tered the open door from
the main cabin. Then I most thankfully removed my clothes--for the
first time since the springing up of the gale--tumbled into the bunk,
and at once fell fast asleep.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

IN THE POWER OF A MADMAN.

The sounds of water being freely sluiced along the deck overhead, and of
the vigorous use of holystones and scrubbing-brushes immediately
following thereupon, awoke me on the following morning, and I opened my
eyes to find the rays of the newly risen sun flashing off the heaving
surface of the ocean through the open scuttle of the state-room which I
occupied. Although I could not have been asleep more than three or four
hours at most, I awoke wonderfully refreshed, and the memory of what had
happened to me during the night instantly returning, I at once sprang
out of the berth, determined to avail myself forthwith of the renewed
opportunity of starting the day by taking a salt-water bath under the
head pump. It took me but a few seconds to make my way out on deck,
where I found the watch, under the supervision of the second mate, as I
presumed, busily engaged in the operation of washing decks, while the
fresh, invigorating trade-wind, sweeping in over the port cat-head,
hummed and drummed with an exhilarating note through the taut weather
rigging and into the hollows of the straining canvas overhead. The
weather was brilliantly fine, the clear, deep azure of the sky merely
flecked here and there with a few solemnly drifting puff-balls of trade-
cloud, and the ocean of deepest blue sweeping in long, regular,
sparkling, snow-capped surges diagonally athwart our bows, from beneath
which the flying-fish continually sprang into the air and went flashing
away on either hand, like handfuls of bright silver dollars new from the
Mint. Merely to breathe such an exhilarating atmosphere, and to feel
the buoyant, life-like lift and plunge of the straining, hurrying ship,
were joys unspeakable, and I felt in positively hilarious spirits as I
danced up the poop ladder to greet the officer of the watch, and prefer
my modest request for a minute's use of the head pump.

The individual whom I assumed to be the officer of the watch was a young
fellow apparently not very much older than myself, attired in a somewhat
dandified style of semi-uniform, bare-footed, and with his trousers
rolled up above his knees. It was he who was sluicing the water about
the poop so freely, while half-a-dozen o