His life, he felt, was pretty sombre and difficult, despite the high promise of the release which had given him a start in the great world. But at least he could take up his burden and go on alone. It no longer concerned him what Lili did, or what became of Lili. He was free. And with each puff of his little short-stemmed pipe, which now looked anything but jaunty, Jerome felt himself more a misogynist.
When his pipe was smoked out he did not refill it, but curled up instead, right where he was, with his head on one arm, and fell asleep.
During the hours that followed he was occasionally half conscious of voices and passing steps. He slept lightly, and, as the phrase has it, with one eye open, the way people often do who sleep out under the sky.
At a little before four o’clock Jerome woke suddenly and sat up. He felt vividly awake, yet there seemed no cause for it. Everything was quiet. There was less wind than at midnight. Dawn was in the sky; but it struggled as yet unequally with great rolling clouds, dense as boiling tar, which seemed to have broken loose from some mysterious mooring that had held them embanked all night. Jerome saw at once that Captain Bearman’s thunder storm was upon them at last. There was a clap quite close at hand, and then he realized that it was thunder which had aroused him from sleep.
Some of the top sails were flapping a little in a lull that would be broken any minute—the quietest and most sinister kind of lull in the whole realm of human experience.
Mr. Nelson, the mate, was giving orders. They could see the rain coming afar off across the troubled sea. A gust of wind made the sails strain and the rigging creak in an abrupt, complex way.
Jerome watched, and the spell of the sea was strong upon him. He had no terror left. A feeling of restlessness made him ask himself: “Why don’t I cut loose and ship before the mast?” He watched the mate and felt his cool authority; watched the seamen on duty going intelligently about their work, undismayed by the threatening chaos of the sky. “Yes. I love it,” Jerome murmured. And then he added, half to himself and half aloud: “It’s so big and free!”
The mate wanted to get up to the forecastle before the rain came, if he could, and see if the anchors were all ship-shape for Captain Bearman’s flying moor; but he waited for the wheelman to bring the vessel around into the starboard tack. In his effort to perform this manœuvre neatly, the wheelman spun the wheel so far that the rudder jammed on the port side. He made a futile effort to release it and turned deploringly toward the mate.
Mr. Nelson swore at the man softly and effectively. There was no bluster about it. The mate knew, and the seaman knew, it is no light and airy calamity, getting the rudder jammed. Already the schooner was swinging around before the wind. In another moment the wind would come over the port quarter, and the sails would jibe.
“Run up forward and rouse the other men!” shouted the mate, his words snatched from his lips by a sudden rush of wind.