But to-day, at the time our story opens, there was neither laughing, joking, nor singing to be heard. The men clustered quietly about bows or fo’c’sle, or leaned lazily over the bulwarks watching the vessel roll—for at one moment she would heel over till the cool clear water could be touched with the hand, and the next she would raise her head or side until a yard at least of her copper sheathing shone in the sunlight like burnished gold.
There was no sound to break the stillness save the far-off boom of the breakers; so quiet was it that the sound of even a rope’s-end thrown on deck grated harshly on the ear, and a whisper could be heard from one end of the ship to the other.
“Bill,” said one sailor to another, biting off the end of a chunk of nigger-head tobacco, “I don’t half like this state of affairs.”
“And I don’t like it either, Jack,” was the reply, “but I suppose we must put up with it.”
“Do ye think it would be any good to whistle for the wind, Bill?”
“Whistle for your grandmother,” replied Bill, derisively.
“Bill,” persisted Jack, “they do tell me—older men, I mean, tell me—that whistling for the wind is sure to bring it.”
“Ay, lad, if you whistle long enough. Look here, Jack, don’t be a superstitious donkey. I’ve seen five hands at one time whistling for the wind; but, Jack, they nearly whistled the whites o’ their eyes out.”
“And the wind didn’t come?”
“Never a breath. Never a puff.”