ng in poisoned air.

Down below, in his cabin, Mr. Burns had advanced so far as not only to
be able to sit up, but even to draw up his legs. Clasping them with bony
arms, like an animated skeleton, he emitted deep, impatient sighs.

"The great thing to do, sir," he would tell me on every occasion, when I
gave him the chance, "the great thing is to get the ship past 8 d 20' of
latitude. Once she's past that we're all right."

At first I used only to smile at him, though, God knows, I had not much
heart left for smiles. But at last I lost my patience.

"Oh, yes. The latitude 8 d 20'. That's where you buried your late
captain, isn't it?" Then with severity: "Don't you think, Mr. Burns,
it's about time you dropped all that nonsense?"

He rolled at me his deep-sunken eyes in a glance of invincible
obstinacy. But for the rest he only muttered, just loud enough for me
to hear, something about "Not surprised . . . find . . . play us some
beastly trick yet. . . ."

Such passages as this were not exactly wholesome for my resolution. The
stress of adversity was beginning to tell on me. At the same time, I
felt a contempt for that obscure weakness of my soul. I said to myself
disdainfully that it should take much more than that to affect in the
smallest degree my fortitude.

I didn't know then how soon and from what unexpected direction it would
be attacked.

It was the very next day. The sun had risen clear of the southern
shoulder of Koh-ring, which still hung, like an evil attendant, on our
port quarter. It was intensely hateful to my sight. During the night
we had been heading all round the compass, trimming the yards again and
again, to what I fear must have been for the most part imaginary puffs
of air. Then just about sunrise we got for an hour an inexplicable,
steady breeze, right in our teeth. There was no sense in it. It fitted
neither with the season of the year nor with the secular experience
of seamen as recorded in books, nor with the aspect of the sky. Only
purposeful malevolence could account for it. It sent us travelling at
a great pace away from our proper course; and if we had been out on
pleasure sailing bent it would have been a delightful breeze, with the
awakened sparkle of the sea, with the sense of motion and a feeling of
unwonted freshness. Then, all at once, as if disdaining to carry farther
the sorry jest, it dropped and died out completely in less than five
minutes. The ship's head swung where