I slept soundly, and at eight bells Duckling roused me up. The unpleasantest part of a sailor's life is this periodical turning out of warm blankets to walk the deck for four hours. The rawness of the night air is anything but stimulating to a man just awake and very sleepy. Let the wind be never so steady, the decks are full of powerful draughts rushing out of the sails and blowing into your eyes and ears and up the legs of your trousers, and down the collar of your shirt, turn where you will: and you think, as your hair is blown over your eyes and a shower of spray comes pattering upon your oilskins and annoying your face, of your sheltered cabin and warm cot, and wonder what, in the name of common sense, caused you to take to this uncomfortable profession. The crew in this respect are better off than their officers; for the watch on deck at night can always manage to sneak into the forecastle and dose upon their chests, or on the deck and keep under shelter; whereas the mate in charge must be always wide awake and on his legs throughout his watch, and shirk nothing that the heavens may choose to pour upon his defenceless person.
I had four hours before me when I went on deck, and I may perhaps have wished myself ashore in a quiet bed. The captain stood near the wheel. It was blowing very fresh indeed, the wind about east-southeast, with a strong following sea. The yards had been braced further aft, but no other alteration had been made since I had gone below. If I had thought that the vessel was carrying too much sail then, I certainly thought that she was carrying a great deal too much sail now. She could have very well dispensed with the main-royal and two top-gallant sails, and in my opinion would have made the same way with a single reef in the topsails. The press of canvas was burying her. Well aft as the wind was, the vessel lay over to starboard under it, and she was dragging her heavy channels sluicing and foaming through the water. The moon was weak, with a big ring round her, and the sky was obscured by the scud which fled swiftly away to the north-west. The horizon was thick, and the troubled sheen of the moon upon the jumping seas made the dark waters, with their ghastly lines of phosphorescent foam, a most wild and weird panorama.
I mustered the watch, and a couple of them went to relieve their mates on the forecastle. A night-glass lay on one of the skylights, and I swept the horizon with it, but nothing was to be seen. I walked aft to see how she was steering, for these heavy following seas lumping up against a ship's quarter play the deuce with some vessels, making the compass-card swing wildly and setting the square sails lifting; but found her steering very steadily, though the rush of some of the seas under her counter might have bewildered a two-thousand-ton ship. She rose, too, better than I thought she would, though she was sluggish enough, for some of the seas ran past her with their crests curling above her lee bulwarks, and she had received one souser near the galley; but her decks to windward were dry.
Coxon was smoking a big Dutch pipe, holding it with one hand and the rail with the other. He had a hair cap on with flaps over his ears, and sea-boots, and all that he was doing was first to blow a cloud and then look up at the sails, and then blow another cloud and then look up again. This would appear to have been going on since nine o'clock. I thought he must be pretty tired of his diversion by this time.
"She bears her canvas well, sir," said I.
"Yes," he answered gruffly, "I have lost twenty-four hours. I ought to have been clear of the Channel by this."
"She is a fast vessel, sir. We are doing good twelve, I should say."
He cast his eyes over the stern, then looked up aloft, but made no answer. I was moving away when he exclaimed—
"Go forward and tell the men to keep a bright look-out. And keep your weather-eye lifting yourself, sir."
I did as he bade me, and got upon the forecastle. I found the two men who were indistinguishable from the poop, wrapped in oilskins leaning against the forecastle rail. It blew harder here than it did aft, for a power of wind rushed slanting from the fore-topmast stay-sail and whirled up from under the foot of the foresail. The crashing sound of the vessel's bows, urged through the heavy water by the great power that was bellowing overhead, was wonderful to hear: an uproar of thunder was all around, mingled with wild shrieking cries and the strange groaning of straining timbers. The moon stood away to windward of the mizzen royal-mast head, and it was a sight to look up and see the grey canvas, full like balloons, soaring into the sky, and to hear the mighty rush of the wind among the rigging as the vessel rolled against it, making the moon whirl across her spars to and fro, to and fro.