"I am prepared for the worst, at all events," responded Phillips, in the same low voice, as he instinctively felt for the butt of the revolver pistol in his breast-pocket, and ascended to the weather side of the poop.
Veering round to the south-eastward, the wind was soon dead against the ship, which laboured hard, though running close-hauled, and, while beating to windward, her head was many points away from her proper course.
She was running fast through the water—ten knots an hour at least—but was making great leeway. The strain on the weather-rigging was great; there every shroud, rope, and halyard were tight as iron wire, while to leeward they were all blown out in wavy bights and bends, especially at every lurch.
There was never a lull in the fierce gale, and, with every wave that burst against her bows, the Hermione seemed to roll, or swerve, bodily off to leeward.
On this night poor Mr. Basset was in great mental misery, lest, amid the tempest, for to such the gale nearly amounted, the crew should put their nefarious designs in execution; but they had their hands too full of necessary work to find time for mischief then.
He twice ventured on deck, but, to the landsman's eye, the aspect of that wild, stormy sea, visible under a starry and cloudless sky, so appalled him, that each time he returned to the cabin with such visible signs of tremor or emotion, that Ethel, who had found the impossibility of sleeping, and had hastily thrown on her morning wrapper and shawl, joined him, and sat caressingly by his side.
Pale, anxious, and lovely she looked in her white-frilled dress; and now every sound on deck made her father start with agitation.
"Is the gale increasing, papa?" she asked, for the twentieth time.
"Undoubtedly it is—but the captain laughs at it, and says his ship is strong and stout."
"How soundly dear Rose sleeps amid all this hurly-burly."