"It's no longer beautiful," she said in disappointment, and dropped it on the house.
"No," he answered soberly, and tossed the weed back into the sea.
V
The wind died out, as he had predicted, and all the afternoon the brig rolled on the long swells, which hourly grew heavier. They leaped against the horizon, swung onward beneath the keel, and swept past with the unrelenting persistency that seemed the embodiment of vindictive hate. A gale can be combated, but, in the grasp of a calm, man is helpless. Every part of the vessel cried out in protest. The canvas slatted and flapped like the wings of a huge bird vainly trying to rise from the waves; every block rattled and croaked; the main-boom, hauled chock aft, snatched at its sheets with a viciousness that threatened to part them at every roll and made their huge blocks crash; from the pantry below came the constant rattle of crockery; and the blue sea, dipped up through the scuppers, swashed back and forth across the main-deck. By eight bells every stitch of canvas had been furled or clewed up to save it, and the brig lay rolling in the dark hollows like a drunken sailor reeling home.
At dusk Hetty made her way to the forward companionway, and, seating herself on the sill, with her hands clasped about the guard-rail, looked out across the watery waste. The line of her eyes, parallel with the deck, saw the stars fly downward till they seemed to vanish in the sea, which suddenly seemed to tower like a huge black wall above the brig; then suddenly it dropped away, and the stars flew up again, and she saw them fairly overhead. Out of the swashing flood of the main-deck, in a momentary lull, Medbury appeared.
"Is that you, Hetty?" he said.
"Yes," she answered. "It's awful, isn't it?"
"It's a nasty roll, and no mistake. There's dirty weather knocking about somewhere."