A dead calm, and nothing to do but kill time.
Dodd had put down Neptune: that old blackguard could no longer row out on
the ship's port side and board her on the starboard, pretending to come
from ocean's depths; and shave the novices with a rusty hoop and dab a
soapy brush in their mouths. But champagne popped, the sexes flirted, and
the sailors span fathomless yarns, and danced rattling hornpipes, fiddled
to by the grave Fullalove. " If there is a thing I _can_ dew, it's
fiddle," said he. He and his friend, as he systematically called
Vespasian, taught the crew Yankee steps, and were beloved. One honest
saltatory British tar offered that Western pair his grog for a week. Even
Mrs. Beresford emerged, and walked the deck, quenching her austere
regards with a familiar smile on Colonel Kenealy, her escort. This
gallant good-natured soldier flattered her to the nine, and, finding her
sweeten with his treacle, tried to reconcile her to his old friend Dodd.
Straight she soured, and forbade the topic imperiously.
By this time the mates and midshipmen of the _Agra_ had fathomed their
captain.
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