after finding myself
precipitated to the floor. I am convinced that when Captain West naps on
the sofa he is only half asleep. How else can he maintain so precarious
a position?--unless, in him, too, the sea and its motion be ingrained.

I wandered into the dining-room, wedged myself into a screwed chair, and
fell asleep, my head on my arms, my arms on the table. And at quarter
past seven the steward roused me by shaking my shoulders. It was time to
set table.

Heavy with the brief heaviness of sleep I had had, I dressed and stumbled
up on to the poop in the hope that the wind would clear my brain. Mr.
Pike had the watch, and with sure, age-lagging step he paced the deck.
The man is a marvel--sixty-nine years old, a life of hardship, and as
sturdy as a lion. Yet of the past night alone his hours had been: four
to six in the afternoon on deck; eight to twelve on deck; and four to
eight in the morning on deck. In a few minutes he would be relieved, but
at midday he would again be on deck.

I leaned on the poop-rail and stared for'ard along the dreary waste of
deck. Every port and scupper was working to ease the weight of North
Atlantic that perpetually fell on board. Between the rush of the
cascades, streaks of rust showed everywhere. Some sort of a wooden pin-
rail had carried away on the starboard-rail at the foot of the mizzen-
shrouds, and an amazing raffle of ropes and tackles washed about. Here
Nancy and half-a-dozen men worked sporadically, and in fear of their
lives, to clear the tangle.

The long-suffering bleakness was very pronounced on Nancy's face, and
when the walls of water, in impending downfall, reared above the
_Elsinore's_ rail, he was always the first to leap for the life-line
which had been stretched fore and aft across the wide space of deck.

The rest of the men were scarcely less backward in dropping their work
and springing to safety--if safety it might be called, to grip a rope in
both hands and have legs sweep out from under, and be wrenched
full-length upon the boiling surface of an ice-cold flood. Small wonder
they look wretched. Bad as their condition was when they came aboard at
Baltimore, they look far worse now, what of the last several days of wet
and freezing hardship.

From time to time, completing his for'ard pace along the poop, Mr. Pike
would pause, ere he retraced his steps, and snort sardonic glee at what
happened to the poor devils below. The man's heart is cal