were wriggling fore and aft
like huge white snakes, gaping for the tops and writhing out of the
hatches. The flush of sunset was dying when I came on deck. I saw the
captain slowly pacing the weather side of the poop with Miss Le Grand.
He seemed earnest in his talk and gestures. Enough western light still
lived to enable me to see faces, and I observed that Mrs. Burney,
standing to leeward of a skylight talking with a gentleman, would
glance at the couple with a satirical smile whenever they came abreast
of her.

But soon the night came down in darkness upon the deep; the wind blew
damp out of the dusk in a long moan over the rail, heeling the ship
yet by a couple of degrees; the captain sang out for the fore and
mizzen-royals to be clewed up and furled, and shortly afterwards went
below, first handing Miss Le Grand down the companion-way.

I guessed the game was up with the worthy man: he had met his fate and
taken to it with the meekness of a sheep. He might do worse, I
thought, as I started on a solitary stroll, so far as looks are
concerned; but what of her nature--her character? It was puzzling to
think of what sort of spirit it was that looked out of her wonderful
eyes; and she was not a kind of a girl that a man would care to leave
ashore; so much beauty, full of a subtle endevilment of some sort, as
it seemed to me, must needs demand the constant sentinelling of a
husband's presence. That was how it struck me.

By eleven o'clock all was hushed throughout the ship: lights out, the
captain turned in, nothing stirring forward save the flitting shape of
the look-out under the yawn of the pale square of fore-course. It was
blowing a pleasant breeze of wind, and lost in thought I leaned over
the rail at the weather fore-end of the poop watching the cold
sea-glow shining in the dark water as the foam spat past, sheeting away
astern in a furrow like moonlight. I will swear I did not doze; that I
never was guilty of whilst on duty in all the years I was at sea; but
I don't doubt that I was sunk deep in thought, insomuch that my
reverie may have possessed a temporary power of abstraction as
complete as slumber itself.

I was startled into violent wakefulness by a cannonade of canvas
aloft, and found the ship in the wind. I looked aft; the wheel was
deserted--at least I believed so, till on rushing to it, meanwhile
shouting to the watch on deck, I spied the figure of the helmsman on
his face close beside the binnacl