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He manufactured a windsail outside the carriage window, which brought in a little breeze during the airless heat of mid-day. He contrived to get cool drinks and improvised for her head a cushion out of his rolled up poncho, a silk handkerchief and a large cold cabbage leaf against which she leaned her hot forehead. In all his actions she watched him with a curious blend of feelings.
Without a sound, then, he scrambled out on deck through the number one hatch. A windsail rigged down there swung against him accidentally, and he remembered that the light touch of the canvas on his face nearly knocked him off the hatchway ladder. 'He confessed that his knees wobbled a good deal as he stood on the foredeck looking at another sleeping crowd.
In the captain's cabin, where the presence of the governor, our passenger, still kept up the strait-laced etiquette of the service, coats and epaulettes appeared at dinner; but in the gun-room, the officers, the instant they came below, slipped on their light white jackets, and, disdaining waistcoat, seized their flutes and books, and drew their chairs as near as possible to the mouth of the windsail.
Our huge windsail flapped or bellied as the breeze fell or rose; the waves thumped familiarly against the sides; the masthead lantern burned clear as a star; and the real stars swung up and down as the bowsprit curtsied to each wave. In the intervals between songs a hush would fall upon us, and the sea noises were like effects in a theatre.
Scarcely had he gone when an immense current of water came down upon the head of the suffering Tickler, and which he was assured was nothing more than the tail-end of a water-spout, though in truth it was poured from buckets in the hands of a cunning rogue concealed in the windsail close by.
There she sat, hour after hour, beneath the shade of the large windsail, which served in all Alexandrian houses the double purpose of a shelter from the sun and a ventilator for the rooms below; and her eye roved carelessly over that endless sea of roofs and towers, and masts, and glittering canals, and gliding boats; but she saw none of them nothing but one beloved face, lost, lost for ever.
As usual, when displeased, he referred to his snuff-box, muttering something, in which the word "annoying" could only be distinguished. The breeze from the windsail blew some of the snuff out of the box into the eyes of Macallan. "I wish to Heaven you would be more careful, Courtenay," cried the surgeon, in an angry tone, and stamping with the pain.
I had grown so suspicious of the wreck, that it was a positive relief to me to look down into the hold, and see it full, or nearly full, of undeniable rice packed in the Chinese fashion in boluses of matting. Breakfast over, Johnson and the hands turned to upon the cargo; while Nares and I, having smashed open the skylight and rigged up a windsail on deck, began the work of rummaging the cabins.
It was such a strange scene to me, and so confined and dark, that, at first, I could make out hardly anything; but, by degrees, it cleared, as my eyes became more accustomed to the gloom, and I seemed to stand in a picture by OSTADE. Among the great beams, bulks, and ringbolts of the ship, and the emigrant-berths, and chests, and bundles, and barrels, and heaps of miscellaneous baggage 'lighted up, here and there, by dangling lanterns; and elsewhere by the yellow daylight straying down a windsail or a hatchway were crowded groups of people, making new friendships, taking leave of one another, talking, laughing, crying, eating and drinking; some, already settled down into the possession of their few feet of space, with their little households arranged, and tiny children established on stools, or in dwarf elbow-chairs; others, despairing of a resting-place, and wandering disconsolately.
Coombes was not sitting on the bell-keys, where I looked for her first, for the wind blew down the tower in many currents and draughts how it did roar up there as if the louvres had been a windsail to catch the wind and send it down to ventilate the church! she was sitting at the foot of the chancel-rail, with her stocking as usual.
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