“’Way aloft thaar!” he cried; “lay out on the yards, men, an’ close reef the tops’ls. We’re going to hev a blow!”
And we did have a blow.
The men were just ready to haul in the weather earring of the mizzen-topsail, the last they were handing, the fore and main having been already made snug, when a storm of wind and hail and snow struck us which in a few minutes coated the deck and rigging and every portion of the upper works of the ship with thick ice. At the same time, the sea, rolling in enormous waves, broke over our counter, throwing sheets of water aboard, which seemed to freeze in the air before it fell.
I was standing on the poop, lending a hand at the mizzen halliards with the rest of the ‘idlers’—as those who are not regular sailors are called, although I was fast trying to become a real salt under the apt tuition of Hiram Bangs and the carpenter—when this fierce blast came.
Goodness gracious! It pinned us all down to the deck, as if we were skittle-pegs, making our faces smart again with the bitter downpour.
Next, followed a short lull, during which the reef tackle was hauled out and the halliards manned, the yard being swayed up again; and then, those aloft were able to come down and find a more comfortable shelter below than the rigging afforded.
But, now, occurred a curious circumstance.
As the hands who had been up on the mizzen-yard reefing the topsail stepped from the ratlines on to the deck of the poop before getting down to the waist below, one of the men, Jim Chowder, the same who had said that he had heard Sam Jedfoot’s voice in the ship since he had been lost overboard, whispered to me as he passed:—
“Listen!” he said.
That was all—