We all found it terribly dull, though; for, even the fish were too lazy to come to the surface to be caught, and so we were deprived therefore of our old pastime of angling for them from the bowsprit in the afternoons and evenings.
Day after day, the _Josephine_ rolled her hull from port to starboard and then back again to port on the tumid sea, which, save throbbing with a dull heavy swell, had now lost all its life and action:--day after day we looked in vain for a breeze from sunrise to sunset; day after day our watchful longing was all in vain; there, day after day, for over a week, we rolled and lay! Captain Miles used to come up regularly on the poop at noon to take the sun, from a sense of duty; but it was almost a useless task, as we hardly varied a mile in our position from the commencement of the calm, the vessel remaining close in with the fiftieth parallel of longitude and in latitude thirty-two North.
Mr Marline liked to chaff the captain about this, telling him that his sextant wanted polishing up a bit and that the glasses were wrong.
However, that all went for nothing with his chief, who well knew where the fault lay, fully understanding that the instrument was not to blame; but, as regularly as he brought out the sextant he used to laugh at Mr Marline's stereotyped joke.
As related in Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner":-- "Day after day, day after day We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean!" Had it not been for the two darkeys, Jake and Cuffee, I don't know what we should have done for fun.
These comical fellows were a constant source of amusement to us; for, although they did not come to fisticuffs again, they were always quarrelling and making friends afterwards in the oddest way possible.
Their disputes usually arose from some little trifle concerning their order of precedence, each being highly jealous of his dignity, and resenting in a moment any fancied slight or want of proper respect on the part of the other.
When Jake came on board in the summary way in which he "took his passage" at the beginning of our voyage, of course he had no wardrobe, or anything to wear save what he stood up in when he emerged dripping from the sea after the capsize of the boat in which he had come off to the ship.

Captain Miles, however, had given him some cast-off slops, and the hands forward had also rigged him out from their chests, so that in a short time he made a very presentable appearance.

This was especially the case on Sunday's, when his dress was most conspicuous, Master Jake being something of a dandy like most negroes, and anxious to take the shine out of his fellows.
Somehow or other Cuffee the cook got jealous of this feature in his brother darkey's character.
On week-days he did not mind submitting to any slight superiority Jake might have over him in his sailor-like rig; but one Sunday the latter donned an old blue coat that had been presented to him by Mr Marline.
It was ornamented with brilliant brass buttons, and the effect was completed by a bright bandana handkerchief which he had begged from me, and this, contrasting with a white shirt and duck trousers, made his toilet so thoroughly effective that Cuffee was greatly aggrieved.
"You tink youself one fine gen'leman now, I s'pose ?" he said, with a snort of indignation, when Jake went down into the waist in all this grand array after prayers on the poop.

"Fine fedders make fine birds, yah, yah!" "Me tinks what I like," replied Jake nonchalantly, proceeding forward to the topgallant forecastle, where he sat down in such a lordly manner that Cuffee, unable to stand it any longer, hurriedly went into his caboose and bringing out a bucket of dirty water pitched it over Jake with much heartiness, sousing him from head to foot.
"Dere, you big fool of niggah, take dat!" he cried triumphantly.

"Guess dat'll take de shine out ob your ole coat, wid yer grandy airs an' bumptiousness!" The men on the fo'c's'le shouted with laughter, and Jake rushed to resent the affront; but they held him back until his temper evaporated, and then the two made it up somehow, for afterwards I saw that Jake was enjoying a savoury mess of lobscouse which Cuffee had cooked for him in amends for the bucket of greasy water.
Jake, however, paid out the cook for the indignity a little later on; for, when Cuffee came up on the forecastle while the hands were there yarning in the evening, he gave him the cold shoulder.
"Wat for you come hyar ?" he asked the poor cook.