Here I found the furniture that had belonged to Captain Dopping's cabin; there were also a little table, a velvet arm-chair from the cabin, and a rug such as would be stretched before a fire-place lying upon the deck. My quarters, thus equipped, looked hospitable enough. Indeed, it was to my taste to live thus apart. It rendered me independent; I could do as I pleased, light my pipe, turn in or turn out, eat and drink, and come and go with a bachelor-liberty that I should not have been able to enjoy had I dwelt as Captain Dopping had in the cabin. The one objection to my quarters lay in the gloom of them. In fine weather there was plenty of light to be obtained through the open hatch; but in stormy times the hatch must be closed, and then I should have to live by lamp-light.
A few minutes after I had descended, the door that communicated with the cabin opened, and the negro lad entered with my breakfast. He put the tray on the table, and stood as though expecting me to question him.
"Is the lady still singing?" said I.
"No, sah, ebery ting quiet now."
"That will do," said I, and he went on deck through the main hatch.
I made a hearty meal and smoked a pipe of tobacco—Captain Dopping had laid in a liberal stock of pipes and tobacco. I then pulled off my boots and coat, sprang into my hammock, and in five minutes was as sound asleep as the dead. Butler wakened me by putting his head into the hatch and shouting. I went on deck, and found my prediction to Don Christoval of a fine day disproved. The weather had thickened, the sky was a wide spread of shadow, under which a quantity of yellow, wing-like shapes of scud were flying with a velocity that might have made you suppose it was blowing a gale of wind. The wind was damp, but there was no rain. Blowing it was, but not yet hard, and Butler had given no other orders than to roll up the topgallant-sail. The breeze was on the quarter, about north-north-west. Had we been working up against it we should have found it a strong wind; as it was, the schooner was swirling before it with every cloth set, saving the little sail I have mentioned. A strong swell chased her, and to each hurl of the regular, giant undulation the vessel flashed along, burying her bows in foam with the next launching swoop in a manner to remind you of the flight of a flying-fish from one glittering blue slope of brine to another.
The vessel that had been ahead of us at daybreak was now on the bow close to—a box-shaped concern with painted ports; she plunged heavily, and seemed to stagger again under her heights of canvas, like an old woman whose balance is threatened by the umbrella she holds up. Such a sputtering as she made I had never before beheld. All about her was white water as she washed through it; it was as though a water-spout were foaming under her. Yet she held her own stoutly; and, two hours after I had been on deck, she was still in sight in the haze astern.
I could make no use of Captain Dopping's sextant in such weather as this. Don Lazarillo was walking the deck alone, swathed to the heels in a cloak, and a large, flapping felt hat, drawn down to his eyebrows. He looked at me askew as I stepped his way to glance at the binnacle. Often had I met his fiery glance scanning me, but never so searchingly as now. He kept his eyes upon me as I stood at the compass watching the behavior of the little ship as she swept to the heads of the swell. When I moved forward, he advanced with a forced, deep grin which so contracted his visage that it looked no more than a mat of hair with a hooked nose thrust through it. He saluted me, and I bowed low, as was my custom with these gentlemen, and the following exchange of sentences took place, partly by signs, partly by shouts; but the substance of our meaning is all that I will venture to give. It would be impossible for the pen to convey his broken English, and as I have not a word of Spanish, I dare not attempt to write the sentences with which he intermingled his English.
"It is a very dark day."
"It is," I answered.