ow vastly swollen,
indefatigably hunted us. I stood on deck, choking with fear; I seemed
to lose all power upon my limbs; my knees were as paper when she plunged
into the murderous valleys; my heart collapsed when some black mountain
fell in avalanche beside her counter, and the water, that was more than
spray, swept round my ankles like a torrent. I was conscious of but
one strong desire, to bear myself decently in my terrors, and whatever
should happen to my life, preserve my character: as the captain said,
we are a queer kind of beasts. Breakfast time came, and I made shift
to swallow some hot tea. Then I must stagger below to take the time,
reading the chronometer with dizzy eyes, and marvelling the while what
value there could be in observations taken in a ship launched (as ours
then was) like a missile among flying seas. The forenoon dragged on in
a grinding monotony of peril; every spoke of the wheel a rash, but an
obliged experiment--rash as a forlorn hope, needful as the leap that
lands a fireman from a burning staircase. Noon was made; the captain
dined on his day's work, and I on watching him; and our place was
entered on the chart with a meticulous precision which seemed to me
half pitiful and half absurd, since the next eye to behold that sheet of
paper might be the eye of an exploring fish. One o'clock came, then two;
the captain gloomed and chafed, as he held to the coaming of the house,
and if ever I saw dormant murder in man's eye, it was in his. God help
the hand that should have disobeyed him.

Of a sudden, he turned towards the mate, who was doing his trick at the
wheel.

"Two points on the port bow," I heard him say. And he took the wheel
himself.

Johnson nodded, wiped his eyes with the back of his wet hand, watched a
chance as the vessel lunged up hill, and got to the main rigging, where
he swarmed aloft. Up and up, I watched him go, hanging on at every
ugly plunge, gaining with every lull of the schooner's movement, until,
clambering into the cross-trees and clinging with one arm around the
masts, I could see him take one comprehensive sweep of the southwesterly
horizon. The next moment, he had slid down the backstay and stood on
deck, with a grin, a nod, and a gesture of the finger that said "yes";
the next again, and he was back sweating and squirming at the wheel, his
tired face streaming and smiling, and his hair and the rags and corners
of his clothes lashing round him in the wind.

Nar