'What is the weather going to prove?' I asked Abraham.
He munched leisurely, with a slow look to windward, and answered, ''Tain't going to be worse nor ye see it.'
'Have you a barometer?' said I.
'No,' he answered; 'they're no good. In a boat arter this here pattern, what's the use of knowing what's agoing to come? It's only a-letting go a rope an' you're under bare poles. Marcury's all very well in a big ship, where ye may be taken aback clean out o' the sky, and lose every spar down to the stumps of the lower masts.'
Though I constantly kept a look-out, sending my eyes roaming over either bow past the smooth and foaming curves of seas rushing ahead of us, I was very sensible, as I have said, that nothing was to be done in such hollow waters as we were now rushing through, though we should sight a score of homeward-bounders. Yet, spite of the wonderful life that strong northerly wind swept into the ocean, nothing whatever showed during the rest of the day, if I except a single tip of canvas that hovered for about a quarter of an hour some two or three leagues down in the east, like a little wreath of mountain mist. The incessant pouring of the wind past the ear, the shouting and whistling of it as it flashed spray-laden off each foaming peak in chase of us, grew inexpressibly sickening and wearying to me, coming as it did after our long exposure to the fierce weather of the earlier days. The thwarts or lockers brought our heads above the line of the gunwale, and to remedy this I asked leave to drag a spare sail aft into the bottom of the boat, and there Helga and I sat, somewhat sheltered at least, and capable of conversing without being obliged to cry out.
CHAPTER III.
A 'LONGSHORE QUARREL.
We passed the afternoon in this way. Jacob was forward, sleeping; Thomas's turn at the helm had come round again; and Abraham lay over the lee rail, within grasp of the foresheet, lost in contemplation of the rushing waters.
'Where and when is this experience of ours going to end?' said I to Helga as we sat chatting.