V

“Here’s the north,” he would say. “There’s the south. The wind’s coming from hereabouts. Now the brig is sailing due west; we’ve just lowered the top-boom mizzen; and so you see⁠—here, where this bit of grass is, she enters the current which you’ll find marked⁠—where’s my map and compasses, Bo’sun?⁠—Ah! thanks, that’ll do, where the snail shell is. The current catches her on the starboard side, so we must rig the jib-boom or we shall be carried to the larboard, which is where that beech leaf is⁠—for you must understand my dear⁠—” and so he would go on, and she would listen to every word; interpreting them rightly, so as to see, that is to say, without his having to tell her, the phosphorescence on the waves; the icicles clanking in the shrouds; how he went to the top of the mast in a gale; there reflected on the destiny of man; came down again; had a whisky and soda; went on shore; was trapped by a black woman; repented; reasoned it out; read Pascal; determined to write philosophy; bought a monkey; debated the true end of life; decided in favour of Cape Horn, and so on. All this and a thousand other things she understood him to say, and so when she replied, Yes, negresses are