle--a breeze whose cool breath was gone and was, instead, perfumed now by the warm spicy odours of adjacent Mauritius and Reunion. Away, over the vast waste of golden waters she flew, and the master, standing on the poop, called down to his first mate joyfully to ask him if this would not do well enough for Bombay. 'Ay, ay, sir,' answered Charke, turning round from giving orders to the men aloft to answer his chief. 'Ay, ay, sir.' While to himself he muttered: 'Bombay! India! Well, when we are there, all is ended for me!' CHAPTER X THE GROWING TERROR The sailor is, as all the world knows, a light-hearted, mercurial creature. Face to face with death in some form or other during every hour of his life--although, often, the mere presence of death is neither known nor suspected--he is only too elated and happy when momentarily without anything to cause him anxiety. Such was the case now with Captain Pooley, since his beautiful ship was rapidly picking up all the time she had lost by lack of wind and delays, 'and since,' as he jovially phrased it, 'all his new passengers were doing well.' 'First and foremost,' he said that evening, as he sat at the head of his table with Bella in the place of honour on his right hand, his wife on the left, and Mr. Fagg opposite to him, while his honest, sunburnt face gleamed rubicund beneath the inch of white under his hair which his cap had preserved from the sun, 'Bella's young man is all right. Then Bella's new plaything, the tiger, takes kindly to its lodgings--though you will have to sell it, my child, directly we get to Bombay, and distribute the money it fetches among the men. Then those wretched slaves--even they will eat and drink, won't they, Fagg?' 'Not much of that, sir,' the second mate answered, who was eating and drinking pretty well himself, however; 'they don't care to do much of either. They make a good deal of moaning up in that deck-cabin forward which you have given them. The woman, however, seems all right. I suppose the lieutenant has not been able to tell you much about the dhow yet, Miss Waldron?' he asked, bending forward a little as he addressed her.