and I
kept watch till I reckoned it was drawing on to about one o'clock in
the morning. Twice or thrice during that long and wretched vigil there
seemed a promise of the weather clearing, and I gazed with the
yearning of the shipwrecked; but regularly it thickened and blackened
down upon us again in blasts like the belchings of a three-decker's
broadside. It was a very watery vapour, and I was early wet to the
skin.

At about one o'clock, as I calculated, I awoke Jackson, and bade him
keep an eager look-out and not to spare his ear in putting it against
the night, "for," says I, "there's nothing to be done with the eyes;
it's all for the hearing at such a time as this, mate, and what you
can't watch for you must listen for; and wake me up to any sound you
may hear, that our three throats may hail together. O God," says I,
"if it would but thin and show the brig within reach of our shouts!"
With that I lay down and was soon fast asleep, being worn out with
excitement and grief, and when I awoke it was daylight, for there's
but little dawn off the Andamans; the sun in those seas leaps on to
the horizon from the night as it were, and flashes it into day in a
breath.

It was still thick and troubled weather, but clear to about two miles
from the side of the boat. There was very little wind, and a long
swell of the colour of lead was running from the southward. The vapour
had broken up and lay in masses round about us--long, white twisted
folds of it, like powder smoke after a great battle; and to the top of
those heaps of thickness the sky sloped in a sort of grey shadow, with
a little pencilling here and there of some small livid ring of mist,
which looked stirless as though what air there was blew low. There was
nothing in sight; we strained our gaze into every quarter but I saw
there was nothing to be seen. This smote me to the heart. I had been
in my time in several situations of peril at sea, but had never yet
experienced the horrors of an open boat amidst a vast waste of waters,
such as was this Bay of Bengal with the Andaman Islands some hundreds
of miles distant, and a near menace of roasting heat when the wide
grey stretch of cloud should have passed away and laid bare the sun's
eye of fire. We gazed with melancholy faces one at another.

"What's to be done?" says Fallows, bringing his bloodshot eyes from
the sea to my face; "if we had a sail to set we might have a chance."

"There are two oars," said I, "for