A wonderful night! Sleep? I suppose I did sleep,
in catnaps, but I swear I heard every bell struck until three-thirty.
Then came a change, an easement. No longer was it a stubborn, loggy
fight against pressures. The _Elsinore_ moved. I could feel her slip,
and slide, and send, and soar. Whereas before she had been flung
continually down to port, she now rolled as far to one side as to the
other.

I knew what had taken place. Instead of remaining hove-to on the
pampero, Captain West had turned tail and was running before it. This, I
understood, meant a really serious storm, for the north-east was the last
direction in which Captain West desired to go. But at any rate the
movement, though wilder, was easier, and I slept. I was awakened at five
by the thunder of seas that fell aboard, rushed down the main deck, and
crashed against the cabin wall. Through my open door I could see water
swashing up and down the hall, while half a foot of water creamed and
curdled from under my bunk across the floor each time the ship rolled to
starboard.

The steward brought me my coffee, and, wedged by boxes and pillows, like
an equilibrist, I sat up and drank it. Luckily I managed to finish it in
time, for a succession of terrific rolls emptied one of my book-shelves.
Possum, crawling upward from my feet under the covered way of my bed,
yapped with terror as the seas smashed and thundered and as the avalanche
of books descended upon us. And I could not but grin when the _Paste
Board Crown_ smote me on the head, while the puppy was knocked gasping
with Chesterton's _What's Wrong with the World_?

"Well, what do you think?" I queried of the steward who was helping to
set us and the books to rights.

He shrugged his shoulders, and his bright slant eyes were very bright as
he replied:

"Many times I see like this. Me old man. Many times I see more bad. Too
much wind, too much work. Rotten dam bad."

I could guess that the scene on deck was a spectacle, and at six o'clock,
as gray light showed through my ports in the intervals when they were not
submerged, I essayed the side-board of my bunk like a gymnast, captured
my careering slippers, and shuddered as I thrust my bare feet into their
chill sogginess. I did not wait to dress. Merely in pyjamas I headed
for the poop, Possum wailing dismally at my desertion.

It was a feat to travel the narrow halls. Time and again I paused and
held on until my finger-tips hurt.