Abraham came aft to seek for the sun.

My humour was not a little pensive, for the sea that was now running was a verification of the boatman's words to me, and I could not keep my thoughts away from what must have happened to Helga and me had we not been mercifully taken off the raft. The lugger rose buoyantly to each flickering, seething head; but, in spite of my lifeboat experiences, I could not help watching with a certain anxiety the headlong rush of foam to her counter, nor could I feel the wild, ball-like toss the strong Atlantic surge would give to our eggshell of a boat, without misgiving as to the sort of weather she was likely to make should such another storm as had foundered the Anine come down upon the ocean. I was also vexed to the heart by the speed at which we were driving, and by the assurance—I was seafarer enough to understand—that in such a lump of a sea as was now running there would be a very small probability indeed of our being able to board, or even to get alongside of, a homeward-bounder, though twenty vessels, close-hauled for England, should travel past us in an hour. How far were we to be transported into this great ocean before the luck of the sea should put us in the way of returning home? These were considerations to greatly subdue my spirits; and there was also the horror that memory brought when I glanced at the rushing headlong waters and thought of the raft.

I looked at Helga: her eyes were slowly sweeping the horizon, and on their coming to mine the tender blue of them seemed to darken to a gentle smile. Whatever her heart might be thinking of, assuredly no trace of the misgivings which were worrying me were discernible in her. The shadow of the grief that had been upon her face during the morning had returned with the passing away of the life the noble picture of the ship had kindled in her; but there was nothing in it to weaken in her lineaments their characteristic expression of firmness and resolution and spirit. Her tremorless lips lay parted to the sweep of the wind; her admirable little figure yielded to the bounding, often violent, jerking motions of the lugger with the grace of a consummate horsewoman, who is one with the brave swift creature she rides; her short yellow hair trembled under the dark velvet-like skin of her turban-shaped hat, as though each gust raised a showering of gold-dust about her neck and cheeks.

Yet I believe, had I been under sentence of death, I must have laughed outright at the spectacle of Abraham bobbing at the sun with an old-fashioned quadrant that might well have been in use for forty years. He stood up on straddled legs, with the aged instrument at his eye, mopping and mowing at the luminary in the south, and biting hard in his puzzlement and efforts at a piece of tobacco that stood out in his cheeks like a knob.

'He's a blazing long time in making height bells, hain't he, to-day!' said Jacob, addressing Abraham, and referring to the sun.

'He's all right,' answered Abraham, talking with his eye at the little telescope. 'You leave him to me, mate; keep you quiet, and I'll be telling you what o'clock it is presently.'

Helga turned her head to conceal her face, and, indeed, no countenance more comical than Abraham's could be imagined, what with the mastication of his jaws, which kept his ears and the muscles of his forehead moving, and what with the intensity of the screwed-up expression of his closed eye and the slow wagging of his beard, like the tail of a pigeon newly alighted.

'Height bells!' he suddenly roared in a voice of triumph, at the same time whipping out a huge silver watch, at which he stared for some moments, holding the watch out at arm's-length, as though time was not to be very easily read. 'Blowed if it ben't one o'clock at Deal!' he cried. 'Only fancy being able to make or lose time as ye loike. Werry useful ashore, sir, that 'ud be, 'ticularly when you've got a bill afalling doo.'

He then seated himself in the stern-sheets, and, producing a small book and a lead pencil from the locker, went to work to calculate his latitude. It was a very rough, ready, and primitive sort of reckoning. He eyed the paper with a knowing face, often scratching the hair over his ear and looking up at the sky with counting lips; then, being satisfied, he administered a nod all round, took out his chart, and, having made a mark upon it, exclaimed, while he returned it to the locker, 'There, that job's over till twelve o'clock to-morrow.' This said, he extracted a log-book that already looked as though it had been twice round the world, together with a little penny bottle of ink and a pen, and, with the book open upon his knee, forthwith entered the latitude (as he made it) in the column ruled for that purpose; but I could not see that he made any attempt even at guessing at his longitude, though I noticed that he wrote down the speed of his little craft, which he obtained—and I dare say as correctly as if he had hove the log—by casting his eye over the side.

'How d'ye spell Thermoppilly?' said he, addressing us generally.

I told him.

'Just want to state here that we sighted her, that's all,' said he; 'this here space with "Remarks" wrote atop has got to be filled up, I suppose? At about wan o'clock this marning,' he exclaimed, speaking very slowly, and writing as he spoke, 'fell in with a raft—how's raft spelt, master?—two r's?' I spelt the word for him.—'Thank'ee! Fell in with a raft, and took off a lady and gent. There, that'll be the noose for twenty-four hours! Now let's go to dinner.'

This mid-day meal was composed of a piece of corned beef, some ship's biscuit and cheese. I might have found a better appetite had there been less wind, and had the boat's head been pointed the other way. All the time now the lugger was swarming through it at the rate of steam. There was already a strong sea running too, the storminess of which we should have felt had we had it on the bow; but our arrowy speeding before it softened the fierceness of its sweeping hurls, and the wind for the same reason came with half the weight it really had, though we must have been reefed down to a mere strip of canvas had we been close-hauled. The sun shone with a dim and windy light out of the sky that was hard with a pie-balding of cloud.

'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.