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Updated: June 10, 2025
Then both parrots rapped their beaks genially against the bars of the cages and beamed on the lady with their little button eyes. "Well, I swow!" ejaculated the Cap'n, rubbing his knurly forefinger under his nose, and glancing first at the parrots and then at the lady. "If that ain't as much of an astonisher as when the scuttle-butt danced a jig on the dog-vane!
For the fool's judgment is a dog-vane that turns with a breath, and the cheat watches the clouds and sets his weathercock by them, so that one shall often see by their pointing which way the winds of heaven are blowing, when the slow-wheeling arrows and feathers of what we call the Temples of Wisdom are turning to all points of the compass.
And here he would chalk out diagrams of great fleet engagements; making marks, like the soles of shoes, for the ships, and drawing a dog-vane in one corner to denote the assumed direction of the wind. This done, with a cutlass he would point out every spot of interest.
For the fool's judgment is a dog-vane that turns with a breath, and the cheat watches the clouds and sets his weathercock by them, so that one shall often see by their pointing which way the winds of heaven are blowing, when the slow-wheeling arrows and feathers of what we call the Temples of Wisdom are turning to all points of the compass.
The captain was "having a stretch" below; the men snoozing away on the deck forwards in all sorts of odd corners; the officer of the watch blinking as he squinted aloft to see if the dog-vane stirred with any passing breath of air; even the steersman was nodding over the helm, as the wheel rotated round to port or starboard as it listed, according as the ship rose or fell on the long heavy rolling swell that undulated over the bosom of the deep; and most of the passengers were in the same somnolent state when all at once an event occurred that soon broke the monotony of the afternoon, waking up the sleepy ones to fresh vitality, for an object of interest had at last arisen in the uneventful day sufficient for the moment to enchain their attention.
The schooner had all her sails set, though at present they were useless; but on looking over the side I observed cat's-paws playing on the surface of the ocean. Now they appeared, now they vanished, but as yet we had not felt the slightest breath of wind. Presently, however, I saw the dog-vane rise and flutter slightly; again it drooped.
"I answered her questions, Mr. Griffith, as any civil man would to a woman he loved. The girl has as much curiosity as one of my own townswomen who has weathered cape forty without a husband, and her tongue goes like a dog-vane in a calm, first one way and then another. But here is her dictionary.
It was on a cloudless day, when scarcely a breath of air puffed out the sails, and the dog-vane drooped lazily, as if desponding at having nothing to do, that Hubert was looking listlessly over the stern, marking how the wide expanse of the sea was heaving and swelling like a vast carpet of silk upraised and then drawn down again by some giant hand. Suddenly he cried out,
Directly afterwards the latter shouted, "All hands on deck, and shorten sail." The men came rapidly tumbling up from below, some looking round astonished at hearing the order, seeing that the dog-vane was still hanging up and down the rigging. They sprang immediately aloft and the sails were rapidly furled. "Starboard the helm," shouted the lieutenant, gazing round the horizon as he did so.
Mr Vanslyperken looked at the dog-vane, and perceived that the wind was foul for sailing, and moreover, it would be dark in two hours, so he determined upon not starting till the next morning, and then he thought that he would punish Jemmy Ducks; but the question occurred to him whether he could do so or not. Was James Salisbury a boatswain by right or not?
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