“South-easterly,” said I; “that will suit us.”
It was a moderate breeze only, but it brought us on our way opportunely, until one day, as we looked out, there was land on our weather-beam.
Then fell another calm, longer and more dead than the last. The sea was like glass, the horizon hazy, and the heat oppressive. The carpenter, as now and again he looked up at the lifeless sails, muttered between his teeth.
“I hear,” said Tim, “our timbers above the water-line have sprung here and there. The old tub is quite rotten, and every day we lie idle like this she grows worse.”
“This time to-morrow, by all signs, we shall not be lying idle,” said I, glancing up at the metallic sky, and following the line of a school of porpoises as they wheeled across our stern.
“So much the better. We must run before the wind wherever it comes from. We could not live through a cross-sea for an hour.”
The storm came sooner than I expected. The metallic sky grew overcast, and a warning shudder fell over the still surface of the water. Then a sudden squall took us amidships, and sent us careening over on our beam, before we even knew that the calm was at an end.
We had no more than time to shorten our courses and turn her head, when the tempest struck us from the south-west, lashing up the sea at our stern, and making our cranky masts stoop forward and creak like things in mortal pain.
The carpenter’s face grew longer than ever.
“For mercy’s sake, captain,” said he, “keep her in the wind, or she’ll crack to pieces. You can’t afford to take a point. We’re only sound under calm water-line; above it, she’s as thirsty as a sieve.”