almost
too languid to drag one foot after the other as I moved about the deck.
That the sick man also was affected unfavourably was evident, for his
shouts came up through the after skylight with positively startling
distinctness as his delirium grew more acute.

At length, just after two bells had struck--and how dreadfully
clamourous the strokes sounded in that heavy, stagnant air--the helmsman
reported that the ship was no longer under command; and presently she
swung broadside-on to the swell, rolling heavily, with loud splashing
and gurgling sounds in the scuppers, with a swirling and washing of
water under the counter, frequent vicious kicks of the now useless
rudder, accompanied by violent clankings of the wheel chains, loud
creakings and groanings of the timbers, heavy flappings and rustlings of
the invisible canvas aloft, with fierce jerks of the chain sheets, and,
in short, a full chorus of those multitudinous sounds that emanate from
a rolling ship in a stark calm. The helmsman, no longer needed, lashed
the wheel and, gathering up his oilskins, slouched away forward,
muttering that he was going to get a light for his pipe; and I let him
go, although I knew perfectly well that he had no intention of returning
uncalled; for, after all, where was the use of keeping the man standing
there doing nothing? I therefore contented myself by calling upon the
hands forward, from time to time, to keep a bright look-out, and flung
myself into a basket-chair belonging to the skipper.

Sitting thus, I gradually fell into a somewhat sombre reverie, in the
course of which I reviewed the events that had befallen me during the
short period that had elapsed since the _Dolphin_ and the _Eros_ had
parted company. I went over again, in memory, all the circumstances
connected with the loss of the brigantine, the hours I had spent alone
in the longboat, her destruction and my somewhat dramatic appearance
among the crew of _La Mouette_, my reception by her mad captain, and
then fell to conjecturing what the future might have in store for me,
when I was suddenly aroused to a consciousness of my immediate
surroundings by a sort of impression it was no more than that--that I
had heard the sound of a ship's bell struck four times--_ting-ting_,
_ting-ting_--far away yonder in the heart of the thick darkness. So
faint, such a mere ghost of a sound, did it seem to be that I felt
almost convinced it was purely imaginary, an effect resulti