hile 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 man 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
south-westerly 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.

Nares went below, fetched up his binocular, and fell into a silent
perusal of the sea-line: I also, with my unaided eyesight. Little by
little, in that white waste of water, I began to make out a quarter
where the whiteness appeared more condensed: the sky above was whitish
likewise, and misty like a squall; and little by little there thrilled
upon my ears a note deeper and more terrible than the yelling of the
gale--the long thundering roll of breakers. Nares wiped his night-glass
on his sleeve and passed it to me, motioning, as he did so, with his
hand. An endless wilderness of raging billows came and went and danced
in the circle of the glass; now and then a pale corner of sky, or the
strong line of the horiz