In Hazard Read Online Free Page B

Rabb? And the young are so deceitful.
    However, it was not his business: this was not even his ship. But he hoped Captain Theobald, of the “Descartes,” would prove more serious-minded.
    Dick Watchett liked Mr. Rabb, as did all juniors who came in contact with him. The midshipmen adored him. And indeed he was a likeable person, with his crisp hearty voice, his clean mind, and his courteous manner with the young or the poor—the best type of Englishman.

Chapter II
(The Beginning)
    â€œArchimedes” left Norfolk at four the next afternoon, passing down the Elizabeth river into Hampton Roads. Craney Island Lighthouse—thought Dick Watchett—looked like a Swiss Châlet on stilts. The yellow shore was low and flat, with sandy beaches: the Roads full of traffic—Bay steamers, chiefly, and long strings of lighters.
    By half past six they were off Cape Henry, and there dropped the pilot.
    Vessels bound south keep close to Cape Henry, inside the banks. It is a strange coast, from there down to Cape Hatteras; most of it just a low stretch of beach dividing the inland waters from the ocean: a rather vague limit for so great a continent. That far, Captain Edwardes’s course lay inshore. But south of Cape Hatteras the coast falls away to the westward: at Cape Hatteras, therefore, at three in the morning, “Archimedes” said goodbye to North America, shaping a course for the West Indian island of San Salvador.
    That day was fine and clear. The sea and sky were a dark blue, the few clouds white and fleecy. Although it was now late autumn, summer seemed to have returned. For, once they were through the Gulf Stream, the sun, undeterred by cloud or mist, made up for the lateness of the season by the strength a southern latitude lent it. “Archimedes” was alone in the sea, and land newly forgotten—that time when everyone in a ship is at his happiest.
    Alone, that is to say, except for the dolphins. For the stem of the ship, cutting through the violet glass, tossed glittering piles of the whitest foam outwards: and deep in the heart of that glass the dancing dolphins were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. A dozen, huge ones, much longer than men; the colour of their backs an olive brown, their sides and bellies a pale and shining green: their shapes the very shape of Speed itself. The pointed nose, in front of the swelling forehead, opened the water perfectly; and it slid together again behind the throbbing tail as if they had been nothing.
    Mostly they danced in twos, swinging from side to side of the stem like two people skating together: then crossing, one over, the other under: then rolling over and over sideways, a flash of greenish silver deep under the water: rising to the surface, so that the back fin cut the air with a white plume: leaping into the air like powerful mermaids too happy to lie still: leaping, twisting on to their backs as they leapt, sometimes two, sometimes three, or four or five together. Two would suddenly swing away, and altogether leave the ship: two more from nowhere cross the bows and join in the heavenly water-play.
    At first Sukie had blazed in Dick’s mind, lighting every part of it: but now already, after two days, she had contracted and receded like the opening by which you have entered a tunnel: turned more unearthly bright than the broad day, but very distant and small and clear. Yet now, as he watched the dolphins, for a moment light seemed to come back over his whole mind, gently flooding all its dark places, and then fading in a mood of pleasurable sadness.
    Again that night he saw something very beautiful: something seldom seen (except in the China Seas): a patch of ocean so phosphorescent that it cast a glow into the sky before they reached it. As they came to it, the whole water sparkled like stars, and everything that moved in it was sheathed in cold flame. Deep beneath it some fish sent out a rotating light, like a lighthouse.
    It