Had I been on friendly terms with Coxon or Duckling, I should have made no delay in going to one or the other of them and communicating my misgivings; for misgivings I had, and pretty strong misgivings they were. But I perfectly well foresaw the reception my hints would meet with from both Duckling and the captain. I really believed that the latter disliked me enough now to convert my apprehension of trouble into some direct charge against me. He might swear that I had sympathized all along with the crew—and this I had admitted—and that if the mutiny which my fears foreboded broke out, I should be held directly responsible for it and treated as the ringleader. Besides, there was another consideration that influenced me: my misgivings might be unfounded. I might make a report which would not only imperil my own position, but provoke him into assuming an attitude towards the men which would produce in reality the mutiny that might, as things went, never come to pass. This consideration more than anything else decided me to hold my tongue, to let matters take their course, and to leave the captain and his chief mate to use their own eyesight, instead of obtruding mine upon them.
When I left the deck at four o'clock on the Wednesday afternoon, there was a pleasant breeze blowing directly from astern, and the ship was carrying all the canvas that would draw. The sky was clear, but pale, like a winter's sky, and there was a very heavy swell rolling up from the southward. The weather, on the whole, looked promising, and, despite the north-easterly wind, the temperature was so mild that I could have very well dispensed with my pilot jacket.
There was something, however, about the aspect of the sun which struck me as new and strange. Standing high over the western horizon it should be brilliant enough: and yet it was possible to keep one's eye fixed upon it for some moments without pain. It hung indeed, a fluctuating molten globe in the sky, without any glory of rays. This seemed to me a real phenomenon, viewed with respect to the apparent purity of the sky; but of course I understood that a mist or fog intervened between the sight and the sun, though I never before remembered having seen the sun's disc so dim in brilliancy and at the same time so clean in outline in a blue sky.
I looked at the barometer before entering my cabin and found a slight fall. Such a fall might betoken rain, or a change of wind to the southward. In truth, there is no telling what a rise or fall in the barometer does betoken, beyond a change in the density of the atmosphere. I would any day rather trust an old sailor's or an old farmer's eye: and as to weather forecasts, based upon a thousand fantastic hobbies, I liken them to dreams, of which every one remembers the one or two that were verified, and forgets the immense number that were never fulfilled.
Throughout the dog-watches the weather still held fair; but the glass had fallen another bit and the wind was dropping. Captain Coxon had very little to say to me now and I to him. I was just civil, and he was barely so; but when I was taking a glass in the cuddy preparatory to turning in for three hours, he asked me what I thought of the weather.
"It's difficult to know what this swell means, sir," I answered. "Either it comes in advance of a gale or it follows a gale."
"In advance," he said. "If you are going to turn in, keep your clothes on. There was a thundering gale in the sun this afternoon, and if you clap your nose over the ship's side you'll smell it coming."
Oddly as he expressed himself, he was quite serious, and I understood him.
As the wind grew more sluggish, the vessel rolled more heavily. I never was in a cuddy that groaned and strained more than this, owing to the mahogany fittings having shrunk and warped away from their fixings. Up through the skylights it was pitch dark, from the effect of the swinging lamps within; and though both skylights were closed, I could hear the sails flapping like sharp peals of artillery against the masts, and the gurgling, washing sob of the water as the roll of the ship brought it up through the scupper-holes.
Just then Duckling overhead sang out to the men to get the fore-topmast stun'-sail in: and Coxon at once quitted the cabin and went on deck. There was something ominous in the calm and darkness of the night and the voluminous heaving of the sea, and I made up my mind to keep away from my cabin a while longer. I loaded a pipe and posted myself in a corner of the cuddy front. Had this been my first voyage, I don't think I should have found more difficulty in keeping my legs. The roll of the vessel was so heavy that it was almost impossible to walk. I gained the corner by dint of keeping my hands out and holding on to everything that came in my road; but even this nook was uncomfortable enough to remain in standing, for, taking the sea-line as my base, I was at one moment reclining at an angle of forty degrees, the next, I had to stiffen my legs forward to prevent myself from being shot like a stone out of the corner and projected to the other side of the deck.