Noah bore on his breast, engraved in gunpowder, a little romance of his younger days--a sailor and a girl standing on the sea-shore. In the background (or offing, to speak more correctly) lay a ship, with her topsails loose, hove-apeak to her anchor, while the smoke from a gun--the signal for sea--curled over her quarter. Under the male figure were the initials "N.G.," and under the girl's were--what we won't say, for in them, lay the pet secret of old Noah's honest heart. The ship, however, he often pointed to with pride, saying it was a "lovely pictur' of her Majesty's ship the _Haurora_, of fifty guns, as was--an ugly smoke-jack now, with a screw-propeller in her starn."
The weather was cool, almost cold, at times, and frequently icebergs were in sight, with their white glistening pinnacles standing sharply defined against the sky, and shaded off with pale green or purple tints, that blended with the deep blue of the sea.
Tom Bartelot's cheerful temperament, his songs and his bonhomie, and Morrison's queer legends of Scotland and the sea, together with grave and earnest advice, and confidence in a Providence who ordered all things for the best, had a good effect upon Morley Ashton's spirits, which might have sunk, circumstanced as he was, amid the monotony of a sea voyage, with foreshadowed fears of evil tidings on reaching the Isle of France, after making a tour so circuitous as Tasmania.
Ignorant of the unlooked-for detention of the _Hermione_ at the Canaries, and of the series of foul winds she had encountered, Morley never doubted that now the Bassets must have reached their destination, and been installed in their new home; that Mr. Basset must have entered on his official duties, and if they were accompanied by one so enterprising as Cramply Hawkshaw, it was difficult to foretell how Cupid and Fortune--blind deities both--might reward his perseverance, and thus cast a fatal blight upon the hopes of our hero who, like a poor "pilgrim of the heart," or a knight-errant of old, was traversing the sea from shore to shore in search of a lost love.
One day, as Morley trod the deck to and fro listlessly, he was startled by the unusual, or, at least, unexpected cry of--