"Oh, I don't know!" replied Phil, diffidently. "I like the sea. I haven't seen much of it, but what I have seen has been pretty rough—an experience that I'd not like to live over again."
He thought of Lelia, and the time they were adrift together in the little pleasure-boat; of their awful landing in the cold, gray dawn of the early morning, on that strange, lonely coast; of their subsequent wanderings, hungry and weary in the swamp—but this was so different!
He was on board a stout steamer, commanded by good, capable officers, and really had no fear as to the vessel's safety, though it was blowing a hurricane, and the locality a particularly dangerous one.
While these reflections were passing through Phil's mind, Captain Barrett, a coast-skipper of the old-time sort, approached them, his rubber storm-suit glistening in the weird light of the lantern he carried, his weather-beaten face wearing an anxious expression, and his brows closely knit in a searching look leeward.
"It's so confounded dark, and the mist and drizzle so thick, one can't see the ship's bows; but we ought to make Largo Light soon, if I am not far out in my reckoning. But you can't tell, in these chop seas, where you are. The wind drives you ahead and the current pulls you back, and the first thing you know you're on the rocks, and the deuce and all to pay," remarked the captain, his sharp, gray eyes still searching the rainy darkness. "I estimate our speed at fourteen knots—what say you, Mr. Moore?"
"Not so much. Twelve knots, I think a fair calculation."
"Then we must be not far from Devil's Rock," said the captain, thoughtfully. "According to my reckoning, we should have passed it an hour ago; and the Devil's Rock it will prove, indeed, if we are so unlucky as to strike it such a night as this."
Phil, who was near enough to hear every word of the above conversation, began to feel a little alarmed, in spite of himself.
It was past midnight, the waves rolling mountains high and the ship laboring heavily. He wondered if Mr. Herdic knew how hard it was blowing, and, if he did, how it was possible for him to lie calmly in his berth and listen, undisturbed, to the tumult raging on every hand around him.
"A light!" shouted the lookout, from the maintop.