“‘I s-s-say, you know, th-this is awful! He’s—he’s m-m-mad,’ he stuttered. You really couldn’t help feeling sorry for the little beast in a way. I believe he was nearly crying!
“‘Mad nothing!’ I said. ‘Anyway, mad or sane, he knows a damn sight more about seamanship than either of us.’ I’d a good mind to add that so far as he was concerned that wasn’t saying much.
“Arnot moaned, ‘He’ll drown us all, that’s what he’ll do!’ gave a despairing little flop with his arms, and dived into his room, for all the world like a startled penguin.
“I jolly well wasn’t going to take sides against the skipper with a little squirt like Arnot, but in my own mind I was far from happy about him.
“What was he driving at? God knows!... Sometimes I think one thing, sometimes another. Was he trying to throw his ship away after all those years of command? I can’t say. I know I knocked a couple of Mister Arnot’s teeth into the back of his head for saying so, after it was all over; but that was more a matter of principle, and by way of relieving my feelings, than anything else. It looked like it, I must own. And yet I don’t think it was quite that. It was more, if you understand me, that he just felt as if things had gone too far for him—so he threw his cards on the table, and left it to—well, shall we say Providence to shuffle them!
“Well, Mister Mate was going to have worse to put up with yet!
“The big blow lasted off and on for four days, and then it began to ease off a bit. I went below for a sleep: I was fairly coopered out. I just flopped down in my wet clothes and was off at once.
“When I came on deck again for the middle watch we were right in the thick of a dense white fog. There was a cold wind blowing steadily out of nowhere, and the ship was still going along, as near as I could judge, at about thirteen or fourteen knots. The first person I saw was the old bos’n—a Dutchman, and a real good sailorman, though a bit on the slow side, like most Dutchmen—standing under the break of the poop with his nose thrown up to windward, sniffing like an old dog.
“‘Ice!’ he said. ‘I schmell ice!’
“I should think he did ‘schmell’ it! Phoo! but it was cold! The sails were like boards—as stiff and as hard. I doubt if we could have furled them if we had wanted to. The helmsman, when the wheel was relieved, left the skin of his fingers on the spokes. It was a queer, uncanny experience ... the ship ripping along through that blanket of fog, as tall and white as the ghost of a ship.... If there had been anyone else to see her, they might have been excused for thinking they’d met the ‘Flying Dutchman’ a few thousand miles off his usual course.