A Divine Providence must have watched over us during the voyage and have
preserved us from danger; for though at that season bad storms are by no
means unknown, the weather remained settled and fine. With clear water
under our keel we passed shoal and reef and low-lying island. Now we saw a
Tonquinese trader running before the wind, a curious craft, with one mast
and a single sail bent to a yard at the head and stiffened by bamboo sprits
running from luff to leech; now a dingy nondescript junk; now in the offing
a fleet of proas, which caused us grave concern. But in all our passage
only one event was really worth noting.
When we were safely beyond London Reefs and the Fiery Cross, we laid our
course north by east to pass west of Macclesfield Bank. All was going as
well as we had dared expect, so willing was every man of our little
company, except possibly the man from Boston, whom I suspected of a
tendency to shirk, when late one evening the cook came aft with a very long
face.
"Well," said Roger, his eyes a-twinkle. "What's wrong in the galley,
doctor?"
"Yass, sah, yass, sah! S'pose, sah, you don't' know dah's almost no mo'
wateh foh to drink, sah."
"What's that you say?"
"Yass, sah, yass, sah, we done share up with dat yeh Kipping and dah ain't
no mo' to speak of at all, sah.
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