Letters from the Cape | Page 4

a heat coming, one can't tell from whence. To-day, the sun is vertical and invisible, the sea glassy and heaving. I have been ill again, and obliged to lie still yesterday and the day before in the captain's cabin; to-day in my own, as we have the ports open, and the maindeck is cooler than the upper. The men have just been holystoning here, singing away lustily in chorus. Last night I got leave to sling my cot under the main hatchway, as my cabin must have killed me from suffocation when shut up. Most of the men stayed on deck, but that is dangerous after sunset on this African coast, on account of the heavy dew and fever. They tell me that the open sea is quite different; certainly, nothing can look duller and dimmer than this specimen of the tropics. The few days of trade wind were beautiful and cold, with sparkling sea, and fresh air and bright sun; and we galloped along merrily.
We are now close to the Cape de Verd Islands, and shall go inside them. About lat. 4 degrees N. we expect to catch the S.E. trade wind, when it will be cold again. In lat. 24 degrees, the day before we entered the tropics, I sat on deck in a coat and cloak; the heat is quite sudden, and only lasts a week or so. The sea to- day is littered all round the ship with our floating rubbish, so we have not moved at all.
I constantly long for you to be here, though I am not sure you would like the life as well as I do. All your ideas of it are wrong; the confinement to the poop and the stringent regulations would bore you. But then, sitting on deck in fine weather is pleasure enough, without anything else. In a Queen's ship, a yacht, or a merchantman with fewer passengers, it must be a delightful existence.
17th Aug.--Since I wrote last, we got into the south-west monsoon for one day, and I sat up by the steersman in intense enjoyment--a bright sun and glittering blue sea; and we tore along, pitching and tossing the water up like mad. It was glorious. At night, I was calmly reposing in my cot, in the middle of the steerage, just behind the main hatchway, when I heard a crashing of rigging and a violent noise and confusion on deck. The captain screamed out orders which informed me that we were in the thick of a collision-- of course I lay still, and waited till the row, or the ship, went down. I found myself next day looked upon as no better than a heathen by all the women, because I had been cool, and declined to get up and make a noise. Presently the officers came and told me that a big ship had borne down on us--we were on the starboard tack, and all right--carried off our flying jib-boom and whisker (the sort of yard to the bowsprit). The captain says he was never in such imminent danger in his life, as she threatened to swing round and to crush into our waist, which would have been certain destruction. The little dandy soldier-officer behaved capitally; he turned his men up in no time, and had them all ready. He said, 'Why, you know, I must see that my fellows go down decently.' S- was as cool as an icicle, offered me my pea-jacket, &c., which I declined, as it would be of no use for me to go off in boats, even supposing there were time, and I preferred going down comfortably in my cot. Finding she was of no use to me, she took a yelling maid in custody, and was thought a brute for begging her to hold her noise. The first lieutenant, who looks on passengers as odious cargo, has utterly mollified to me since this adventure. I heard him report to the captain that I was 'among 'em all, and never sung out, nor asked a question the while'. This he called 'beautiful'.
Next day we got light wind S.W. (which ought to be the S.E. trades), and the weather has been, beyond all description, lovely ever since. Cool, but soft, sunny and bright--in short, perfect; only the sky is so pale. Last night the sunset was a vision of loveliness, a sort of Pompadour paradise; the sky seemed full of rose-crowned amorini, and the moon wore a rose-coloured veil of bright pink cloud, all so light, so airy, so brilliant, and so fleeting, that it was a kind of intoxication. It is far less grand than northern colour, but so lovely, so shiny. Then the flying fish skimmed like silver swallows over the blue water. Such a sight! Also, I