there was some
wind aloft. Indeed, my own ears had caught a feeble flutter of wet
canvas, high up overhead, the jingle of a slack chain sheet. . . .

These were eerie, disturbing, alarming sounds in the dead stillness
of the air around me. All the instances I had heard of topmasts being
whipped out of a ship while there was not wind enough on her deck to
blow out a match rushed into my memory.

"I can't see the upper sails, sir," declared Gambril shakily.

"Don't move the helm. You'll be all right," I said confidently.

The poor man's nerves were gone. Mine were not in much better case.
It was the moment of breaking strain and was relieved by the abrupt
sensation of the ship moving forward as if of herself under my feet.
I heard plainly the soughing of the wind aloft, the low cracks of
the upper spars taking the strain, long before I could feel the least
draught on my face turned aft, anxious and sightless like the face of a
blind man.

Suddenly a louder-sounding note filled our ears, the darkness started
streaming against our bodies, chilling them exceedingly. Both of us,
Gambril and I, shivered violently in our clinging, soaked garments of
thin cotton. I said to him:

"You are all right now, my man. All you've got to do is to keep the wind
at the back of your head. Surely you are up to that. A child could steer
this ship in smooth water."

He muttered: "Aye! A healthy child." And I felt ashamed of having been
passed over by the fever which had been preying on every man's strength
but mine, in order that my remorse might be the more bitter, the feeling
of unworthiness more poignant, and the sense of responsibility heavier
to bear.

The ship had gathered great way on her almost at once on the calm water.
I felt her slipping through it with no other noise but a mysterious
rustle alongside. Otherwise, she had no motion at all, neither lift nor
roll. It was a disheartening steadiness which had lasted for eighteen
days now; for never, never had we had wind enough in that time to raise
the slightest run of the sea. The breeze freshened suddenly. I thought
it was high time to get Mr. Burns off the deck. He worried me. I looked
upon him as a lunatic who would be very likely to start roaming over the
ship and break a limb or fall overboard.

I was truly glad to find he had remained holding on where I had left
him, sensibly enough. He was, however, muttering to himself ominously.

This was discouraging. I remarked i