Captain Nelson had not got far into the subject when he interrupted himself.

“Well, Tim,” he said, “that ’s enough for this time. Better be off about your business, and we ’ll have another lesson before long. I want you to learn to navigate a vessel.”

This was good news to me. I knew nothing whatever about navigation, or perhaps I should not have been so pleased. When Captain Nelson had given me some instruction, and I plunged into Bowditch by myself, I found that I had plunged into deep water without knowing how to swim. I was not satisfied to do things in a superficial way, according to formula, without knowing what I was doing, or why, and at first I had a heartbreaking struggle with mathematics beyond my preparation for it. But I happened to discover, quite by accident, in the third mate, Mr. Brown, a man who knew all that mysterious country—or those seas. Mr. Brown piloted me through those strange seas with considerable skill and great patience, so that I could attack my navigation with some satisfaction. But I am getting ahead of my story.

Flocks of petrels, or Mother Carey’s chickens, were about the ship by noon, with their curious habit of flight, as if walking on the water. By the middle of the afternoon the wind had come in from the eastward, and by dark it was blowing fresh, the wind heavy and wet and increasing. Sail was reduced to reefed topsails, and the Clearchus was put as close to the wind as she would go, making a course a little south of southeast. Sailing on a taut bowline was not one of the strong points of the Clearchus. She labored a great deal, the seas slapped up against her bluff bows, she made much fuss and com­par­a­tively little headway, but considerable leeway. There was nothing to do, however, but to make every­thing snug, and to trust in Providence and the ship; and I turned in with no misgivings, and slept soundly.

The weather got worse as the night wore on, and I suddenly found myself sprawling on the floor. The ship was cutting up curious antics. I crawled on my hands and knees back to my bunk, but I could not go to sleep again, although I was sleepy. My bunk was on the weather side, and first I would be standing nearly on my feet, then nearly on my head, then perhaps she would quiver and go slowly over almost on her beam ends, so that I barely escaped being rolled on to the floor again. I heard the bell striking wildly—the tongue must have got loose—until somebody went and tied it up again, lashed it tight. It must have been two or three o’clock in the morning. She seemed to ease a little, sliding down the side of each sea until I thought she must be bound for the bottom of the ocean; then rising slowly, and struggling up the side of the next, until at last she reached the top. There she paused for what seemed to me, down there in my bunk, as much as an hour, and rolled to leeward, and I held on with all my might.

I must have dropped off to sleep again, for the next thing I knew daylight was filtering in. The ship was keeping up her wild coasting down and slow struggles upward, and my muscles were sore and lame with holding on through my sleep.

Captain Nelson was on deck when I got there. He must have been there most of the night. Never in my life, before or since, have I seen such seas. They were veritable mountains, with rugged sides, long and high. When we were in a valley we on the deck were sheltered from the worst of the wind, and the oncoming sea towered so above us that I wondered whether the ship would ever be able to climb that steep slope. She did somehow. The seas were so long that she rode them easily enough; with unnatural ease, it seemed to me. At last I discovered the explanation. They had put out oil bags during the night, bags of canvas stuffed with oakum and filled with oil. Two of these bags were fast, by lines long enough to let them trail in the water, to the ends of the spritsail yard, or spreader on the bowsprit, and one to each cathead. As they trailed in the water at the ends of their lines, the oil oozed slowly from them and formed a thin film over the water which prevented its breaking, so that the ship sailed in a little calm area of her own. This eased her wonderfully.

The best course she could make was too much to the south to please Captain Nelson, and she was hardly doing more than lie to. Soon after I came up the foretopsail, close-reefed as it was, split from top to bottom, and in a very few minutes it was nothing but ribbons. The men had great trouble in getting in the remnants of the sail, but at last it was secured after a fashion, the strips wound about the yard like a bandage, and lashed.

One storm is much like another, except in degree. This one reached its height just before noon, and wore off considerably toward night, although it still blew with gale force. The sea went down during the next day, the wind drawing to the westward. It was a dry, puffy wind, and the men got out their wet clothes and hung them on lines all about the ship, so that we must have looked like a laundry. We had got more sail on the ship, and with a fair wind she made pretty good speed for her. A pretty sight she must have been, rolling along under courses and maintopsail with garments of all hues and descriptions festooned about her.

I went in search of Peter, and found him gazing toward the southeastern horizon. He paid me no attention until I spoke.