t our trawls, and, leaving the vessel, the skipper had said, "Our last
set, boys. Let 'em lay to-night, and in the morning we'll haul;" and,
returning aboard after setting, we had our supper and were making ready,
such as had no watch to stand, to turn in for a good, long sleep against
the labor of the morrow.

It was an oily sea that evening--a black, oily-smooth surface, lifting
heavy and slow to a long swell. A smooth, oily sea--there is never any
good comes out of it; but a beautiful sea notwithstanding, with more
curious patterns of shifting colors than a man could count in a year
playing atop of it. The colors coming and going and rolling and
squirming--no women's shop ashore ever held such colors under the bright
nightlights as under the low sun we saw this night on the western
banks. It was a most beautiful and a most wicked sea to stop and look
at.

And the sun went down that evening on a banking of clouds no less
beautiful; a copper-red sun, and after 'twas gone, in lovely massy forms
and splendid colors, were piled the clouds in all the western quarter.

Such of the crew as stopped to speak of it did not like at all the look
of that sea and sky, and some stopped beside the skipper to say it, he
leaning against the main rigging in the way he had the while he would be
studying the weather signs; but he made no answer to the crew, to that
or any other word they had this evening--except to Saul Haverick, and to
him only when he came up from supper complaining of not feeling well.

He was one could drive his crew till they could not see for very
weariness; but he was one could nurse them, too. "Go below and turn in,"
was his word to Saul, "and stay there till you feel better. Call me,
Simon, if I'm not up," he then said to me. "I'll stand Saul's watch with
you, if Saul is no better."

It was yet black night when I was called to go on watch, and, Saul
Haverick still complaining, I went to call the skipper. But he was
already up and had been, the watch before me said, for the better part
of the night. I found him leaning over the gunnels of the wind'ard nest
of dories when I went on deck, gazing out on a sea that was no longer
oily-smooth, though smooth enough, too, what was to be seen of it, under
the stars of a winter night.

I stood on the break and likewise looked about me. To anchor, and alone,
lay the vessel, with but her riding-light to mark her in the dark; alone
and quiet, with never a neighbor to hai