sking of me when I
thought the wind was coming, and he was constantly getting up and
staring round, and I'd notice he was always letting his cigar go out,
which is a sure sign that either a man don't care about smoking, or
else he's got something weighing upon his spirits. P'raps, thought I,
it's stipulated that he's not to get married anywhere but in the port
we're bound to, and that the license don't run so long as to allow for
calms; but this I said to myself, with a wink at my own thoughts, for,
though there's a good many things in this 'ere yearth that I don't
understand, I must tell you Jacob Williams wasn't born without a mind.

"Well, time went on, and then a head-wind sprung up, with a short,
spiteful sea. I kept the yacht under a press, according to orders, and
the driving of her close-hauled, every luff trembling and the foam to
leeward as high as the rail, fairly smothered the vessel forward;
whilst as to her movements, it was dreary and aching enough, I can
tell you, the wind sweeping out of clouds of spray forward and
splitting with shrieks upon the ropes, and the canvas soaking up the
damp till every stretch might have been owned for the matter of color
by a coalman. 'Twas 'bout ship often enough, Mr. Robinson being full
of anxiety and impatience, and watching the compass for a shift of
wind as if he was a cat and there was a mouse in the binnacle. I could
have sworn the handsome party would have been beam-ended by the dance;
it turned the stomachs of two of the crew, anyhow, and one of them
said that if he had known the 'Evangeline' was to cross the bay, he'd
have found another ship; yet the lady took no notice of the weather.
She'd come up dressed in waterproofs, and her beautiful face shining
with the big eyes in it out of a hood; and the more the sea troubled
the schooner, the more the vessel labored and showed herself uneasy,
the more the lady would look pleased, laughing out at times, with
plenty of music in her voice, I allow, but with a something in it and
in the gleaming stare she'd keep on the plunging and streaming bows,
that made me calculate--don't know why, I'm sure--that lovely as she
was and beautiful as she was shaped, there was no more heart inside of
her than there's pearls in cockles.

"Well, we had two days of this, passing a good many vessels; both
steam and sail, that were getting all they could out of what was
baffling us; then there was a shift of wind; it fell light, everything