It was not a matter to pursue with this worthy man, whose small intelligence lay too deep to be worth boring for; so I dropped the subject, and talked afresh of the coloured crew, and continued lingering till I could not have told how long our chat lasted. Though the gale was much less hard than it had blown down from noon, it was still a very violent wind, and the sea as wild as ever it had been, with the shadow of the evening now to add a darker tinge of gloom to the whirl of stooping, sooty heaven, under which every head of surge broke like a flash of ghastly light. The vessel was a strangely desolate picture—not a living creature to be seen forward, the decks half drowned, water sluicing white off the forecastle rim, or blowing up into the wind from off that raised deck in bursts of crystalline smoke, like corkscrew leapings of fine snow to the hurl of a blast roaring across a wintry moor. The black gear curved black with wet: again and again the vessel would pitch into the head sea till the spreading froth made by the massive plunge of her round bows rose to her forecastle rail. I had had enough of the cold and the wet; the cheerless picture of the barque and the ocean, too, was unspeakably depressing, and, with a glance round at the near horizon of broken creaming waters on which nothing showed, I bestowed a nod of farewell on Jacob, and re-entered the cuddy.

Captain Bunting was sitting close to Helga. The light was so weak in this interior that I had to peer a little to make sure that it was the Captain, for the dim figure might well have been the mate's. Helga was at the extreme end of the locker, as though she had uneasily worked her way from his side while they sat; but he had followed, and was now close, and her next and only step to get rid of him must be to rise. He was addressing her very earnestly when I entered; his whiskers floated from his cheeks as he bent towards her. Though the cuddy was charged with the complaining sounds of the labouring fabric, speech was very easy within it, nor was it necessary to raise the voice. Indeed, the interior had the effect of a hush upon my ears, coming as I did fresh from the shriek and thunder of the weather out on deck.

On seeing me the Captain instantly broke off, sat up, and called out:

'Well, and how are things looking on deck?'

Helga rose and went to the little window against the door.

'The weather could not be worse,' I answered, with the air and tone of sullenness I had resolved on. 'Your ship is too old and squab for such a conflict.'

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