might
know our whereabouts and if it were day or night, since here in the
bowels of the ship it was always night. So (as I say) I reached for
the lanthorn, then paused as above all other sounds rose a cheery hail,
and under the door was the flicker of a light. Hereupon I opened the
door (though with strangely awkward fingers) and thus espied Godby
lurching towards me.

"What, Mart'n pal," says he, sitting beside me on my berth and setting
down the food and drink he had brought, "are ye waking at last?"

"Have I slept long, Godby?"

"You've slept, Mart'n, a full thirty hours."

"Thirty hours, Godby?"

"Split me crosswise else, pal!"

"Mighty strange!" says I, reaching for the flask he had brought, for I
felt my mouth bitterly parched and dry, while, added to the consuming
thirst, my head throbbed miserably.

"Well, here we be, pal, clear o' the river this twelve hours and more.
And, Mart'n, this is a ship--aye, by hokey, a sailer! So true on a
wind, so sweet to her helm, and Master Adam's worthy of her, blister me
else!"

"'Tis strange I should sleep so long!" says I, clasping my aching head.

"Why, you'm wise to sleep all ye can, pal, seeing there be nought
better to do here i' the dark," says he, setting out the viands before
me. "What, no appetite, Mart'n?" I shook my head. "Lord love ye,
'tis the dark and the curst reek o' this place, pal--come aloft, all's
bowmon, the fine folk han't found their sea-legs yet, nor like to while
this wind holds, Mart'n--so come aloft wi' Godby."

Nothing loth I rose and stumbled towards the ladder, marvelling to find
my hands and feet so unwieldy as I climbed; the higher I went the more
the rolling and pitching of the ship grew on me, so that when at last I
dragged myself out on deck it was no wonder to find the weather very
blusterous and with, ever and anon, clouds of white spray lashing
aboard out of the hissing dark with much wind that piped shrill and
high in cordage and rigging.

Being sheltered by the high bulwark hard beside the quarter-deck
ladder, I leaned awhile to stare about me and drink in great draughts
of sweet, clean air, so that in a little my head grew easier and the
heaviness passed from me. Ever and anon the moon peeped through wrack
of flying cloud, by whose pale beam I caught glimpses of bellying sails
towering aloft with their indefinable mass of gear and rigging, and the
heel and lift of her looming forecastle as the stately vessel rose to