ORANGESTHE clipper ship “Parisina” lay becalmed off the Western Islands. The gallant Nor’-East Trade which had hummed steadily through her royals for ten blue and golden days and star-sown nights had tailed away ignominiously into a succession of fitful, faint, and baffling airs which kept the wearied crew constantly hauling the yards at the bidding of every shift of the variable breeze, and withal scarcely served to give the clipper leeway; and had died off last of all into a flat calm.
She lay there as still as if she were at anchor. Her sails drooped against the masts with no more movement than banners slowly dropping to silent dust in the nave of some great cathedral. Their shadows on the white deck were clearly defined as shapes cut out of black paper. There was no sound aloft, not s
