Ishmael took tea with the old captain, who came into the saloon and sat down in a perfectly renovated toilet, as if nothing had happened.
But when I say they took tea, I mean that they took quite as much of it up their sleeves and down their bosoms as into their mouths. Drinking tea in a rolling ship is a sloppy operation.
After that the captain produced a chess-board, ingeniously arranged for sea-service, and the two gentlemen spent the evening in a mimic warfare that ended in a drawn battle.
"The gale seems to be subsiding. The motion of the ship has not been so violent for the last half hour, I think," said Ishmael, as they arose from the table.
"No; if it had been, we could not have played chess, even on this boxed board," was the reply.
"I hope we shall have fine weather now. What do you say, captain?"
"I say as I said before. I am a passenger, and the weather is nothing to me. But if you expect we are going to have fine weather because the wind has lulled—humph!"
"We shall not, then?"
"We shall have a twister, that is what we shall have—and before many hours. And I shouldn't wonder if we had a storm of snow and sleet to cap off with. Good-night, sir!" And with this consoling prophecy the old man withdrew.
Ishmael went to his berth and slept soundly until morning. When he awoke he found the ship rolling, pitching, tossing, leaping, falling, and fairly writhing and twisting like a living creature in mortal agony.