"You have travelled this road before, Mr. Blunt, I perceive. I have suspected you of being a brother chip, from the moment I saw you first put your foot on the side-cleets in getting out of the boat. You did not come aboard parrot-toed, like a country-girl waltzing; but set the ball of the foot firmly on the wood, and swung off the length of your arms, like a man who knows how to humour the muscles. Your present remark, too, shows you understand where a ship ought to be, in order to be in her right place. As for the trades, they are a little uncertain, like a lady's mind when she has more than one good offer; for I've known them to blow as high as thirty, and then again, to fail a vessel as low as twenty-three, or even lower. It is my private opinion, gentlemen, and I gladly take this opportunity to make it public, that we are on the edge of the trades, or in those light baffling winds which prevail along their margin, as eddies play near the track of strong steady currents in the ocean. If we can force the ship fairly out of this trimming region--that is the word, I believe, Mr. Dodge--we shall do well enough; for a north-east, or an east wind, would soon send us up with the islands, even under the rags we carry. We are very near the coast, certainly--much nearer than I could wish; but when we do get the good breeze, it will be all the better for us, as it will find us well to windward."
"But these trades, Captain Truck?" asked Eve: "if they always blow in the same direction, how is it possible that the late gale should drive a ship into the quarter of the ocean where they prevail?"
"Always, means sometimes, my dear young lady. Although light winds prevail near the edge of the trades, gales and tremendous fellows too, sometimes blow there also, as we have just seen. I think we shall now have settled weather, and that our chance of a safe arrival, more particularly in some southern American port, is almost certain, though our chance for a speedy arrival be not quite as good I hope before twenty-four hours are passed, to see our decks white with sand.
"Is that a phenomenon seen here?" asked the father.
"Often, Mr. Effingham, when ships are close in with Africa, and are fairly in the steady winds. To say the truth, the country abreast of us, some twenty or thirty miles distant, is not the most inviting; and though it may not be easy to say where the garden of Eden is, it is no hazardous to say it is not there."