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Again, whither has vanished a feature of the old sea-life even yet more romantically interesting than the nautical masquerading of black-eyed Susans and yellow-haired Molls—the flirtation of the long ocean passage? What we call flirtation now at sea is a mere shadow of a shadow as compared with the robust and solid reality of a period when it took a ship four months to sail to Bombay or Calcutta. There is no time allowed in this age for love-making. Before you can fairly consider yourself acquainted with a girl some wretch on the forecastle is singing out “land-ho!” I took particular notice of this matter on board the Union steamer in which I made the passage home from Cape Town. It must certainly have ended in a proposal in the case of one couple had the propeller dropped off or a boiler burst and the ship been delayed. They only wanted another week. But the steamer was impertinently punctual, about eight hours before her time: the people went ashore at Plymouth, and, for all I can tell, the young man, in the excitement of landing and meeting his friends and seeing plenty of pretty women about, may have abandoned his intention and ended for the girl a chance that would have been a certainty in the old romantic poetical sea-days. Why, we all know how the British matron used to ship her darlings off in the East Indiamen for husbands in the country with which those vessels trafficked, and how scores and scores of these unsophisticated young ladies would land engaged, having affianced themselves to gentlemen on board in calms on the Equator or in the tail of the south-east Trades, or in a small swell with a moderate breeze off Agulhas, some possibly hesitating as far as the Madagascar parallels. How many marriages originate at sea in these times of thirteen knots an hour, I wonder? Out of the several millions of passengers who are annually sea-borne, how many pledge their vows on board ship, how many fall in love there, how many become husband and wife in consequence of meeting on ship board? But a few, I’ll warrant. But only think of the old East Indiaman; four months for Captain Thunder and Miss Spooner to be together to start with; four months, and perhaps longer, with possibly Lieutenant Griffin to give a swift maturity to emotion by importing a neat and useful element of jealousy. Oh, if moonlight and music and feeling are one ashore, what are they at sea, on the deck of a sleeping fabric lifting visionary wings to the lovely stars, when the sea-fire flashes like sheet lightning to the soft surge of the ship’s bows or counter upon the light fold of the invisible swell, when the westering moon, crimsoning as she sinks, wastes her heart’s blood in the deep for love of what she is painfully and ruefully leaving, when the dew upon the bulwarks sparkles like some diamond encrustations to the starlight, when the peace of the richly clad night presses like a sensible benediction upon the breathless, enchanted, listening ship, subduing all sounds of gear-creaking in blocks, of chains clanking to the stirring of the rudder, to a tender music in sweetest harmony with the fountain-like murmur at the bows as the vessel quietly lifts to the long-drawn heave there—think of it! was there ever a bower by Bendemeer’s stream comparable as a corner for the delicate whispers of passion, for the coy reception of kisses, with some quiet nook on the white quarter-deck, shadowed from the stars and protected from the dew by the awning? If you thrill now it is because the whole ship shakes with the whirling and thrashing of those mighty beams of steel below. Emotion must be blatant or it cannot be heard. Not yet has a generation that knows I am speaking the truth in all this passed away. Confirm me, ye scores of elderly master-mariners enjoying your well-earned repose in spots hard by that ocean ye loved and sailed for years! Confirm me too, ye many survivors of a sea-going time, when the most blissful hours of your long and respectable lives were passed under the shadow of the cross-jack-yard!